https://padlet.com/marcabondurant/ng5ect59wp1rml9r Week 1 Task en-us 2022-10-06 03:04:29 UTC 2022-10-07 03:45:48 UTC hello@padlet.com marcabondurant https://padlet.com/marcabondurant/ng5ect59wp1rml9r/wish/2328641302 Marca Bondurant
Beijing City International School]]> 2022-10-06 03:09:47 UTC https://padlet.com/marcabondurant/ng5ect59wp1rml9r/wish/2328641302 marcabondurant https://padlet.com/marcabondurant/ng5ect59wp1rml9r/wish/2328642977 English
Little bits of Spanish and Chinese]]> 2022-10-06 03:11:13 UTC https://padlet.com/marcabondurant/ng5ect59wp1rml9r/wish/2328642977 marcabondurant https://padlet.com/marcabondurant/ng5ect59wp1rml9r/wish/2328645220 I grew up in a monolingual home and community. 

My first exposure to learning an additional language came in high school. I began learning Spanish. I don't remember many details from Spanish class. I did enjoy it and wanted to do well. We did a lot of memorizing vocabulary. Much of our time was spent with the teacher asking individual students questions while we tried to answer appropriately in front of the rest of the class. I remember conjugating verbs and memorizing poems, but I do not remember having conversations or using language in context. 

I continued learning Spanish when I went off to university. Our professor encouraged us to write in Spanish, but by then it had become more of a subject that I was learning than a tool I could use to communicate.

My first opportunity to actually apply what I had spent all of those years trying to learn came in my junior year of college when I spent the summer doing archaeology in Jalisco, Mexico. Spanish felt awkward. I had a lot of the words, but no real clue about putting them together. One afternoon, while chatting with my bilingual archaeology professor, I remarked that hearing myself speak Spanish sounded funny and uncomfortable. His response was that if that was the case then I would never be fluent. His lack of support shut me down for a long time. The fact that I am still writing about it 30 years later shows the impact that those words had on me.

As an adult, language learning has been more about survival in a new country. While living in Bangkok I learned enough Thai to be polite, catch a cab, and make sure the food I was ordering was vegetarian. Next, we moved to Saudi Arabia. Although we were there for 8 years, I only learned how to say 'hello' and 'thank you.' Living in China has been a challenge. I speak some Chinese and would like to learn more. Learning additional languages has been difficult.

My struggles as a language learner have helped me empathize with others who are learning a language. 



]]> 2022-10-06 03:13:17 UTC https://padlet.com/marcabondurant/ng5ect59wp1rml9r/wish/2328645220 marcabondurant https://padlet.com/marcabondurant/ng5ect59wp1rml9r/wish/2328645775 I never imagined myself growing up to be a teacher. After finishing my graduate coursework in Archaeology, I took a break to decide what I wanted to do with my life. Pursuing archaeology would most likely mean a Ph.D. and a life in academia. My husband and I were avid travelers and we decided that the next step was to live abroad. His focus was Chinese language and religion so we took jobs at an English training center and moved to China. My first language teaching experiences were mainly for students to practice having conversations with a native speaker. The complex nature of learning was intriguing and led us back to the United States to study.

After completing an education program for lateral entry teachers we searched for our next international post and ended up at a trilingual school in Bangkok, Thailand. The language of instruction was English. Students were native speakers of either Thai or Chinese and were learning all three languages. In my role as an ESL teacher, I was responsible for pull-out English language instruction. It was completely disconnected from what students were learning in their other classes. We taught both BICS and CALPS because students would not have exposure to English socially. Over the years ESL teachers, influenced by the work of Krashen,  pushed to move towards a sheltered instruction approach to better connect the language that we were teaching to the content they were learning in the classroom. We explored co-teaching and focused on how to differentiate and scaffold for our language learners. We discovered that what we thought would benefit a small group of language learners benefitted all students. 

Next, I wanted to challenge myself further by becoming a homeroom teacher. I wanted to bring what I knew about language learning to other subject areas. My students were from all over the world with a number of different home languages so English was our common language. We began teaching literacy through the workshop model using Lucy Calkins and the Teacher's College Reading and Writing Project as our main resource. The Teaching and Learning Cycle (de Oliveira and Smith) from the required reading this week brought me back to this time. We built our units around genres and each began with a dissection to find characteristics of the genre. I gathered mentor texts and led students in discussions of what was common across the texts. We created a rubric together for our writing. After reading de Oliveira and Smith's article, I realize that I did not go deep enough into the text structures and language features. 

At my current school, I have moved back into a language support position. I support two homerooms and am fortunate to have time to co-plan, co-assess, and reflect with my homeroom teachers. There is a lot of flexibility in how I teach. This includes co-teaching, small groups, and one on one instruction. I have been working on teaching grammar through mentor sentences using Jeff Anderson's Patterns of Power as a resource. Deconstructing sentences and recognizing patterns is a good fit with the inquiry-based nature of the PYP.

Additionally, we have begun using WIDA's English Language Development framework when planning with our teams. I see the importance of developing language objectives through function, but it has been challenging to apply. After reading the de Oliveira and Smith article, I think what I am missing is a deep Knowledge About Language (KAL) to better make connections between genre, register, and grammar while focusing on function. 

I am looking forward to this course. I still have a lot to learn.

Referneces:
de Oliveira, L.C. & Smith, S.L (2019). Systemic functional linguistics in teacher education,
Oxford Research Encyclopedia, Oxford University Press, pp. 1-29.]]> 2022-10-06 03:13:49 UTC https://padlet.com/marcabondurant/ng5ect59wp1rml9r/wish/2328645775 marcabondurant https://padlet.com/marcabondurant/ng5ect59wp1rml9r/wish/2328646199 This has been a difficult topic for me to address. My years as a homeroom teacher give me insight into how to better co-teach, co-plan, and co-assess with my teaching partners. This experience helps me determine what language functions are needed in different content areas. Additionally, I am passionate about literacy and have experience in Reader's and Writer's Workshop, particularly using conferring to focus on specific teaching points, set goals, and reflect.]]> 2022-10-06 03:14:12 UTC https://padlet.com/marcabondurant/ng5ect59wp1rml9r/wish/2328646199 marcabondurant https://padlet.com/marcabondurant/ng5ect59wp1rml9r/wish/2328646586 I am interested in metalanguage, talking about language, and what that would look like with younger students (Grade 1-2). I want to strengthen my KAL and apply that towards teaching grammar through patterns in mentor texts. I have begun attempting this with students, but I am just at the beginning and have a lot to learn. How do we talk about language without being overly technical? How can we see grammar more as a connected system than a rule book?]]> 2022-10-06 03:14:36 UTC https://padlet.com/marcabondurant/ng5ect59wp1rml9r/wish/2328646586 marcabondurant https://padlet.com/marcabondurant/ng5ect59wp1rml9r/wish/2330405677 de Oliveira, L.C. & Smith, S.L (2019). Systemic functional linguistics in teacher education,
Oxford Research Encyclopedia, Oxford University Press, pp. 1-29.

Goulet, N., Karellis, M., Sharpe, M., & Brosseau, R. Systemic functional linguistics for the
English language arts classroom, October 27, 2016, McGill University,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWznZoq43xQ&list=PLk5apCn6NbgSlLGMCfs3WzN3an
wTr0jCk&index=4 

Mannon, P. (2o18). An introduction to systemic functional linguistics,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XSnbVbJEuC4


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