Manten Resources

Supporting your Japanese language program

Manten Resources

We’re going to Noosa! Do you want to come too?

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This year we are excited to announce that we will be holding our first workshop for Manten Resources on July 17th 2018. We have met many of you at other conferences, during school visits or online but this year we thought we would try something new. We have so many ideas and we realised we needed more time to unpack these with you. So come and escape the winter blues with some time at Noosa in July!

Why is it at Noosa?

There are two main reasons why we are running our first workshop at Noosa. The first is that chapter 6 of Jblog textbook 3 is set in Noosa. The chapter revolves around a house swap exchange between Noosa locals the Clark family, and the Yamada family from Tokyo. So we thought if you are teaching this unit, you will be sure to get some ideas to make it more real whilst you are here.

The second reason is about you. Teachers work so hard with very little “perks” of the job. Tired of hearing about friends in other industries swanning off to conferences in fancy locations, we thought it was time Japanese teachers had their day in the sun too – literally! The workshop is on a Tuesday so we encourage you to fly up with your family the weekend before, if you are from out of town. Don’t forget to talk to your tax accountant about how you can claim your expenses for accommodation, travel and daily expenses.

When is the workshop?

Tuesday July 17th 2018. This is the second week of the school holidays for NSW, ACT, Tasmania, South Australia and Northern Territory schools. It is the first week of Term 3 for Queensland, Victoria and Western Australian schools.

Where is the venue?

The workshop will be held at Peppers Noosa resort & Villas, 33A Viewland drive, Noosa heads, QLD, 4567. It is a few minutes walk from Hastings street and the beach.

Where can we stay?

There are various forms of accommodation in Noosa ranging from hotels to apartments and caravan parks. Contact http://www.visitnoosa.com.au/ for more information about what would suit your needs best. You may want to share accommodation or lifts with other teachers, so start talking with your colleagues and start planning your Noosa escape!

Is the workshop suitable for all teachers?

Yes! The workshop will be divided into a series of shorter modules that will discuss topics such as Growth mindset, soft CLIL, differentiation, and feedback to improve student performance. Check out the schedule below for more detail.

The day will be presented by Liberty Campbell and Junko Nichols.

Junko Nichols has taught Japanese and English as a Foreign Language at pre-primary, primary, secondary and tertiary levels in Japan, China, England and Australia over the past 20 years. She has taught at a Japanese immersion program at Central Queensland University and has been involved in language teaching and language teacher training at a variety of schools, using a range of methodologies and approaches. She has many fabulous ideas for primary teachers including how to use “soft-CLIL” in a variety of topics such as poetry and art.

Liberty is the Catholic Education Commission’s representative on the NSW Languages advisory Panel, the Project officer for Languages in the Broken Bay diocese and the author of the Jblog textbook series. She is passionate about supporting Japanese teachers and students with research based resources and practical teaching strategies. Liberty has spoken at various conferences for the MLTANSW, JTAN, JLTAV, DETNSW and at the National Symposium for Japanese Teaching in 2016.

 

 

How much is it?

The full day workshop is $135. This includes a fabulous buffet lunch and snacks, a beautiful location, lots of ideas and great company in the form of other inspiring Japanese teachers. This is designed as an intimate workshop so places are limited to 31 delegates. Make sure you are one of them!

How can I book?

You can book and pay for the workshop via the Trybooking link below.

https://www.trybooking.com/TQDQ

If you have any other questions about the day, please email us at jblog1help@gmail.com .

Workshop Schedule Session Overview

Session 1 : 9:00-10:30am : 1.5 hours

  • Growth mindset versus fixed mindset – How to develop more resilience in our students
  • Closing the feedback loop – Using peer and self-feedback to improve writing skills

Morning tea : 10:30-11am

Session 2 : 11:00am -1:00pm : 2 hours

  • Soft CLIL : What is it? What does it look like in a primary and secondary context?
  • How can I dabble in CLIL without committing to it every day?

Lunch : 1-2pm

Session 3 : 2:00-3:30pm : 1.5 hours

  • Differentiation – Acknowledging that teachers and students need to accommodate their own strengths, weaknesses and learning preferences
  • PERMA in language teaching – How can we teach hope? How can we develop it in ourselves and our staff?

