Lessons Learned

Instructional Technology - International Education - Wellness

Tag: pre-kindergarten

App Smashing in a Language Immersion Program

Letters Numbers

As we are a dual language school here at the Washington International School, finding apps in Spanish and French that meet our needs sometimes takes lots of work. Generative apps like Educreations, Draw Free, etc. are our best bets for several reasons, including that they give the students the avenue to make their thinking visible in language and visuals as they also are language free with the tools/functions represented by symbols/icons. Explain Everything, though, does come in French and Spanish with the directions/commands offered in both languages.

This leads me to a lesson I did today in one of our French immersion Pre-K classes. The teacher, Sonia Mena, is one of our school leaders trying new approaches to teaching and learning in her classroom. She already has used video to record her students sharing their understanding of a concept for one of their PYP units. She then used her iPad to recreate a story in French with the students as narrators.

Her most recent strategy is to have me help her students write letters and numbers using iPads. The iWriteWords app is an excellent choice for this activity. One can even get it in French and Spanish. But before making the purchase, I wanted to try the free version to see if it would benefit the students.

We had the students use the app drawing letters and the provided practice words in English. The app smashing came into play as we switched from iWriteWords to the Draw Free art app. It was a transfer task as the students again drew the numbers without the benefit of the structure provided by iWriteWords. They spoke the numbers in French as they drew them. We then used the projector and screen to display the French word “Deux.” The students then applied their letter drawing in French.

We should bring in a third app to have the students screencast as they draw, speak, and record the numbers, letters, and words in French. The practice today was beneficial for the students. The technology did more than replace paper and pencil as students easily erased, chose different colors, and was very engaged.

Early Childhood Technology Enhanced Lessons

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Recently I spent some time in two classes where the early childhood teachers seamlessly used technology to help their young students reach the learning goals for their respective lessons. Cecilia Rios teaches one of our two Spanish Kindergarten classes. She is a leader in our iPad pilot and uses her interactive whiteboard (IWB) in a student-centered manner. With one of the biggest and deserved complaints about IWBs being that they are often used just for direct instruction, it was nice to see Cecilia’s students interacting with the software on the board. The students were comfortable answering questions by moving to the board to manipulate digital objects.

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Cecilia’s room is filled with images, objects and descriptors to immerse her students in the Spanish language.

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Movement, singing, and hands-on activities are a big part of our early childhood program. The teachers tell me that learning a second language also involves social engagement and games to help students learn within routines that use language. Teachers like Cecilia also bring in digital media (see image above) so that students can see and hear Spanish in a fun and engaging way.

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I also spent some time in Rebecca Courouble’s French Pre-Kindergarten classroom. Rebecca is another one of our tech leaders. Besides using her IWB for interactive language work, Rebecca created a series of online video storybooks with pages from books where she virtually reads to her students. Rebecca also has a Moodle site rich with resources to extend learning beyond the classroom. She will be one of my models as we work to further our efforts to provide a blended learning environment for our students.
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One of the many wonderful aspects of the Primary Years Programme (PYP) of studies is the conceptual nature of the learning goals. Built along the same lines of Understanding by Design, the PYP curriculum starts with the end in mind focusing on the learning goal. The learning goal is all about big ideas that connect to multiple disciplines.

The Kindergarten students recently finished a unit about homes. The inquiry unit had the students pondering questions about the various ways and reasons why people build their homes the way they do. While the goal was to understand how homes are designed to fit the needs of the people and their localities, the students started their learning pursuit by looking at the similarities and differences of each others’ homes. They took photos of rooms in their houses and then worked with their teachers to build a three-dimensional composite. An example of their work is below.

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