Teach Depth or Teach Breadth?

Inspired today to share my thoughts about an upcoming #reflectiveteacher at TeachThought Twitter chat topic. This coming week we are going to light up Twittersphere with a healthy debate on "Should we be teaching Depth of Knowledge or Breadth of Knowledge in our classrooms? This should be an interesting chat!

Depth or Breadth?

This topic leaves me with some heavy reflecting....and this is good! Am I supposed to pick one side? Is one approach better than the other? My inner compass and my outlook on life and education always point me in the direction of finding good and value in everything and to consider all sides of the issue. Why can't the two coexist side by side in a healthy balance?! 

In teaching languages, we want our students to be proficient and go out in the world and communicate in meaningful ways. Language teachers work hard to create authentic learning opportunities for learners in class. These opportunities not only challenge students to develop deeper, more meaningful connections with the target languages but to also stretch out of their comfort zone to make additional connections to new themes, new topics or new issues. 

For example, take my AP students who this past week finished up one of my favorite activities to do in class- the Shark Tank. Now this activity is not completely like the TV show, but I have taken a key piece from that show and morphed it into an activity that helps develop Depth and Breadth of my students' speaking proficiency. You can easily apply it to any theme, but this was their task:

How can we help countries in Latin America

solve some of the challenges that face them?

Student-Centered. Authentic. Engaging, Open-Ended. These are all good things! Depth? We've got that. In the task, my students further explored an AP Theme of World Challenges  by creating a "product" that could help resolve an environmental, geographical or demographic issue in Latin American countries. Talk about deepening one's knowledge of the overall topic!
Breadth? We've got that too. Students then give a sales pitch of their product and this requires a lot of different/new structures and vocabulary to be able to not only showcase the idea to the class, but to be able to spontaneously answer or react to audience comments. Being able to use a variety of structures to sustain and advance conversation is another key component in language proficiency. 

What are some of the ideas they came up with? An app that would allow needy families to obtain food/goods with a click funded by generous donors, a filter system powered by solar panels that would bring drinkable water to remote areas in Mexico, or a solar-charged garbage can that automatically separates waste and would thereby help areas where there are no recycling program established in the community. These were great ideas, and you never know, we may see one of these some day in the future making a difference!

Doing a Shark Tank style activity encourages both Depth and Breadth of knowledge in the target language and the students love it. It is a great way to students to really grow in multiple ways in the language. How do you encourage students to broaden and expand their knowledge on a topic? Please share :)

No Chromebooks? No problem with Plickers!

I had a set of Chromebooks in my classroom for a whole semester. What a lucky gal I was. It was love at first sight and students in my 5 classes used them in their learning 3-4 times s week. Minus off an assessment day in class and that makes almost every day students using technology! What a great anytime, anywhere environment for students to learn Spanish and having the opportunity to connect to all that amazing culture in the world! Looking back on it, I had loads of opportunities to try out new approaches and new apps. 

This past semester I piloted e-portfolios with my AP class and dubbed Socrative as my favorite new formative assessment tool and was able to incorporate more Latinamerican culture into my choice boards which gave students more options during class time and more access to authentic resources! Students were creating and collaborating with Google, sharing and accessing documents quickly.  I added it up in my head, my students were using technology probably 60-90 minutes a week! And they were thriving.
Now that I don't have the Chromebooks this semester, I needed to solve the problem of access. I was able to solve the issue of a low tech/ barely no tech formative assessment option in the classroom. Enter Plickers. Plickers says that it is "a powerfully simple tool that lets teachers collect real-time formative assessment data without the need for student devices" No lie. Plickers uses a set of student cards in conjunction with a smart phone or iPad used by the teacher for quick checks for understanding and to know whether your students are understanding big concepts and mastering key skills. I like simple, and I really needed something now that me and my students were without the laptops. 
Plickers provides you with free cards on their site or you can buy a laminated set on Amazon (very pleased with these!). After setting up the account on my laptop, I downloaded the app on my iPhone and iPad. Setting up my classes is pretty easy as well as the questions for the day. To use Plickers for a quick formative check of the day's material, I passed out the cards to the students and readied myself with my laptop running the program and my iPad with the app and camera ready to scan my students. Here are some screenshots I took of my AP students as we went over a reading activity with AP=level . Yes, look at those smiles! 

As you can see from the screen shot on the left, the correct answer was B and many of the students were answering C and D. After I got done with the Plickers, we all took another look at that problem and we were able to talk about the students' misunderstanding of the problem, refine their understanding and interpretation of the question. 
That's why formative assessment is so important; giving students instant, valuable feedback along the way, pinpointing areas that need readjusting, refining and getting back on track with learning. And that's why I like Plickers: it offers a viable solution to not having technology every day. No Chromebooks? No problem with Plickers!

Who Says you Can't Play Golf with Apples?

What do you do to help your students learn in a climate of optimism and hope? Do you have a successful strategy you can share?

Be flexible. Be flexible. Be flexible. This will help create a classroom shared by both teacher and student. Being flexible does not mean letting students always have their way, or always getting to do what they want. Being flexible means listening to what they have to say, considering their ideas, and weighing their suggestions as you plan and carry out your lesson and activities, rubrics and long-range planning. Students who feel that they are valued and part of all aspects of a class will work harder and care more about you and their learning.

 

I would consider myself to be a thoughtful person, at least that is what others say of me.That's both a positive and a negative in my life. Because being thoughtful means you weigh things, you want lots of input to make a decision and you want to consider everything and everyone who is part of the decision. To put it bluntly, I am not someone who pulls the trigger, goes off on a whim, jumps off the deep end first, throws caution to the wind.  

Even though I may have missed some unplanned and spontaneous moments in my personal life,  being a thoughtful person has been very beneficial in my teaching because I do always consider alternate solutions, look for the middle ground and will always try new things. Like the poster says- Who says you can't play golf with apples? I am always will to listen to why that student did not have a homework, or give him/her time to explain why they were acting a certain way. Maybe there is something I was missing. Because after all my 25 years of teaching I still don't know everything- so why not consider other alternatives and solutions?  I would like to believe that being flexible with my students has led to those many smiles, cares and Facebook friend requests that I get as time marches on.