Westland Middle School

Westlane Middle School - February 12, 2016

Arrival at 8:30 - School entry has many country flags hanging from ceiling. Secretary said many parents point out flags to students "That's where your grandfather is from!" I think the flags are an awesome idea to promote community and also a good beginning of incorporating international mindedness of the IB. Gets students thinking about other counties and people different from them. Some of the learner profile traits.

Louisa LaGrotto

8:30 - 9:30

1. How would you say your classroom different from a "traditional" non-IB classroom?

2.In what ways do you incorporate inquiry in to your units? What does it "look" like for you?

3. Do students know the statement of inquiry/inquiry questions from the units? Are they involved with the development of any of them?

4. How do you get students to know and understand the traits of an IB learner?

5. How would you describe the overall attitude of the students towards IB/MYP?

1. It's supposed to be a common language among school with IB. Hard when not everyone is on board. Not use of the book as much. Creates much of own material to go along with IB units. Use textbook for some content and language practice. Making sure summarize assessments include the strands needed. Try to incorporate all strands in assessments.

2. Speaking more English than before because of the common language and teaching them how to think like IB learners. Creating own projects and not using textbook for everything. Since teaching more inquiry at lower levels, language not the strongest. Students need more support with terminology and expectations at lower levels due to English proficiency.

3. Posted on the board and on the planners. Students: not much say. Students can ask debatable and factual. Factual no. Developmentally not able to do so in the language and possibly developmentally.

4. Students memorize them in the target language and have to present on what they are and which they aren't. Student refer to essential classroom agreements and use ser and estar to make sentences. Also gustar to talk about which they like and dislike.

5. Some students coming into the district have a hard time adjusting to the rigor and explanations of IB. Many behavior issues from those students. There are a lot of great students who excel with the program. Very mixed.

PLC Meeting - 9:30 to 10:42

Louisa and other Spanish teacher plan weekly agenda for seventh grade Spanish. Teachers talk about essential question for the unit and relate classroom activities back to question. Teachers talk about the use of superlatives and comparatives with carnival float projects.

Finalize weekly agenda for coming week.

Discuss the caligrama summative assessment. Writing a poem etc. in the shape of an item they purchased. (Maybe email to see example?)

Discuss student behavior and progression through years of the program.

Students all participate in national Spanish exam.

Intermediate Class- 10:42 - 12:45

Teacher greets students in target language. Reviews the classroom procedures and praises class for doing it well. Each group is a country and the center group is the United Nations.

Allows student sitting alone to move. "You're making a choice. Make a choice that's best for you and will distract from your learning."

Reviews agenda and activities for the class. Shoe verb drawing and activities. Reminds student it'll be a small exam grade.

Animator - asks questions to class. (Get questions from Louisa? How does she develop the questions?) reviews the agenda. ¿Cuál es número 9? Vamos a.....? This helps build classroom community. Questions at standard from day one. Later, students get questions relating to chapter/ unit content.

Louisa reviews the rules for shoe verbs. References sheets students have. Discusses the linguistics of why we have stem changed. Strong vs weak vowel. Students draw show to understand where the change happens. Students begin to work in groups with their shoe verb drawing rough drafts. Expectations are clearly stated by teacher to support student understanding. IB stresses using student work as examples. Teacher places students samples for students to gather ideas.

Students work in groups to remind each other of the rules for shoe verbs. Teacher reminds them to use prior experiences with notes and homework in case they are forgetting. Encourages them to use resources to check their work.

After lunch: Louisa asks students how lunch was. Students practice adjectives with "Me fue fantástico. Etc" Students can't repeat adjectives.

Teacher presents to the class there is 30 minutes left in class asks class what would be the best way to use the time. Teacher gives the illusion of choice to students to work on preguntas de animador, but seems to have planned to transition to that activity before. While going over questions, teacher reminds students that hacer won't be used in their responses. Students should refer to their vocabulary and choose a different infinitive. Provides student with a personal example. Asks student to provide another example.

Presents new word (ningún) to students. Asked how they would spell it. Practicing and checking on pronunciation comprehension.

Walks through other questions with students. Provides input and examples of new grammar topics. 15 minutes left in class for students to work on materials.

Developmental Design Period 12:50 to 1:15

The focus of this period is work on social development and develop a sense of community in the school. Students do CPR (check what the appreciation is for?) None of the students in DD are Louisa's students. Students use this time to read and Louisa also uses this time to read to students if they don't have a book to themselves.

Beginner Spanish - 1:22 to 2:40

Teacher reviews classroom procedures with students do to having new seats.

Students start off by reading the classroom essential agreements. Agreements are posted on the wall and are visible.

Teacher reviews "A quien le toca? and appropriate responses. Afterwards the animadora reads the agenda questions and calls on students to answer. This process is very students driven and focused. There is much participation in this process.

Teacher prompts students with asking ¿qué significa repasar? Teacher reminds students it has shown up a lot of their agendas and it is the action they are currently doing.

Teacher transitions to the movie the students are watching. She reviews key words necessary for the goal of the activity. I.e. Personaje, resumir, padre, hijo, estudiante. Student and teacher discuss characters that have appeared in the movie so far. Students also show how many times they heard key words from the film. I.e. Buenos dias, ay chihuahua, patrón, gitano, valiente.

Students continue to watch film.

End of visit 2:30

Reflection

This visit was helping in seeing the implementation of IB and specially the MYP in a world language classroom. Mrs. LaGrotto has clearly put in a lot of thought in how to make her classroom an IB classroom. She uses daily questions regarding unit content to reinforce and scaffold language acquisition and statement of inquiry. When I asked her about how she develops the IB learner profile, she stated that she and her colleagues start from the very beginning. Within the world language classroom, she connects the traits to language topics being studied. Students choose a learner profile trait to present on and describe and other students say if they like those traits. One question I do still have is, how they develop the traits after learning about them?

It was interesting to hear them talk about assessments and the use of criterion. Westland requires that each criterion be met twice a year at all levels. Because of this some teachers choose to create summative assessments that involve as many criterion and strands as possible.

One question that I still have is, how are classes "transdiciplinary" at Westlane? I think that a foreign language classroom would be easy to do this. There is so much outside of grammar that can be part of language acquisition: history, art, music, etc. However, I'm curious as to how other classes do this.

#text