Cross Curricular Oral Communication

For the first three years of my teaching experience, I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to teach drama to a wide range of students and their learning levels. What I find funny is that it was not until I began my formal teacher’s education that I realized that what I thought was simply just sharing my passion for Drama with my students coincided with the requirements of the Oral communication strand.

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It is a fact that we spend about seventy percent of our daily lives is communicating with others through various forms. Of this seventy percent, thirty percent of our communication comes from speaking. When this fact was brought to my attention it put into perspective just how important it is to teach our students how to communicate thoughtfully and effectively. I feel as though there is not enough stress placed on the importance of Oral communication, especially in the classroom, so I am going to make it my own mission to change this notion once I begin my practicum and into my future classroom. Once I decided to incorporate more Oral communication activities in my classroom I went looking for different activities online that I could practice in class and that is when I realized just how much Arts education coincides with the curriculum requirements for oral communication.

The Oral Communication connections in the Arts and Language Curriculum.

In a few excerpts from each curriculum doc, I realized both the arts curriculum and the Language curriculum had similar things to say about oral communication. For example, in the Language curriculum it states: “To develop their oral communication skills, students need numerous opportunities to listen and to talk about a range of subjects, including personal interests, school work, and current affairs” (Language curriculum doc pg 9) While the Arts curriculum doc has something similar to say about using oral communication in the arts. “Through purposeful talk, students not only learn to communicate information but also explore and come to understand ideas and concepts, identify and solve problems, organize their experience and knowledge, and express and clarify their thoughts, feelings, and opinions.” (Arts Curriculum doc pg 51) It is clear that through purposeful and effective instruction in the arts we are able to teach cross-curricular expectations, once I came to this realization I thought about one particular activity I did with my drama class that touched upon each of the important aspects of developing oral communication.

Orally Communicative, Cross-Curricular Activities in Practice. 

http://bit.ly/2idc5VT

I once ran an activity where the students were given the opportunity to research an important current event and it was their job to present this topic to the class in the form of a news report. I really liked being able to do this activity with my drama class, I was teaching it at the time only focusing on the dramatic elements of it, however, an activity such as this could easily span across the requirements for both the arts and the language curriculum. What is a simple activity to run is one that gets students to focus on what is happening in the world around them, it gives them the opportunity to form their own opinions and most importantly it gives them the chance to speak to their classmates through presentations and focused talk. It is a wonderful cross-curricular activity that I will try to use with my classes each year, it promotes important conversations and teaches students how to communicate thoughtfully and purposefully in both a linguistic and artistic way.

Inspiring our Students to Write

In many classrooms, students tend to have a negative outlook towards writing. There are many factors that can go into this fixed mindset one of which includes a lack of inspiration and ideas when trying to write creative stories and journal entries. 

What many students do not realize is that writing is an important component in 

• communication 
• socializing 
• and it is influential to how others perceive you 

In a Pinterest board, I found a great resource that helps to inspire students to write. I think that using this kind of resource will help students in a significant way, especially at the junior level to write journal entries. I would love to incorporate a writing jar into my classroom to help motivate students to write short stories and journal entries.  

In such a simple and open-ended activity, the use of a writing jar in the classroom touches most on the first expectation of the Ontario Language Curriculum expectations in writing(pg 12). This is a simple idea that could allow students to practice generating, gathering, and organizing ideas and info to write for an intended purpose and audience. The idea of the writing jar is that students are given the chance to draw an open-ended question out of a jar to which they answer in a journal. The jar can contain a countless number of topics and ideas that can help inspire students to write either a creative paragraph or write about their daily lives. Using this resource in the classroom gives students more opportunity to motivate themselves to write more. In giving students these broad questions it forces them to gather their thoughts, organize their ideas and write them out on the page. 

  It is important to give class time to students to practice their writing skills. I think that the use of a journal is great way to help students to understand how important writing is in communicating ourselves to the world.  While incorporating writing is a great way to get students to be working quietly and practicing their writing, when I see journal writing in practice I find myself during this time helping students to simply decide on a topic instead of seeing students spending the bulk of the period with writing in their journal. I think that using the writing jar strategy in class would help to minimize the time used in deciding on a topic in general. I like the idea that using the writing jar gives students a wide variety of questions to choose to inspire students and excite them to write creatively. I think that giving students that choice also makes them more motivated to write about something they have chosen.

