DESCRIPTION: The Life of the Child Conference, was led by Dr. Carla Hannaford, a neurophysiologist, author and educator. We explored the latest insights from scientific research regarding the body's role in learning, from infancy through adulthood. Dr. Hannaford's main premise is that movement is crucial to learning.

I have since applied many of these strategies and highlight here an After School French program I taught at Champlain Elementary School in 2018. These movement based learning methods support the development of foreign language learning skills as a process and allow for continuous sequencing of instruction as new content is added. The 2-day conference took place at the Lake Champlain Waldorf School in Shelburne, Vermont.

The workshop geared for educators put into practice the key concepts covered to improve the quality of learning in our classes. The workshop highlighted that the body/mind connection is of profound importance in understanding learner development and education, thus I submit it for supporting evidence for this knowledge standard of employing research-based methods that develop foreign language skills as a process calling for continuous sequences of instruction in action during my French class at Champlain Elementary School in Burlington, Vermont in 2018.

ANALYSIS/REFLECTION:

The workshop provided activities and remedies that teachers can put into practice right away to make a real difference in their student's ability to learn. Hannaford addressed a number of important educational priorities such as taking a holistic view of each learner; less emphasis on rote learning; more experiential and active instruction; less labeling of learning disabilities; more physical movement; more personal expression through arts, sports and music; less prescribing of Ritalin (and other drugs whose long term effects are not even known,) and inserting a joy into the act of learning and discovery. I find many of these strategies dovetail with those I am learning about in the Teaching Proficiency through Reading and Storytelling methodology (TPRS) as well as many I have used throughout my years teaching.

As well, many of her key points are supported by others I have recently read about in preparing this portfolio including, Dr. Vanessa Durand, a pediatrician at St. Christopher’s Hospital for Children in Philadelphia, who advocates for the importance of the freedom of movement for children to meet their developmental milestones.

In the Winter/Spring of 2018 I taught a 10 week French class to elementary youth at Champlain Elementary School in Burlington, Vermont. I plugged into Hannaford's overarching premise, which is that to cultivate successful, joyful learning for all, we must unlock the potential of the body to grow the brain. In other words, she advocates that simple and practical movement, enriched/appropriate sensory environments and human connection are key ingredients for establishing life long learning habits. This is supported by Charlotte Danielson's Cluster 4 focus of "Student Intellectual Engagement," to which I was recently introduced by my professor, Dr. Juliette Longchamp, in a class I took this year, Reflective Practice and the Peer Review Portfolio through Castleton University. Dr. Longchamp shared Danielson's tremendously helpful framework for teaching and is a big fan of her important work in the field of education. It has aided me in learning the professional nomenclature to talk about teaching as well as a lens through which to view my practice and learner achievement.

It is based on a philosophical approach to and understanding of excellent teaching and the nature of learning. While it is a vision, it is also sets of specific practices. There are four domains of teaching in this framework: Planning and Preparation, The Classroom Environment, Professional Responsibilities and Instruction. Furthermore, the four domains are organized into six clusters that describe skills demonstrated by teachers promoting high levels of student performance, of which Cluster 5 is referenced above. The clusters consist of:

• #1 - Focus: Clarity of Instructional Purpose & Content Accuracy including

• #2 - Focus: Safe, Respectful, Supportive and Challenging Learning Environment including

• #3 - Focus: Classroom Management including

• #4 - Focus: Student Intellectual Engagement including

• #5 - Focus: Successful learning by All Students including

• #6 - Focus: Professionalism including

Thus, in my class at Champlain Elementary with 16 students, I would start off each class with the same procedure: an interactive circle of song, movement and repetition of key French vocabulary for the day. This covered cooperative learning, verbal expression and interpersonal communication skills as learners practiced with partners. I created a welcome song we sang at the beginning of each class, with hand and body movements that all students participated in and I would alternate choosing an assistant of the day in leading the song. We then sang an interactive name song, "Je m'appelle Madame Maggie, Madame Maggie, Madame Maggie, qui es tu?" for example, and passing off the lead to the next person. This chunk of the lesson involved much movement along with the verbal expression aligning with what Hannaford stressed about movement, that it "awakens and activates many of our mental capacities. Movement integrates and anchors new information and experience into our neural networks," (Hannaford, Carla. Smart Moves. Why Learning is Not All in Your Head, Great River Books, 2005. p.107).

I used techniques learned in the workshop such as the "cross-crawl" and "figure eight" which are cognition boosting activities. We proceeded to a few yoga poses in French- that I created moves for mimicking French vocabulary, so for example, instead of "mountain pose," I would call it "La pose de pain." We finished our opening routine with a French version of "Heads, shoulders, knees and toes," which I sped up at the end, and this signaled our transition to the next part of the lesson.

To be noted, there was one student in the class who had a condition that is called Selective Mutism, which the school shared with me in terms of preparing for instruction and participation expectations. This student, after several classes would engage with others as well as myself verbally. While her voice was always in a whisper, it was rewarding to see this, as was also noted by another teacher at the school who observed the class.

Each week we would begin the class with this format, and adding to it more vocabulary and supported mini dialogues between students. The next segment of the class consisted of working on a hands-on artistic project. The fabulous book, Le Petit Prince, served as inspiration and an anchor of activities. In essence, I was employing a "comprehensible input," technique not knowing it was called that.

This evidence shows my competency in this standard as the use of movement based learning activities as a strategy, founded in Dr. Hannaford's research, comprised every class. In the future, I would like to learn more about this through workshops. I also would like to attend a Framework for Teaching workshop. In addition, I have recently learned that the Burlington School District has launched a partnership with the French Consulate in Boston to start an immersion French program here at the kindergarten level with hopes of adding a grade each year. I have reached out to the superintendent at BSD expressing my interest in contributing and working in this program. Fittingly, I had, two years ago, attended an early meeting exploring this possibility with interested francophones in the region, the Burlington School Board and members of the French Consulate staff.

