Data-fying langauge spin-out

Working with students learning English is a great kind of work for me. I enjoy people and like sharing my love of learning about the natural world and the world of language and song. My classroom is not a beautifully organized Pinterest space.

 Since I graduated from college with a BA in Education in 1983, I have worked with people learning English. I started in a summer school and worked teaching Math to English language learning middle schoolers. They were the sons and daughters of Mexican migrant farm workers. I did not have any experience teaching, but I could communicate in Spanish about adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing. I feel like I blocked out the memory of how poorly I was prepared. I also blocked out any memories of classroom management failings. I do remember I taught the standard algorithm with very little concept development. It wasn't until ten years later, after a course in Visual Mathematics, that I understood the concept of two negatives make a positive. I memorized the statement as fact and taught it that way to that first group of kids.

Every year I learn from students what it is that I need to teach them. Now, a lot of what I need to teach them has had to be data-fied. I hear the first grade English Langauge Learner (ELL) say, "Him run to school". I understand her intent, so I know she isn't stuck in the Silent Period when she doesn't know enough English to say her own thoughts, and I know she needs to get some miles on her tongue saying, "He runs to school." I say, "Yes! He runs to school. Say it with me. He runs to school." The student repeats. If she is with other students that might need this practice I'll enlist the help of the others and make it more like a chant-on-the-fly. "He runs to school in the morning, he runs to school at night, he runs to school in the afternoon, he runs with all his might." Data-fying her original sentence means scoring it to begin finding out if the instruction is effective. Unfortunately, to see if instruction is effective it needs to be compared with the other first grade students learning that same lesson, hence a speaking task for all first grade ELL students at her level. I need a picture of the boy running to school. No, I need a whole series of pictures of different people running to different places. I will enlist help creating pictures. Other verbs riding, driving, skipping, walking, rolling, jumping, skating, skiing might make for some funny images. I see a series of art lessons culminating in a class made flip book.

At home for the holidays. I am feeling blessed to have friends to play music with and that the sun is shining and I am not just socked in with grey clouds.

I have some homework (reading and highlighting, no long essays) as our district is looking at renovating the ESL materials. In this era of Common Core Standards I find that my job is changing. Not that it hasn't changed every year since I started, but now I feel I find myself trying to navigate how the English Language is used effectively in the regular ed classroom and how to support language learners and their teachers.

The classes that Stanford offers through the MOOC (massive open online course) that focus on English Language Learners are time consuming and full of ideas and high expectations. I am mulling over the idea of taking the next one that is six months long instead of three. I was team lead on one last spring and it was a great experience. I joined one this fall that had no team lead ( It hought it did, but no one communcated ) and it was not a great experience. It was a lot of work to do the team lead, but I feel it was worth it.

I'm a Blogger-not

I really thought that I would get better at narrating some of the more interesting things that I do, but I have not taken the time to do it. When I am online I tend to check email and trash most of it, check Facebook and reply to any posts that I like. I have been a member of Twitter a long time, but never really tweet anymore. I joined Instagram a couple of days ago to make posting pictures easy.

Last summer I got to play with some mummers and puppeteers called Risk of Change for the Oregon Country Fair. My friend Jenni invited me and we ended up making a twins costume so that we could be the Silver Lining Sisters. We had clear glass orbs (otherwise known as marbles) and we would hand one to a fair-goer and tell them something like "This is an orb of perception that will help you look into yourself to find the silver lining in all your life's challenges." We also dressed up as gnomes, trolls, curly-stripey clowns, carnaval clowns, flamingo-rinas and some color themed costumes. This year uncle Sam thwarted my ability to go play by demanding more than a thousand dollars on April 15th, so I taught summer school again. I am hoping to return next summer.

I am going to clean out my car so that I can drive it south for 12 hours or so and camp in the redwoods near the Russian River and play music from Brazil at California Brazil Camp. I have been going for 7 or 8 years and learning songs and a third language and culture. It looks like I might be trecking alone, so I am preparing myself for that possibility. Snacks, music and a good night's sleep and I'll be ready.

QuadBlogging Connects Student Writers with Global Audiences | Edutopia

QuadBlogging Connects Student Writers with Global Audiences | Edutopia

Hmm. I wonder if it is time to Blog with the writers at Parkdale Elementary school.

This summer we hosted six people from the Czech Republic for a couple of days. They found their way to Timberline, Laurence Lake and Tamawanas Falls for local hiking before venturing up to Washington and across to Montana and then back down to California and home. I love Couchsurfing.org.

I am thinking about music a lot. I have always sung. The first recording that I made was when I was in kindergarten at Castle School and my mom rewrote the words to "Wouldn't It Be Loverly?" from the musical ___. We did a play and I played a cat and sang about wanting tuna and milk and "Meow... wouldn't it be loverly?" But that isn't the thing I was thinking about when I started this blog entry.

Lately I have been stretching my mind to learn more music theory because I am in a teacher certification program for ukulele teachers taught by James Hill. I never took a music theory class in school. I sang in choir in high school and in the vocal jazz ensemble in college and was familiar with the idea of intervals but never had to label them or teach them. Now I am learning them so that I can teach them to my second year students that are playing ukulele.

I was searching around on the Ukulele in the Classroom site and found a thread that lead me to The Musical Intervals Tutor. I like how it lists songs that many people are familiar with so that you can imagine the different interval in your "minds ear" before you listen to it. This song starts with a major third. What would it sound like with a minor third instead? This video was done on a FlipVideo last summer near Banyuls Sur Mer in the south of France when James and I couchsurfed with Leonardo.

He took us up to the view between towns. I have a memory blog about our whole couch surfing experience started. I lost my muse when I deleted the notes (note) I was taking on my iPad on the flight home. I am only now beginning to retrace our footsteps.

Back to playing.

I teach ukulele after school to fourth and fifth graders. On Valentine's Day, I think an hour after school is too long! They all needed to take a break in the middle and go get drinks, partly because of the candy they consumed and partly because their fingers were tired from a new strum that I taught them. I think it might be considered a folk strum. The best part of the group was when individuals played the C scale that they have been practicing.

I tune the instruments before they come in, but last week I changed the strings on four of them and they have to be tuned again after about 15 minutes. Well after fifteen minutes I start to hear that they are too far out of tune to sound good they probably are stretching after five minutes. If you have any tricks for getting nylon strings to settle in, let me know.

This is a picture of me from last summer in Geißen, Germany. A two year old took the picture of me holding the guitar that I had just tuned.