Foreign Language – Curriculum Mapping

 Our original goal was to determine how curriculum mapping will impact students, the community and teachers. Also, to determine how will we as group members communicate lesson objectives and procedures to each other across languages and levels . Also, to determine what materials, resources will we use to complete the curriculum mapping.-

M Chelkowski, H Hickey, M Teixeira, M Lumley, D Barone, J Duca, E Shiland, L Diago, C Rant

Each meeting was dedicated to listening and answering questions group members had in translating the “curriculum mapping” to our content. We read through publications focused on the ins and outs of curriculum mapping. We browsed through other schools’ foreign language curriculum maps. We input our data into the curriculum map database and shared and discussed appropriate examples of essential and secondary questions as well as content to be included in the unit time line.-What is the impact on student learning? It will bridge any gaps that may exist between language levels that are offered here.

Differentiated Learning in the Foreign Language Classroom

We are interested in creating lesson plans  that could assist us in meeting the needs of individual students. We would like to explore ways in which we could  instruct native speakers who are enrolled in our classes.  

C. Rant, M. Teixiera, H. Hickey, G. Duca, M. Hughes, M. Chelkowski, L. Diago, K. Gregory, M. Barnes

Our goal was to design lessons that address the needs of students with various abilities, learning styles and interests.

 

After reading about differentiated learning, we compiled a list of differentiated learning activities that we already did and others that we could try.  We tried some of these activities and then reported back to the group about the effectiveness, the students’ responses, the ease or difficulty of the activity.  Some were very successful and others were not.  We found that student interest is greater when students have the ability to choose how they will learn or practice the lesson.  With greater interest, students are more motivated to learn.  In this way, our efforts to include more differentiated learning techniques in our classrooms have had a positive effect on student learning.