Salut! I’m Meredith Roe

Teaching practice

Forming the foundation of my teaching

1. Cooperative learning can be implemented in various ways in the classroom. For foreign language learning, cooperative learning is crucial because it helps students develop their listening and speaking skills. Cooperative learning can be utilized in various ways: stations, jigsaw, and other activities that can be done as a group. Cooperative learning fosters community within the classroom and helps students to feel more confident about their coursework. Students must be aware of their classroom expectation before engaging in cooperative learning activities. An ideal assessment would be a rubric based on participation, accuracy of their activity/assignment, and engagement with the activity. 

2. Teaching proficiency through reading and storytelling (TPRS) is a form of teaching that engages students through storytelling. Since this activity is complete student-centered and student-drive, it is ideal. Students' only rules are to be engaged and focused on the story. For an assessment, at the end of each story, students are given a mini-quiz on the story.

3. Being culturally relevant to students is very important because no matter what diversity out school has, as an educator, we must know how to stay relevant to our students. This can be done in various ways. Including music into a lesson, specific vocabulary or words, representing all people from all backgrounds, and many others. I can create a classroom environment that fosters culturally relevant pedagogy by recognizing the diversity in my students and honoring it through my teaching strategies. This will definitely contribute to a positive classroom environment and ensure that students' voices are being heard. Finally, I believe this will benefit my assessments because if I am including more relevant information to my students, they will better be able to understand and learn it for assessments. 

4. Role play is a beneficial instructional technique to learn language because your whole body is engaged. This strategy isa often utilized because it increases motivation and encourages students to participate. Students are encouraged to become more physically involved in the lesson, and these lessons typically discourage passivity. There must be time to account for: class environment, props, scripts, casting, rehearsal, performance, and debriefing. Have clear objectives and goals for students so they can easily assess if they have met the objectives. Rubrics and score sheets are adequate examples of assessments because they demonstrate clear behaviors that are acceptable and unacceptable

5. Self-evaluation is important for both students and the teacher. My cooperating teacher this past semester (fall 2019) had students self-evaluate their classroom behavior and expectations. Self-evaluation can also be used to demonstrate progress to students through the year with  specific objective in mind: writing, speaking, reading, or listening. This could definitely contribute to a more positive classroom environment, since students will be held accountable to themselves for their own actions. This could be considered its own form of assessment, or it could be done at the end of every unit. 

6. Student-directed investigation is a means of introducing research to students. Since it is student-directed, students are motivated by their own inquiry, so their intrinsically motivated to research and answer their question. This type of investigation could be performed in the form of an essay, presentation, or project. There will need to be an established "community of learners" already in place for students to develop this investigation. 

on field experience

In practice

Moravian College has granted me various opportunities to work alongside real, practicing teachers, in their classrooms. In the fall 2019 semester, I worked in a middle school classroom: I developed my own lesson plan and taught it, I taught culturally relevant traditions about French culture, and I helped students in the classroom. 

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As a student-teacher, I was able to work one-on-one with students and help more than if there was only one teacher in the classroom. I used various questioning strategies to help engage students more deeply in the material. I also used instructional tools such as videos to enhance student learning. 

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Having the opportunity to teach my own lesson to a class, was extremely beneficial for me. I have learned a lot about the process of developing a lesson plan for students. I had the opportunity to talk with my cooperating teacher before presenting my lesson many times and she gave me advice for how to better facilitate the lesson. TPR was a new strategy for me and I was excited to implement it. TPR, or total physical response engages students with language learning devices to help them learn foreign language more effectively. 

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Being an educator is not only advocating for your students, but it is also recognizing and caring for the community and environment around you. In order for reflective teaching to work, teachers must constantly frame and reframe problems in different situations in order to achieve the best possible outcome.