Dear Nikki,
It was an amazing opportunity to sit in Raphael’s workshop. We all learned tons today. I appreciate how he was not only talking about big education ideas, but also modeled a lesson for us, so we can experience it.
I will never forget the activity we did on the floor about different discipline’s top five verbs and how they overlap. The conclusion is not a new concept, but the way he presented it was. Being engaged in creating and making connections was the most important part. That made me think again about the relation between content and process. This activity also demonstrates the Bloom’s taxonomy by having us learn dominos. Immediately the interdisciplinary education concept made so much sense to me.
It was an amazing opportunity to sit in Raphael’s workshop. We all learned tons today. I appreciate how he was not only talking about big education ideas, but also modeled a lesson for us, so we can experience it.
I will never forget the activity we did on the floor about different discipline’s top five verbs and how they overlap. The conclusion is not a new concept, but the way he presented it was. Being engaged in creating and making connections was the most important part. That made me think again about the relation between content and process. This activity also demonstrates the Bloom’s taxonomy by having us learn dominos. Immediately the interdisciplinary education concept made so much sense to me.
As a language teacher, this Spanish class was different for me. Later that day, I was talking to a Chinese friend who is studying Engineering in Wisconsin. He was telling me how he was never able to speak English until he started learning English in his engineering classes. That really connected to me on the two different kind of languages Raphael talked about – Basic Interpersonal Communication Skills (BICS) and Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency (CALPS). If we adopt the iceberg concept, what under the water CALPS is how we define ourselves as a learner [??]. Through teaching the concept as well as the language, students will naturally develop the BICS. Maybe our language class can just be a special interest class. When students are immersing themselves in some concepts they are interested in, they will highly focus on the teacher and the topic without realizing that he/she doesn’t speak the language. That was an eye opening idea to me. I am excited about the Chinese class I am going to teach all in Chinese on Monday night.
I think the debrief and assessment part was very smart. Almost all children love to draw or watch cartoons. We naturally are good at expressing ideas through pictures. That six tables become alive when I was looking at my classmates’ whiteboard and helped me to reflect on the lesson too. I thought the tea party idea was brilliant. It’s not easy to construct a sentence which summarizes what we did and what we learned today. But it was also very interesting to see how we all took away different things from this workshop and gain a new perspective.
The whole class really did a great job on differentiation instruction. He covered all different type of learners through different activities, at the same time, Raphael also mentioned that it is better for students to experience different ways of learning to be able to develop as a whole learner. I think he would agree with Multiple Intelligence and what New City School does.
It’s a very different field trip experience where we actually have the whole day sitting down and learn new things. Thank you for organizing this.
Gratefully,
Jamie
10.15.15
I think the debrief and assessment part was very smart. Almost all children love to draw or watch cartoons. We naturally are good at expressing ideas through pictures. That six tables become alive when I was looking at my classmates’ whiteboard and helped me to reflect on the lesson too. I thought the tea party idea was brilliant. It’s not easy to construct a sentence which summarizes what we did and what we learned today. But it was also very interesting to see how we all took away different things from this workshop and gain a new perspective.
The whole class really did a great job on differentiation instruction. He covered all different type of learners through different activities, at the same time, Raphael also mentioned that it is better for students to experience different ways of learning to be able to develop as a whole learner. I think he would agree with Multiple Intelligence and what New City School does.
It’s a very different field trip experience where we actually have the whole day sitting down and learn new things. Thank you for organizing this.
Gratefully,
Jamie
10.15.15