Total 5 hours PD

How’s your Losada ratio?

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The summer holidays are a fabulous time to reconnect with interests that you may not find time for during school term. These interests are what bring breadth and depth to your lessons so it is important that you nurture them and yourselves over the break.

This summer I have been inspired by Applied Positive Psychology and in particular the work of Martin Seligman. The success of our instruction is influenced so much by the psychological state of our students. As we know, building rapport with individuals and developing a positive classroom atmosphere will influence student learning outcomes – and the teacher’s stress levels at the end of the day!

One concept that may help us with this is the Losada ratio. This study found that there is a “sweet spot” for the ideal ratio of positive to negative comments in our daily interactions. Roughly 3 positive to 1 negative statement was found to result in flourishing companies – both economically and socially. There is a need for honest negative feedback though and being too positive (13 positive statements to 1 negative) was found to result in a lack of credibility and not enough direction for success and growth to occur.

It is easy for us to fall into the trap of only correcting behaviour rather than acknowledge what is going well. When I refer to behaviour here though, I am also including student language skill development. When teachers provide spoken or written feedback to students they tend to provide predominately feedback about how to improve. Whilst this can be useful, it is important we aim higher at reaching the Losada ratio sweet spot. If we fail to acknowledge that a student has used correct stroke order and a great connective between two statements then they may not realise that what they are doing is impressive and they will be less likely to repeat the good habits next time. Students are not always aware of their strengths so it is important that we look for evidence of their progress and report it back to them as a positive comment. Using growth mindset language can greatly help with this as well. Take a look at the two examples below of teacher feedback regarding a student error.

Feedback 1:

You have written the dash in シドニー the wrong way. You should write the dash horizontally when writing a text horizontally. (Note the underlines are for emphasis here and would not be included when given to the student. This is explanation feedback but the terms “wrong” and “should” do not reflect growth mindset terminology.)

Feedback 2:

I was really impressed to see you stretch yourself to include the new kanji from chapter 2 of Jblog 2. Take a look at the kanji index on page 125 of Jblog 2 and see if you can find the reason I have highlighted this kanji. See me though if you can’t see what I am referring to. (Growth mindset language used to highlight an error in kanji without labelling it as a mistake. A strategy to assist the students in making the correction themselves is provided instead. This has the potential to increase their feelings of self-efficacy.)

You can see from these examples that it is still possible to provide useful feedback to students about their mistakes using more positive language and thus bumping up your Losada ratio.

(There are more examples of how to do this in our Stage 5 Formative Assessment Writing Resource. Check out the link https://www.mantenresources.com.au/teachers/blog/new-growth-mindset-formative-assessment-resource/ if this is an area of interest for you.)

Good luck with those Losada ratios this term and remember that they work for both your interactions with students and your colleagues. Let’s spread some positivity in term 1!

Reference : Flourish by Martin E.P. Seligman (2013) published by Atria, New York.

New Growth mindset formative assessment resource

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Are you feeling motivated to freshen up your teaching and assessment task schedule? If you are looking for a way to embed growth mindset ideals in a formative assessment context, then this is the resource you have been looking for. The Stage 5 Formative Assessment Writing Resource is professional development for your department and a student assessment task all rolled into one. This resource provides you with everything you need to run the task plus a summary of the evidence based research that contributed to its design. You will learn how to facilitate the task and why each step is relevant to the learning process.

This task develops writing skills in Japanese. It is pitched at Stage 5 Year 9 students but could be modified to suit other grades.

This task will suit teachers who:

  • Are striving to develop peer feedback and self-analysis skills in their students
  • Are committed to growth mindset principles and the long term benefits for their students
  • Want to see their students learn from and use the feedback they receive in subsequent tasks
  • Want to increase the quality and quantity of feedback received by their students within a sustainable workload structure
  • Are looking for a fresh take on assessment, based on evidence based research

 

What is included in the Stage 5 Formative Assessment Writing Resource pack?