EVIDENCE #2: Tiered instruction examples. The teaching activities occurred at Edmunds Middle School while I was the French teacher in 2017.

a) Pre-assessment at Edmunds Middle School 8th Grade French II

b) Verb Review 8th Grade French II with varying amounts of material

c) "How to ask questions," formative assessment

d) Les Lions, authentic cultural anchor activity completed in strategic groups

ANALYSIS/REFLECTION: It has been invigorating and interesting to read much about various learning strategies. I am discovering that there are names for some of the techniques I have been using over the years. From where I learned them is a mosaic of sources including past teachers as role models, workshops, extensive reading, trial and error, and knowing what worked and did not for me when I was learning French. The class I took this year, Reflective Practice and the Peer Review Portfolio, through Castelton Universtiy, has been immensely helpful in bringing other teaching resources to my attention.

Based on my personal French learning experience, it is crucial that an understanding of content exists before adding on more "input," taking a term from the TPRS method. For second learning acquisition to be a successful process for the learner, whatever strategies a teacher employs, in which learning activities are sequenced, a method of tiered instruction can assist in supporting learners coming to a class with different strengths and challenges.

The evidence above illustrates a sequence of learning activities for my 8th grade French classes at Edmunds Middle School. I have also included some thoughts on my own teaching philosophy solidifying as a I learn so much more throughout this Peer Review process.

A tree is a wonderful metaphor for learning and brings to my mind growth, starting from a tiny seed into a large, vast vessel of experiences lived, weathered and witnessed. As the rings of a tree increase each year, teachers' complex roles provide content, tools and support to nurture the growth of our students. What I refer to as the A, B, C's of life, stand for Access, Belief and Courage. I created this anchor idea, the A,B,C's of life while starting my youth empowerment program, Spread Your Wings!

Moving on to the instructional activities presented here, the first one, a pre-assessment was given when I first started my French position at Edmunds Middle School. The students had been without a consistent French teacher for several months and I wanted to gauge where they were at.

The content on this assessment was covered together as a group the day before and students were aware we would assess their learning the following day. I would like to add that, starting out, there were a number of behavioral challenges to deal with, especially in one 8th grade class, which took up quite a bit of instructional time for the first couple of weeks. Compounding that issue was that there was not a designated French classroom. Each of my classes occurred in a different room, and for one 8th grade class in particular, we were quite cramped. Fortunately, that classroom's teacher requested the school find a different location for the class as it was disruptive for her, and the alternative was a better fit with more room to move around in general and large circular tables for groupings of students to work together.

I delivered the input using a team based, gamification approach on the dry erase board, with learners writing and drawing, and with directions to take notes when your group was not at the board. It was made clear to review the material for a clarifying knowledge assessment the next day. It is a short vocabulary assessment to view evidence of learning from this instructional activity, with a number of important grammatical concepts embedded such as: definite articles, gender of nouns/adjectives, possessive adjectives, singular/plural nouns and adjectives, and the verbs "etre," "avoir."

We went over the formative assessment together, and I asked the students to circle parts that needed more practice and underline those questions they did well on. The irregular verbs needed some reviewing and as perhaps an old school French teacher, I am a big proponent of getting the trinity of irregular French verbs down; être , avoir, aller.

The next learning activity illustrates a student's work in reviewing "etre" and "avoir,' while highlighting the subject pronouns as well. The verb review formative assessment was tiered by giving different quantities of work to students at various levels. While the content and complexity was the same, several students that sometimes felt overwhelmed or ran out of time, were given less work to complete. I feel this works better than allowing them extra time as to not single them out and so that all learners can feel competent and empowered in relationship to their knowledge accumulation. This is a tenet of personalized learning as well, the integration of flexible content and targeted instruction to meet the individual learner's needs and goals. Educator and educational consultant, Scott Johns points out that, "built on metacognition research, we believe students need ample opportunities to reflect on their own learning. Although far from simple to accomplish, student reflection and ownership begin with a teacher helping students to track their own data and set specific learning goals." Johns, Scott. Sept 2018. The Core Four Elements of Personalized Learning, Education Elements. Retrieved from https://www.edelements.com/blog/the-core-4-of-personalized-learning .

Followed by this, in order to support the process of students pairing off and talking, I wanted to focus on the question asking formats available to one in French. In order to have a student-centered approach in my classes, I make a concerted effort to balance teacher talk with student talk, so find it important for French students to have the tools to be able to ask each other questions. With "pair and shares," I sometimes let students self-select, and at times, depending on the needs of certain learners, will strategically pair students together.

A final example I present here is the reading comprehension and writing activity about the Cameroonian soccer team called "Les Lions." While I lived in Cameroon their team made it to the semi-finals of the World Cup. This topic was one I could unpack with interest from many students involved in playing soccer themselves. It was also an effective way to introduce geography and culture while underlining comprehension and grammar. Students worked in small groups to complete this and I arranged them intentionally so those with different levels of competency could assist others. I have found this collaborative approach works well and is a positive opportunity for students to be mentors to other students. In this way we all become teachers in meeting the tasks and goals at hand.

The evidence here reflects my use of research-based instructional methods and strategies that develop foreign language communication skills as a process and articulate continuous sequences of instruction by providing tiered learning activities differentiated to meet the needs of diverse learners, while all aiming for the same learning standards and targets. In the future, I plan to pursue further growth in this area by attending professional workshops, reading and discussions with other French and second language teachers.

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