Lesson+2

Lesson 2
Monday, January 31, 2011

- //sunny// - //cloudy// - //warm// - //cold// ||
 * **Content to be taught** || * Expressing the weather
 * Chinese cities
 * The Chinese character ri (day, sun, bright, etc.)
 * Vocabulary:
 * **Standards ** || This particular school asks that teachers pay close attention to student behavior and needs. These should be noted for later discussion in middle school team meetings. Due to the small class size (six students), the teacher is also responsible for being relatively personal with each student. Chinese is considered an elective at this school; therefore, the teacher should assign only light homework.

The Chinese elective has an emphasis on speaking and listening rather than reading and writing, so the Chinese romanization system, //pinyin//, is used for most lessons. The objective of the course is to introduce students to Chinese culture as well as the language. A notional syllabus is used that focuses on topics rather than grammatical constructions. Students are also encouraged to work together to solve problems and develop interpersonal skills. || **Level of Technology Use** || Students should know vocabulary for days of the week from the previous lesson and be able to make basic sentences of the form "This is (blank)." They should have basic skills with a computer mouse. ||
 * **Prior knowledge &**
 * **Technologies ** || <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Jing - Used to capture partial screenshots of a Chinese weather website for use in creating a tutorial worksheet on how to look up the weather in a Chinese city.

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Webspiration - Used to create a diagram illustrating several of the Chinese characters that are formed from the character for "day/sun."

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Voki - Used to create small cartoons describing the different types of weather. The background and clothing worn by each Voki was chosen to reflect the appropriate weather. Sunglasses were chosen if it was "sunny," for example.

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Microsoft Word - Used to create a worksheet with a tutorial for looking up Chinese weather.

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Audacity - Will be used to record students giving mini weather reports and add a music track in the background after the lesson. Audacity will also be used to export the recordings as MP3s.

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Woices.com (sic) - Will be used by the teacher after the lesson to produce what are called "echoes," on the Woices website, which are sound files linked to a particular location in the world. Weather reports created by students will be uploaded and linked to the appropriate Chinese cities. Links will be posted on this Wiki after students have been recorded.

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Rubistar - Used to create a rubric for grading the student weather reports. ||
 * <span style="font-family: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; font-size: 11pt; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">**Pre Lesson** || Students will form partners for the in-class weather activity. Students will also have previously learned vocabulary for dates, which they will use again in this lesson when checking the weather. ||
 * **<span style="font-family: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; font-size: 11pt;">Lesson Goals ** || <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Students will become familiar with a Chinese website and learn to express several weather conditions in Chinese. They will further review the use of dates in Chinese, which they learned in the previous lesson. Students will also develop cooperation skills as they work with a partner on the assigned task. ||
 * **<span style="font-family: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; font-size: 11pt;">Activities ** || <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">(5 mins)
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Play the GoAnimate cartoon created from the students' recordings during the previous lesson. Ask students a few questions about the dialogue to check comprehension.

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">(5 mins)
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Review dates in Chinese by eliciting today's date and calling on a student to come write it on the board. Ask if today is warm or cold, using exaggerated gestures to show the meaning of each. Write these two vocabulary words in pinyin on the board.

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">(5 mins)
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Ask another student to draw the character for “day” on the board. Explain how many Chinese characters relating to weather and days are made from this character. Pass out worksheets created with Webspiration to illustrate this concept. The worksheet will contain Chinese characters and their pronunciations for the words today, tomorrow, yesterday, sunny, and spring. Model the pronunciation of each word and ask several students to form a sentence with a word of their choice.

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">(5 mins)
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Navigate to the Vokis for this lesson (embedded below). Allow students to come to the computer one at a time and choose a Voki to click on and play for the class. Students repeat what the Voki says as a class. Each Voki will say a sentence related to the weather, such as "It's warm here." Write each weather expression on the board as it is said.

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">(10 mins)
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Assign each student a partner. Pass out the weather worksheet (see PDF below) to each student and assign each pair a Chinese city for which to find the weather. Pairs of students take turns using the computer to look up the weather for their city in China and fill out the worksheet accordingly. While one pair is using the computer, encourage others to observe.

