Task III

Do all students have a capacity to learn?
Of cause!! Even people with natural born mental retardation, they still can learn. Even other kind animals can learn. Such as pets learn from their own life experiences.

What shapes this capacity?
A lot of elements can shape this capacity. Family love and involvement, teacher's love, dedication and profession; school and communities; econemy; environments.

How much influence do you have upon this capacity?
A lot. Students are with the teacher one third of their lives. Don't you think we teachers can have huge influence on this capacity?
I could be very honest to say, I have been working very hard for the students: I keep my grade records arcurate; I contact families with students make improvement in academic or behavior; I found the strength of my students and praise them in specificaly area; I share my big smile with them daily; I promise my students I will try my best to make my class interesting and fun; I also told my students that I want them leave my classroom with a happy mood. As a educator, I always say and will still say: 'if students are not learning, it will be the teacher's fault'. I know this saying will make a lot of teachers attack me. But I honestly cannot change my mind. Of cause, that require a lot of work. For our salary schedule? forget about it. But what I am saying is, teachers can change a student's future. This year, I have 5 students change their schedule from other elective to my class after school starts for 1 month. They were being described as 'top challenging students'. I could tell that of cause just by talking to them the first minutes. But I did all as I described above. Catch good and praise, call parents for good (at the first, the mom was like'yeah! what do you want?' after my good news, she was so happy and cooprative, tell me if I have any problem with the kid in the future just let her know, she will straight the kid up for me. you see, I have an alliance now)So far, they are doing great in my class, three are catching up with the rest students. Two are still trying.

How do these assumptions about learning shape our instruction?
Knowing our students is the key. After knowing them, we could find ways to approach them, perconal, academicly for their learning styles.

I will want to know more about domain 4: Professional Responsibilities.

KWLA Conference

This past Friday and Saturday, Kentucky World Language Association hosted a conference in Lexington. I presented a session called "Practicing Puzzling Teaching". I gave a presentation about how to use curriculum as a guideline and use activities to design a lesson. We had a lot of fun.

Tesk II

The purpose of curriculum is to help children and young people to become successful learners with enthusiasm and motivation for learning with determination to reach high standards of achievement and with openness to new thinking and ideas; also help them to be able to use literacy, communication and numeracy skills; to use technology for learning; to think creatively and independently; to learn independently and as part of a group; to make reasoned evaluations and to link and apply different kinds of learning in new situations. The purpose of curriculum is also to help learners to be confident individuals with self respect, a sense of physical, emotional and emotional wellbeing, secure values and beliefs and ambition; and help learners to be able to relate to others and manage themselves and develop and communicate their own beliefs and view of the world. Teachers serve a tool role in this purpose. We help learners to reach the goals. I am the one designing the Chinese curriculum for FCPS middle school students. So I am fully controlling the content. I believe teachers should have most control of designing the curriculums since they are the one who are going to use the curriculum as guideline. They have the frontline experiences. Every teacher’s classroom and students needs are different. To my situation, I know my students’ level and abilities, so I could design a curriculum that my students could achieve. In my classroom, the curriculum is the goal of my teaching. Every activity is linked to the curriculum.

Task I Curriculum Design

· Why do we need to consider curriculum?
If there is no goal, there is no future. Curriculum is the goal of what the students need to achieve; curriculum is the goal of what teachers look up to when they give students education. Two year ago, I was a brand new Chinese teacher. I carry two responsibilities: designing Chinese curriculum and teaching Chinese. I don’t know what to teach since we don’t have curriculum and I am the one who has no experience needs to design it. I just like a boat on the see missing directions and there is no light house on the shore. Compare to my students now to the students two years ago, they are learning much better because I have a curriculum to follow now.

· What model of curriculum do you feel best fits your current role? What model are you most attracted to? What would be your preference?
As a foreign language teacher, curriculums that focus on communication would be the best fit. Able to communicate in Chinese is the main goal of Chinese learning. We learn culture in order to better understanding others; we learn how to compare cultures to better understanding others… To help students develop deep thinking habit and problem solving skills, to form an ability of reproduce from what they have learned.

· Wiggins talks about the need for a “modern” curriculum- what could this look like? Do you buy that we need a new approach to curriculum? Why or why?
A “modern” curriculum is where students continue their questioning, to awaken, not to stock the mind. I think that is so obviously right. There is a saying in China: “don’t only feed the poor, teach them skills to get out of poor”. Educators need to not feed students with information but teach students the skills to solve problems and to be able to reproduce newer information.