 I think that implementing these types of activities will be a good starting point to get students more interested in writing. Using different activities like:

•          The Writing Jar
•          Or Chapter Summary tweets
•          Or Facebook profile character sketches.

The activites listed above are a few of the many ways in which we can foster a positive attitude towards writing. These kinds of activities reach out to students in an engaging way, that helps them to understand how writing applies to our communication skills. These activities are ones that I would like to try in the future and I think that they could make a positive impact on the attitude towards writing in the Classroom. As educators, we must help students get inspired to write and show them that writing is more than just creating "good" short stories, essays or Journal entries. It is an important form of expression and communication. Students must be able to understand the impact writing has on our daily lives, and how others perceive us. 

The significance of Referencing skills in Reading.

Referencing: Why do we need it?

Many people can easily look up anything online and learn something new or gain a new perspective. While being able to access a huge variety of information on any given topic can be a great thing, students can run into problems with fully comprehending all the information that is thrown at them. Using an important tool like a dictionary in print 😱 can actually be more beneficial to learning reading comprehension than using a digital dictionary. I think that it is important for students to learn how to properly use a reference book like a dictionary or thesaurus in print and here are a few reasons why:

1. It allows students to practice their skills in gathering information and organizing it on paper. 
2.  It makes a huge impact on their reading comprehension skills.
3.  learning the basic layout of a dictionary can be further used to navigate other reference books.

While it is one achievement to learn how to phonetically understand words, another important part of reading comprehension can be solidified through the use of a dictionary or a thesaurus.  When students are able to comprehend what they are reading, they begin to feel more confident in communicating with both teachers and classmates. Specifically using a dictionary in print forces the student to do a little more to enhance their comprehension. Instead of simply right-clicking a word and learning about that one word instantly, the student must understand the layout of a reference book in order to find the information they are looking for. Through their search, they not only find the word they are looking for but they are also exposed to many other words, their meanings and uses. In doing this, students are practicing the transferable skills needed to do scholarly research papers in their future educational careers. I remember feeling overwhelmed with my first university research paper s. I think part of that overwhelming feeling I had was because I didn't feel confident in my referencing skills. I think that learning these skills and putting them into practice as early as elementary school grades would help students in their futures. I also think that it could definitely eliminate some of the overwhelming feelings students may have when writing research papers in higher grade levels.

How do we teach 21st Century Learners to use a reference book in print? 

Of course, there is a huge number of activities to choose from online to introduce these skills to your students. While it is great to be able to have access to all sorts of information, it is our job to show students how being able to use a reference book in print is just as important as a digital version. Like I have mentioned before it is important to begin practicing these skills as you are learning to read. Having a student flip through the pages of a dictionary gives them the opportunity to gain an understanding to multiple words instead of a specific word typed into a search engine. Here are a few resources I have found online to introduce the layout of a dictionary and referencing skills in the classroom:

http://bit.ly/2yNJyfa

The Dictionary Scavenger Hunt.

This is a fun activity to introduce young students to use the dictionary. It contains a variety of questions the students must find in the dictionary. The activity gets students to explore the dictionary, get acquainted with its structure and get to understand how much information they can find in its pages. The example shown here is a very simple one geared towards primary grades, but you can always update the questions to fit the level of your classroom.

The Sound it Out Activity 

        This is a good pre-lesson activity, it can help you as a teacher gauge each individuals reading comprehension skills while incorporating the practice of referencing skills. The way the activity works is that the phonetic spellings of words and a photocopied page out of a dictionary are distributed to the students. The students must then match the phonetic spelling with the correct spelling of the word found on the dictionary page. I would like to try this lesson in a junior level class, I think that it allows students to make connections to the sounds of words, their meanings and their place in context.                                                       

                                         

                                        A Word Collection

http://bit.ly/2z3WLBI

This activity is great for multiple reasons. First it gets students to log their dictionary use, secondly it is a great way to practice writing and lastly, it helps students understand the appropriate context for a word. The activity is an ongoing collection of words in a notebook throughout the year. The students are to divide it alphabetically and as they find words that they do not understand they are instructed to look it up in the dictionary, write out the word its definition and one sentence using the word in proper context. I think that I would definitely use this activity in my own classroom. I think that it could work well in both junior and intermediate classes. 

