Submitted by: Adele

During this meeting we shared meaningful projects and resources that support and inform the teaching of oral skills throughout the divisions. It seems that projects and culture will drive our exploration of these oral skills. Music was a common thread because of its universal nature that sparked a comparison of  common songs and resources to illustrate content and curriculum.

We also talked about the need for better platforms where the students can record and share their oral projects with us and we will follow up with tech for some recommendations and ideas.

We ended by reviewing the M.S. trips and the academic work being done in preparation for these trips.

We will begin our next meeting at the L.S. to share student work. All of this in preparation for our day long retreat in the Spring to add to our existing document on how we teach oral skills.

Submitted by: Adele

Talked about Self study
Talked about launching oral communication this year.
Discussed attention level of the l.S. students  and need for simultaneous activities.
How do we address short attention span and develop / create speaking activiites to accommodate those students.
– need for speech therapy also an obstacle
– integration of skills, writing, speaking, listening.
Hopefully this year will give us an opportunity to develop strategies and curriculum.
How do we accommodate native speakers and the wide range of levels in our classes.
This year we will explore how we teach oral communication skills in our classes and throughout the divisions.

Future dates for department meetings will be shared.

PD day at H.S. World Language REading Curriculum : How and why we teach reading

Independent work days in preparation for PD day on 5/6.

We used this time to schedule and plan our PD day on May 6th ( if possible). This will be a time to record and archive our reading practice across divisions.

At this meeting French and Spanish met by department at the high school to share the reading program, resources, and materials in grade 9-12. This was Chinese New Year our colleagues did not attend. We also discussed our goals for this project to include not only digital documentation of resources, but a narrative by language and division of how we teach reading and the skills it informs. Some of us thought it would be helpful to identify an area of curriculum that we could develop, improve, expand upon for next year. 

At our next meeting on March 5, we will talk more about this documentation and try to set    aside a PD day when we would be able to all work together.

This meeting was one of our best. We met over on Bleecker and the full group was present which really helped move the work and discussion forward. This was our time to divide up into smaller groups by department which oddly enough we haven’t done in the past. The goal was to share resources, student work, and talk about curriculum.. We started out in one large space, but then some of us went off to into assigned classroom space where we could get a better idea of the technology and program. There was an apparent enthusiasm and excitement evident in all of the groups and I think it is fair to say that we all felt energized by talking about our best practice, what we do, and how we do it.

We did not  have enough time to all share and when we met back as a full group, I had to bring the conversations to a close which was a first for us. We will continue these discussions next time at th HS where HS teachers will have  more time and an opportunity to share.

On Tuesday the department met in order to review our goals and share the different kinds of reading we are currently doing in our classes and how that reading reinforces communication skills across the curricula and intra-divisionally.

We also discussed the schedule of meetings and agreed that we would like to convene on the scheduled Tuesday times along with the option to meet for a  bigger block of time further on down the road to work on documenting and recording our study. Many of us seemed to like the idea of photographing student work and even filming our students engaged in their projects.

At the next meeting we will be meeting together, but by language at the MS to address issues of continuity and transitional years. Time permitting we will come together to begin to share student work.