My Reflection
I have created a conversational French class for children (Grade 1-3) of immigrants in Kamloops because on the one hand, French is the second-most commonly spoken language in Canada. Aside from Québec, there are many communities with large French-speaking populations. On the other hand, outdoor education replaces traditional methods to capture students’ attention, increase their motivation and succeed in learning objectives because children like doing something in a fun atmosphere, outdoor than indoor.
According to Judson (2020), he described that the walking curriculum can make students move, ensure their health and happiness and even stimulate their emotion and imagination by changing the learning situation. Walking courses take a variety of forms, such as “outdoor learning”, its curriculum and activities is mostly driven by the interest of the kids. However, there will be risks if the activities are not designed in a good way. In order to achieve the main purpose, I defined outdoor activities as any kinds of activities conducted outside of the class such as conversation, self-introduction, yoga poses, sharing cycle, storytelling, game and Padlet. I wanted to provide my students more opportunities to ask questions, discuss, and share their insights with peers and teacher reflect on the different topics of French class. Throughout these four lessons, children can explore something instead of memorizing the boring French vocabularies. As Vygosky’s basic proposition revealed how children could use imagination to make sense of the world. Imagination education can make students’ learning more efficient, interesting and engaging (Egan & Judson, 2015). At the beginning of this project, I was confused about how to foster students’ creativity and imagination; I thought it was too vague for students. In order to remedy this problem and explore imagination, I asked children to do many drawing or yoga activities which have probably more expected results. With these activities students will gain knowledge about the French language without feeling pressured. Moreover, students will gain a new understanding of how learning French can be fun too.
Through this process I explored the importance of why children need to be in nature and the significance of inquiry.
- Getting close to the nature helped the students develop the vocabulary related to the animals, plants, their own body and emotions. In addition, they can build up a good rapport with the nature. It is a great way to teach kids about kindness – how to be kind to others and to the environment.
- Learning about social interactions that were done by asking the students to discuss in a sharing cycle for every lesson and students were encouraged to think about their world and the part they play in it through outdoor inquiry.
- Learning about the body or different emotions by singing a song and a game called “emotional dice”.
- Learning about the subject of cooperation with others, which combined several activities such as discussion and role play.
- Mindfulness learning such as yoga poses that reflects the physical part of nature. (Dog pose, cat poses, cows pose, mountains pose etc.) At the same time, students review French words of their bodies and their emotions after doing yoga. As my classmate Iliana said they are still kids, their parents need to know their child will participate in yoga practice by parental consent in advance because some religions may not want to partake in the practice.
I designed a variety of assessments such as Kahoot, worksheet, journals, exit tickets, and drawing to see what students have learned. In addition, students’ questions and responses, what they say in small groups, conversations with students are also listed in my part of assessment.
Keeping social distancing and preventing children from getting injured outdoors are our top priority.
Overall, Friesen et al. (2003) say in the past, when children read, they were accompanied by their parents or siblings, but now they sit on their own chairs and work hard with textbooks which can provide organized units of work and give students all the same plans and same lessons. “Learning has been reduced to what they do in school, living is what they do in the real world”, I was impressed with this sentence in this article, children has lost their interests of learning when they go to school. I hope students could gain a meaningful and unforgettable learning journey outside schools. We are living in the unknown world with wonderful surprises happen in every moment. We cannot be truly curious or imaginative if we know what the outcomes will be. In order to foster students’ inquiry ability, I need to live a life of inquiry and curiosity. I should seek to explore more about what my teaching purpose might be based on students’ interests and needs. I will share what I worked in this class and what I could be improved upon and listen to other people’s comments then use the information to guide further teaching.
***Thank you Jodi for giving me an unforgettable and meaningful class! Have a wonderful summer vacation and all the best!
References:
Egan, K., & Judson, G. (2015). Imagination and the engaged learner: Cognitive tools for the classroom. NY: Teachers College Press.
Jardine, D. W., Clifford, P., & Friesen, S. (2003). Back to the basics of teaching and learning : thinking the world together. L. Erlbaum Associates.
Judson, G. (2020). A walking curriculum. Education Canada, 60(2), 8.