Each pack includes:

  • A student workbook to guide students through the stages of the task
  • A teacher support pack that explains each step, provides suggested outcomes, success criteria, an annotated student work sample of what constitutes effective and not so effective feedback, teacher marking comment bank, professional readings summaries
  • Peer feedback prompts worksheet
  • Self-analysis prompts worksheet
  • Student Pre-test google form
  • Growth mindset teacher marking comment bank
  • Student feedback sheet

How can I order a copy?

The total coast for the pack is $70. You can order simply by emailing jblog1help@gmail.com. Please provide us with the email address you would like the resource sent to and any billing requirements (eg bill to a school or as an individual, provide a quote only etc). The copyright allows you to print off the resources or edit them as you wish amongst the staff within your school campus. They cannot be shared with others outside your school campus.

This resource would work well with the Hiragana Patch and Katakana Patch resources. For more information on these visit : https://www.mantenresources.com.au/resources-teaching-scripts/

 

ADVOCACY STRATEGY: TIME TO WIN OVER THE EXECUTIVE

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Many language teachers may feel frustrated by a lack of support or understanding from the school executive. You work incredibly hard all year running excursions, incursions, overseas trips, speech contests and hosting sister schools. You spend hours filling in lengthy risk assessments and taking hundreds of photographs of incredible learning experiences.

Sometimes, despite all of these efforts, you missed out on elective class due to the executive’s magic minimum enrolment number. It is understandable you may be feeling less than love for your school executive. But now is exactly the right time to begin your 2018 advocacy campaign!

The reverse gap video

The school executive is often swamped staying on top of the school’s forward gap goals. This is the position where one sets goals for the future and works towards them. Unfortunately, once one goal is achieved, another slots in place and we can become despondent by our apparent lack of progress.

Dan Sullivan’s reverse gap theory asks us to instead, reflect on where we are now and where we have come from. What amazing things have you achieved this year? What fantastic things have your students done this year? Have you, as a department, sat down and reflected on this? Have you celebrated these achievements as we approach the end of the year?

If you don’t even take the time to recognise these efforts, why do you think the school executive or anyone else will?

The answer to this problem is the reverse gap video.

  1. Make a list of the amazing achievements you have done in languages this year and create a folder of matching photographs or video footage you have taken.
  2. Give said folder and list to either the video editing enthusiast in your department or student in your class, and have them edit it to create a videoclip. I would keep it short eg one to two song lengths. (Ben Lee’s song “We’re all in this together” off the album “Awake is the new sleep” is a good song for this or any other “feel good” track.)
  3. Save the video to your school’s drive or google folder and send the link to your school executive with a nice message to get them in like : “I appreciate it can be hard at the top to see always what is happening at the classroom level. Thanks to the school executive we have had a fabulous year in languages. Please take a minute to see what your efforts have enabled us to do.” Flattery will get you everywhere!
  4. Then offer the video up to the person who runs the Year in Review night. Sometimes they are looking for clips to play in between the prize giving. This is excellent exposure for your department if you can get on the play list for the evening.
  5. Offer the video up to the person in charge of public relations for the school. Many schools have websites and social media platforms like Instagram and Facebook.
  6. Send a copy out to the parents of your current students via a safe platform eg the school social media account.
  7. Show the video to your new stage 4 class at the beginning of Term 1 2018. Save it to your google classroom page and send an email home to the parents encouraging them to watch it to learn what their child will be doing in 2018.

To make the video does take time but I believe it is worthwhile when you consider how many platforms you can use it for. Your mantra should be “Be efficient by choosing strategies that are worth your time and that can be used more than once”.

You may not see immediate results but it could be the start of something unseen.

Good luck!

GROWTH MINDSET – MORE THAN JUST A POSTER ON THE WALL

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Carol Dweck, the researcher behind the growth mindset movement, was recently quoted discussing common misconceptions of her theory.

“It’s not about educators giving a mindset lecture or putting up a poster – it’s about embodying it in all their practices.”

So how can we authentically embed growth mindset theory in our language teaching practice?