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">(10 mins)
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">When all students have finished finding the weather for their city, each pair will give a mini weather “report” to the class and record it using Audacity. Students should tell what the weather will be for today, tomorrow, and the next day. After class, mix the recorded tracks with audio and prepare MP3s. Upload them to Woices.com and assign each recording to the appropriate city in China. They will be accessed during the next lesson. ||
 * **<span style="font-family: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; font-size: 11pt;">Student Assessment ** || media type="custom" key="8056586" ||
 * **<span style="font-family: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; font-size: 11pt;">Technology Samples ** || [[file:Weather Worksheet.pdf]]

Webspiration for the Chinese character "day" media type="custom" key="8057182"

Weather Voki (warm) media type="custom" key="8059684"

Weather Voki (cold) media type="custom" key="8056694"

Weather Voki (cloudy) media type="custom" key="8059676"

Weather Voki (sunny) media type="custom" key="8059678" || http://www.weather.sina.com.cn || || **<span style="font-family: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; font-size: 11pt;">& Reflections ** || <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Before class, I had arranged the desks in a semicircle to allow for better observing and interacting with the Chinese website during this lesson. Because it had been a while since students were exposed to the format of writing and speaking dates in Chinese, it took several examples to remind them. After passing out the web diagram of the Chinese word for “day,” I modeled the pronunciation of each word and had students write the pinyin under each of the characters. I realized I should have perhaps limited the amount of vocab on the handout to just yesterday, today, and tomorrow so as not to confuse students. Arranging the web diagram with yesterday on the left and tomorrow on the right would have also made the meaning more clear. I told them to ignore the other words in the web diagram for now. To get students familiar with the meaning of the new vocabulary while reviewing dates, I called students to the board and told them to write the dates for yesterday, today, and tomorrow. After saying these as a class, I felt students were ready to be introduced to the weather terminology.
 * **<span style="font-family: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; font-size: 11pt;">References ** || Sina Weather (Chinese)
 * **<span style="font-family: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; font-size: 11pt;">Student Work ** || media type="custom" key="8347706"
 * **<span style="font-family: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; font-size: 11pt;">Lesson Annotation **

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">I decided to also limit the weather vocabulary for this lesson to warm, cold, and cloudy since students seemed a little overwhelmed by all of the new information. I played the appropriate Vokis and students were intrigued. I found that the Vokis loaded very quickly, more so than the GoAnimate cartoon, and were thus very easy to access during the lesson. I allowed students to click the play buttons themselves and they commented on the strangeness of the Chinese text-to-speech voice, although I found it quite accurate in pronunciation. The students jokingly tried to imitate the robotic voice which, although somewhat silly, got them to speak much more than usual which was a plus. It seems that humor is an effective incentive for getting students to speak.

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">I finally passed out the weather worksheet and explained the directions to students while showing them the Chinese weather website. They were somewhat distracted by the Chinese advertisements, but this curiosity led to a bit of extra learning. I taught the class how to say “internet” in Chinese, as they kept seeing this recurring character on the website. Students still remembered the word at the end of class, which is rare. If students are genuinely interested in knowing something, it seems, they are much more likely to remember it. I also taught them the word for “degrees” and they practiced their numbers in Chinese by reading the temperatures from the website for their city. While each group of students were accessing the website, I ensured that they took note of the temperature and whether it was hot or cold for today, tomorrow, and whichever day of the week the next day happened to be. After each group filled out their worksheet, I helped them write their weather reports in full sentences and prepare to speak them with proper pronunciation. I decided to do this since during the previous opportunity to record their voices, students had preferred to use silly voices and did not pay attention to their pronunciation or grammar as much as I had hoped. Rather than have students record their reports less than fully prepared, I opted to use the rest of this lesson to help them prepare and record their reports during the next class instead.

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">During the next class period, after each group of students had presented their weather report, I let them gather around the computer and create a Glog about Chinese weather in general. Before class, I had downloaded several pictures related to weather so that they could be easily uploaded and placed on the Glog. All words on the Glog were written in Pinyin so the students could easily read them.

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Overall, this lesson was a good review of many items the students had learned, including dates, days of the week, and numbers. They learned new vocabulary as well. However, I felt that this lesson might have been better split into two parts: one for teaching the weather vocabulary and letting students become very comfortable using it, and another for viewing the Chinese weather website, practicing their weather reports (with much assistance from the teacher), and finally recording them. I plan to have students record a Chinese news report in a future lesson and will keep this in mind.

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">After class, I spoke with the school principle about allowing me to bring students to a vacant, smartboard-equipped classroom for a future lesson. She allowed this, and I will see how I can incorporate such a new resource in future lessons. ||