Genius Hour Reflection 4: Learning to Sing and Play at the Same Time

So I have this new found respect for anyone who sings and plays an instrument at the same time. Throughout this process I have really had some fun, I am happy to say that I am feeling more and more confident each day with my Ukulele playing. However over the last few days I have began singing the lyrics while playing the ukulele at the same time and now I feel as if I am learning the song from scratch again. I am unsure if it is because I am bad multi tasker or I don't quite have the lyrics memorized but nonetheless it has been a challenge to combine the singing and playing together. However practice really does make perfect and thankfully this has not totally discouraged me from the project. I will keep persisting through it, but I have to say that I cannot wait until I just get to the first chorus smoothly! It is in setting these little goals for myself that I feel has helped not to lose motivation. I think that if I only had the big picture in mind then I feel like I would lose motivation because of course it has been weeks and I still cannot play it perfectly. But since I have had small little checkpoint throughout this process I still feel as if I am on track and that these setbacks are not all that significant when it comes to the main performance.

Genius Hour Reflection 3: My Sore Fingers

Now that I have found some great resources that work well for me I have just been doing nothing but practicing. That being said however, I feel like I've hit one of my first rough patches, starting to build the calices on the tips of my fingers so they don't hurt so much when I'm playing my ukulele. My fingers hurt so much right now, its not very fun! I feel like I am just waiting for this part to be over so that way I can just play without worrying about sore fingers. Right now just playing an hour a day is making my fingers pretty sore. But what is kind of cool is that I feel like I can feel the calices forming which is an awesome thing. Regardless of the pain I have proudly pushed through and I am still practicing as much as I can each day. I have to admit at the beginning I was dedicating more than an hour a day, and that's really just because I feel like I am having a lot of fun with this project. I am struggling still and I know that I am nowhere near performance ready but the process so far has been great I feel so motivated to make it perfect, and I think that has a lot to do with me being able to choose exactly what I wanted to work on over the course of this project.

Genius Hour Reflection 2: Finding the Perfect Resources.

By now I am well on my way to working towards my goal. I am set up with the perfect tutorial and I am totally ready to really start diving into this project. This past week I focused on finding the perfect tool to help me learn the song. First thing I had to do was download a ukulele tuner app, I found the App called Pocket Ukulele Tuner. This simple App has literally worked miracles for me! I had no idea what note each string on the ukulele was even supposed to be tuned to, and this app does it all. Simply pluck the string into your phone and the meter shows you when you have reached the appropriate note! It is seriously wonderful!
After I tuned my ukulele to the perfect notes I began the bulk of my research. Now my task was to find the best way for me to learn this song. I first looked up the tabs, tabs are a great source to use when you have never learned how to properly read a piece of sheet music. For me never having seriously played an instrument in my life I realized using ukulele tabs instead of actual sheet music was my only option. I practiced playing the different chords which thankfully there were only 4 different chords used throughout the entire song and that all went well until I realized that I have no idea what the rhythm is for this song.
So off to Youtube I went. I was able to find a ukulele teacher that made her tutorial fun and easy to understand and the best part was that she had made a tutorial for the exact song I wanted to learn. However before i was able to graduate to using the tutorial for the song I was learning I had to learn something called the Island strum. I was actually really glad I mastered this video first, not only was I able to get comfortable with the rhythm in the song Lava, but I was able to learn the basics of how to also play the song Stand by me, which uses the same strumming pattern. On this post you'll find the two Youtube videos I used the most through my learning process. You will also find the chord chart I used to play the song when I was confident enough to play without the teacher but still had not quite memorized the song yet. Once I found the perfect resources, I felt that this was really where the fun began for my project.

Genius Hour Reflection 1: I Finally Decided on What to do!

So in my introductory post I was talking about how I was really unsure about what I should do for this Genius Hour Project. I talked about how I was thinking of expanding my passion for performance by learning a new aspect of performance. This thought stuck with me as I continued to search for the perfect topic. Since I could not seem to stay away from doing something with performance I decide to go with my first thought which was to learn an instrument. Years ago, I received a ukulele for Christmas. I loved it! I also played with it for literally about an hour and since I never took the initiative to get lessons it just sat around collecting dust. This was something I decided I did not want to live with anymore. So I am happy and excited to start learning to play a song on the ukulele! One song that I know only uses a ukulele and voice is the Song Lava. I first heard it when I went to go watch the movie Inside out. It was just an adorable Pixar short film they played before the movie. The song is about 7 minutes long and in the next few weeks I am determined to learn it all!
I think that this will be a good experience and I am happy and eager to begin the process.