The first way I do this is via the “Ask your senpai” column in the Jblog textbooks. This is based on an advice column text type where someone writes in with a problem they have experienced understanding the linguistic or cultural perspective of others. This column models the growth mindset ideal of learning from your mistakes as well as intercultural competence development. It teaches the students that it is natural to be confused by unfamiliar concepts or events, and that others may have other opinions or ways of handling an issue. The column is a regular feature in each chapter of the 3 textbooks so it is an embedded strategy that teachers do not need to force awkwardly into their program.

The second strategy that I have found successful is the Hiragana and Katakana Patch systems. We have divided the learning of hiragana and katakana into 15 levels. Each level focuses on an aspect of the script. For example level 1 focuses on the a, k and s sounds; Level 7 the tentens that work with the k and s sounds; Level 10 the use of small tsu. We have created a work book for students that allows them to practice those letters and a set of flashcards to revise with.

When the students are ready, they challenge themselves with the matching quiz for that level. The teacher prints off the quizzes and keeps them ready in a folder or filing cabinet. There are teacher marking guidelines to make the marking quick for the teacher or you could have peers mark the quiz for you, using the guidelines. The teacher just needs to keep a record of which levels the student has passed. Each quiz tests the students’ skills in both reading and writing the script. The pass mark for each level is 75%. Students are allowed to take the quizzes as many times as they need to. They should be encouraged to progress through the levels at the rate that best suits them. Failing a quiz should be seen as part of the process and teachers are encouraged to comment on really well-written letters, even if the student does not attain the required 75% to progress.

Each quiz includes a growth mindset quote to help keep the students in a positive mindset as they challenge themselves. Deliberate growth mindset language has also been selected for the wording of the quizzes. You will notice at the end of the quiz, teachers tick whether the student is allowed to progress from one of two options:

  • This student is ready to progress to level 2
  • This student is ready to retry level 1 after further review and practice

The emphasis is on the student mastering the learning process and the content as a result. There are 3 certificates of progress that can be used as part of the system. These acknowledge a student’s achievement of 5 levels. (There is more information about this system available at : https://www.mantenresources.com.au/resources-teaching-scripts/ )

Growth mindset strategies can make a real difference to your students’ learning outcomes. The key is finding authentic resources and learning tasks that are a natural fit for your teaching program.

Reference :

https://www.tes.com/news/school-news/breaking-news/carol-dweck-three-biggest-misconceptions-about-growth-mindset

Using Data to Increase Enrolments

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Term 4 can be a traumatic time of year for language teachers. Teachers of compulsory subjects have little understanding of the pressure that teachers of elective subjects are under. Nobody enjoys the wait to hear whether their subject will run as an elective in the coming year.

The goal of many teachers is to lure approximately 20-25% of a Year 8 cohort into the year 9 elective course, in order to guarantee a class. Some states are lucky and have guaranteed classes until Year 9 or 10, but inevitably the elective challenge arises at some point.

Regardless of whether you managed to get an elective class or not, term 4 is the most important time of year as it is the perfect time to plan for next year’s direction. So what do you need to do now to ensure long term success and growth?

  1. Befriend the administrative assistant who enters the students’ elective choices and ask to see how many students picked your subject prior to the final lines being established. This will let you know how successful you were attracting students prior to other factors tainting the results (such as line clashes, students leaving the school etc).
  2. Keep a record of how your department is going regarding electives across several years, and annotate factors that may have impacted your numbers both positively (eg changing textbooks or purchasing new resources) and negatively (eg teachers on leave, new subject being offered in competition etc). You are aiming for a steady increase.
  3. Now get access to what students picked for their other electives. What are the most popular subjects in your school? This is valuable information as it can provide you with an overview of trends in your school community. You then need to consider what aspects of these popular subjects you can tap into, to enhance your course. For example if PASS (a sport based subject) is popular, they you may like to include sport based incursions such as kendo or karate lessons into your Stage 5 program. When “MasterChef fever” was as its peak, we introduced a pop-up restaurant assessment task in the schedule.
  4. Start planning your assessment and incursion/excursion activities for next year with this data in mind. Often it is just a matter of tweaking what you already do to better market your course. We know what we do is awesome but unfortunately many parents and students don’t realise this until it is too late.
  5. Don’t let it wear you down. What you do is incredible. You just need to ensure more people realise this through reflective practice, use of data and strategic planning. Good luck!