Amplify Science in Spanish
This up coming year will be a year of firsts. Just as last year was a year of first. Last year year I started at a new school, teaching a new curriculum to a new grade. The most challenging thing about last year is that I had to create my own curriculum. This year could be a bit easier because I am teaching the amplified curriculum with a co teacher. The things that are new is that I am not familiar with this curriculum(and there is a lot to grasp). The second is that there will be a brand new bilingual class and we will start off the year teaching in Spanish. Oh by the way I don’t speak Spanish.
The good thing about Amplify is that they do have the curriculum in Spanish. The challenging part is that not everything is in Spanish. For instance the 2 videos above were in the Spanish section but only one was translated into Spanish. I can not get closed captioning on the video also so I will need the co teacher to translate in Spanish.
As I discussed with coworkers, one main area we wanted to focus on was Vocabulary. Another great feature Amplify has is the Glossary in different languages. They have Arabic, Russian and Spanish(the one I need) along with many others. The only challenging part was how to transfer the vocabulary. I was trying to up load the vocabulary list into this blog and I was not successful. Learning the technology and then teaching the technology can be time consuming and draining especially if you are not successful. I even tried to take a screen shot and up load as an image and that was not working.
THE WHY? We chose to focus on the vocabulary primarily because we noticed our test scores were the lowest in this area. Ever though I am very skeptical of data, I believe that this was an area that was accurate. Vocabulary is lacking because at times it is not necessary. Students mainly participate in street vocabulary for lack of a better term. The sophisticated vernacular is not valued as much as is was in the past.
I believe that science is great place to start teaching language, especially to a Bilingual group. I am personally intrigued by language. I think students will see the similarity between the English and Spanish words. Arabic on the other looked a little more challenging for me. Once we get students having small victories, we will see greater success.
THE HOW? The teacher that has been teaching this curriculum has created Nearpod lessons for Amplified Science Units. We will work on translating some of the information, but we will also have printed material that students can tangibly touch and read. We will have the list of the words and their definitions and also have index card so they can focus on one word at a time. Even though we love the vocabulary, sometimes good old index cards work best for new vocabulary.
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Engage – We plan to make the units and lessons as engaging as possible. The topic for the first lessons is Human Energy. The hook is going to be that being bilingual is one of their supper powers. We want them to feel like they are part of this community and that their voice matters.
Enhance – Using technology to advance the students lessons is a little bit easier in a science class. As we discussed in earlier classes. We need to make sure it is not an over kill. It can become more of a distraction than a support. Using pictures, real world example and the simulator should enhance learning. Also as stated earlier using old fashion index cards will support also.
Extend – For the extension, we are thinking about the students extending this knowledge to their families. So we would work on creating family letters and making sure that students could log in at home. Each unit would have a real world component that they would practically be able to do.
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Final Comments: It was very helpful to go through this exercise with my colleagues. Since I am teaching a new topic this upcoming year I had to review and make some modifications to the curriculum. The first colleague I worked with had been teaching the curriculum for awhile so he is very familiar with the content. We had already discussed how we will take most of the Google Slides and make them into nearpod lessons to make them more engaging and accessible. We also discussed make sure that we start the year with Digital Citizenship especially since I would not be teaching technology this year. The Science class we be the best place to include Digital Citizenship Topics. Also to make sure that families were involved in the education of their children.
More of my conversation was with the bilingual teacher. She will also be teaching this curriculum for the first time. The first thing we had to do was deconstruct the lesson. What could we accomplish in one period? We wanted to make sure that students had vocabulary. So we will print out sheets to have in their notebooks. We would have words posted on the walls and the we will create flash card that they can use as study tools. They will be arranged in different groups (Pairs, Small groups and mentors)
We want to engage familles and extend the work at home. The simulator module will be saved for a different day and we had to make sure the video was translated. Overall it was good to look at the Unit as a whole with the UDL framework to make sure that we are meeting the needs of our students. I am grateful I had this class to work on that.
