My last class

I had my last Understanding by Design class last night. It was a worthwhile class and it felt SOOO good to just hand in my unit and call it good. I still need to e-mail my annotated bibliography, but it was great to hand in everything else! I was concerned when we discussed it because I thought I had left stuff out, but then Mary Kay took a look at it and said everything was fine! I felt awesome... and when I was speaking my plan out loud, I even surprised myself at the cohesiveness of the podcasting stuff. A proud moment for me.
Then we spoke about some things during the discussion in class that I found most interesting. The first was the idea that in Japan, they have the students experience first and then find the words and information they need through uncoverage and construction of learning. I was considering how I could fit this into my classes. The thing I could think of is just the authentic experience of speaking (reading or writing) about a topic... and then using that to figure out what information they need. So example: in the movie chapter, ask the students questions and try for 15-20 minutes to speak in German about what they can... having the students take notes on what vocabulary would be useful for them within that topic! It coud be the same with food, restaurants, classes and school and so much more. it would put their vocabulary necessity in a very authentic and meaningful context! How exciting!! I need to include that in my classes. Instead of having the students imagine what vocabulary they want for the day of talking, maybe we try first without any vocabulary... then learn the vocabulary... and then do it again the next day! I wonder if it should begin as mainly teacher led discussion (to be sure that the kids are either talking in German or not at all) and then could lead to students doing it on their own.
The second thing we briefly talked about that I have been considering is grading. It was interesting. Do you grade homeworok if it's just practice? And what if they don't need the practice to do well on the test? Then should they be punished for not doing the practice? Hm... This is something to keep rolling over in my mind... but it reminded me that I need to/want to do observational assessment of the students. Just random snapshots of students progress. This could be acccumulated through the dialogue journals, hot seat, in-class speaking and other writings/works. Just notes here and there... and if I watch/look for two kids in each class every day, it should work itself out. Then I think I would also have a better idea of how the class is performing as a whole. Interesting. I think I'm going to make a sheet for that right away.