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ACIE Articles Make Versatile
Training Aids
The ACIE Newsletter, November 2005, Vol.
9, No. 1
by Michele Anciaux Aoki, Ph.D., Project Director,
Washington State Coalition for International Education, Seattle,
WA
In August 2004, I was invited by Pacific Lutheran
University to coordinate a six-day language immersion
workshop for over thirty teachers and administrators
from Sheridan Elementary and Stewart Middle School in
Tacoma, Washington. Working with a team of three dynamic
and experienced immersion teachers from Seattle, Bellevue,
and Tacoma (representing Japanese, Spanish, and French),
my goal was to model the intensive “boot camp”
experience that a wonderful teacher from Fairfax County,
Virginia, Regla Armengol, had created for our Spanish
immersion teachers when we launched the John Stanford
International School in Seattle in 2000. |
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Sheridan Elementary began its language program several years
ago and currently offers partial immersion in Japanese, Spanish,
and French. Stewart Middle School had just completed its first
year offering partial immersion, content-based instruction
in Japanese, Spanish, and French in 6th grade. The purpose
of the intensive summer workshop was both to prepare new immersion
teachers to teach in an immersion setting and to ground the
entire staff in the principles of language immersion. In addition,
the workshop was intended to be a team-building experience
that would help create the basis for good working relations
among the teachers and across languages and schools in the
coming year.
At first it was challenging to think of ways to organize the
workshop to meet the needs of this mixed audience, but in
reviewing materials available on the web, I realized that
the ACIE articles would be a great tool. I reviewed the list
on the website and chose a variety of articles – some
pragmatic, some theoretical. The pragmatic ones, with concrete
strategies for classroom lessons, would appeal to the immersion
teachers, while the theoretical ones would fill in gaps in
understanding of immersion for the non-immersion teachers
and administrators.
I printed several copies of each article. Then, on the first
day of the workshop, I posted the articles on the wall and
gave the workshop participants a chance to select an article
to read and report on to the group. Participants who chose
the same article formed a team. The teams ended up crossing
languages (French, Spanish, Japanese, and English) and grade
levels (K-6). This gave the participants a chance to have
fun and get to know each other better. Teams were able to
meet several times during the week to review their articles
and plan their presentations.
Over the next five days, we interspersed the article presentations
with the other workshop speakers and activities. It worked
great! Because the teams were creative with their presentations,
the teachers in the audience had an enjoyable time, while
being exposed to the valuable information in about a dozen
articles. For the non-immersion teachers, it was also eye-opening
to realize they could report on an article that was about
a language they didn’t know.
Here are some examples:
The team presenting “A Dozen Activities for Promoting
the Use of Spanish Outside of School” added their own
suggestions to the list and tailored them to their neighborhood
where, for example, there is a Spanish-language grocery store
near the school.
The team presenting “Teaching the Geography of Francophone
Africa” was thrilled that something as mundane as prepositions
could be taught using content (i.e. by talking about locations
of countries in Africa in relation to each other).
Based on comments from the participants’ evaluations,
the articles and presentations were well received. Here are
some responses to the question “What did you like best
about the workshop?”
- Articles on things to do in the classroom.
- The information [in the articles] was research based.
- The opportunity to encourage my peers and to finally get
some clear definition of immersion.
- All the practical, applicable ideas/theories were also
top on my list.
- I walked away with valuable … strategies that will
enhance my teaching.
- I developed a ton of curriculum ideas listening and reading
on my own this week.
- Building on This Idea
You don’t have to wait for a six-day immersion “boot
camp” to use this idea. How about meeting up with your
teachers at school and assigning teams of three to read and
report on an article at your next teacher meeting? You could
focus on the best practices or perhaps points for parents.
This would be a good way to show the non-immersion teachers
that there are lessons in good teaching and communications
for everyone to learn from immersion.
Articles chosen for the workshop are:
Thanks to ACIE for providing such valuable resources!
Editor’s note: Dr. Anciaux’s training ideas
can be adapted to a school-wide staff development plan so
that immersion teachers remain apprised of current research
and best practices in immersion education. As in Dr. Anciaux’s
workshop, a jigsaw strategy in which staff members participate
in an “expert” group and a “home”
group allows everyone the opportunity to focus on an area
of personal interest while being exposed to a greater range
of ideas. Over a period of time, the “expert”
group members explore a selected reading, discussing the text
and making connections to their own practice. Later, in their
“home” groups, made up of teachers from each “expert”
group,
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