Ahlan ya colleagues, Welcome to the Arabic K-12 Bulletin, a biweekly resource for elementary, middle, and high school Arabic teachers, administrators, and researchers. The recent events at the Boston Marathon have shaken us all, especially those of us with personal and professional connections to the city. Our thoughts go out to colleagues and their friends and families who were affected by these senseless acts of violence. As always, if you would like to reach us please send a message to arabick12@gmail.com. Steven Berbeco, Editor |
The Arabic K-12 Teachers Network consists of more than 1,000 educators interested in the Arabic K-12 field in the U.S. It is a free membership provided by the National Capital Language Resource Center's Arabic K-12 Project. Recent issues of the Bulletin are archived here: http://bit.ly/10KRZi3 . All members are welcome to submit posts in English or Arabic and may do so by e-mailing their content to arabick12@gmail.com specifying their content for the listserv. This listserv is focused on K-12 Arabic teaching. Job openings at the university level can be found on the AATA's website . |
PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT OPPORTUNITIES NEW RESOURCES FOR YOUR STUDENTS AND CLASSROOMS GRANT OPPORTUNITIES AND JOB ANNOUNCEMENTS NADA'S WEBSITES BELAL'S ACTIVITIES CURRENT RESEARCH: "Jay McTighe and Grant Wiggins on 'Essential Questions'" FOCUS ON LEARNING: "Palestinian Hip Hop Group Visits Campus" |
Workshops and Webinars The National Council of State Supervisors for Languages (NCSSFL) is sponsoring a three-day institute June 26-28 in Baltimore, MD for district/school administrators and curriculum directors interested in increasing language learning opportunities for critical need languages (Arabic, Chinese, Dari, Hindi, Persian, Portuguese, Russian, Swahili, Turkish, and Urdu) for their students. Each district interested in expanding a STARTALK summer program into the school year can identify a team of three to attend the institute and will leave with an action plan to take back to their respective communities. Travel, accommodation, and meals are covered. Deadline to apply is April 26. For more information, contact: Gregory Fulkerson, NCSSFL STARTALK Program Director, gregoryfulkerson71@gmail.com. Concordia Language Villages is offering Qatar Professional Development Workshops this spring and fall with full scholarships, substitute teacher reimbursement, and travel stipends for current and future teachers of Arabic, April 25-28 and October 10-13. These workshops will bring together K-16 Arabic language teachers from across the United States to explore innovative instructional strategies. All Arabic language teachers are invited to apply for one or both of these workshops. To register: http://bit.ly/Xm0v7y . New York University (New York City, NY) will conduct a STARTALK teacher-training workshop June 10-21, 2013. All current and prospective teachers at any level can apply, from community to college; graduate students are also welcome. Grant covers on-campus housing, course transcript, and need-based travel assistance. To apply: http://bit.ly/151VnK4 . Georgetown University (Washington, DC) will present Approaches to Teaching the Middle East, a one-week workshop for K-12 teachers, June 24-28, 2013. This program offers a multidisciplinary approach to teaching about the countries of southwestern Asia and northern Africa. There will be readings and hands-on activities, and plenty of opportunities to ask questions and engage in discussions. Each teacher participant will receive $100 worth of resources, background information, and teaching materials. Deadline for application: May 10, 2013. Contact Zeina Azzam seikalyz@georgetown.edu with questions or to apply. The Developing Materials for Less Commonly Taught Languages institute at CARLA (Minneapolis, MN; July 15-19, 2013
) will provide Instructors with practical tools and hands-on experience in developing a wide range of materials. Grounded in the latest research on effective language pedagogy and second language acquisition, this institute will focus on proficiency-oriented approaches to teaching. For more information: http://bit.ly/16rRtIp . The Center for Language Education and Research (East Lansing, MI) is offering summer professional development workshops in July and August. These workshops offer hands-on experience and concrete ideas for language teachers: Writing in the Foreign Language Classroom; Revisiting the Learning and Teaching of Vocabulary; Rich Internet Applications for Language Learning: Introductory Techniques; and Assessing Speaking: For Placement Testing, Classroom-based Assessment, and Proficiency Exams. Early bird deadline is May 17 ($150/workshop), regular deadline is June 3. For more information: http://bit.ly/16KTFeh . Professional Conferences The National Council of Less Commonly Taught Languages (NCOLCTL) annual conference will be held April 25-28, 2013 in Chicago, IL. The conference theme is "Expanding Opportunities for LCTL Learning at All Levels of Instruction." For more information: http://bit.ly/Vv3esh . The International Conference on Language Teacher Education will be held May 30 - June 1, 2013 at George Washington University (Washington, DC). Designed for practitioners and researchers involved in the preparation and ongoing professional development of language teachers, LTE 2013 will address the education of teachers of all languages, at all instructional and institutional levels, and in many national and international contexts in which this takes place including: English as a Second or Foreign Language (ESL/EFL) instruction; foreign/modern/world language teaching; bilingual education; immersion education; indigenous and minority language education; and the teaching of less commonly taught languages. For more information: http://bit.ly/THAevN . Call For Proposals and Papers The Journal of the National Council of Less Commonly Taught Languages (JNCOLCTL) is soliciting articles for publication. The Journal, published annually by NCOLCTL, is dedicated to the issues and concerns related to the teaching and learning of Less Commonly Taught Languages such as Arabic. The Journal primarily seeks to address the interests of language teachers, administrators, and researchers. Articles that describe innovative and successful teaching methods that are relevant to the concerns or problems of the profession, or that report educational research or experimentation in Less Commonly Taught Languages are welcome. For more information: http://bit.ly/12gmiRT . To submit an article: Danko.Sipka@asu.edu . The Foreign Language Association of Virginia (FLAVA) will be holding its annual conference Oct 3-4, 2013 at Williamsburg, VA. FLAVA is seeking papers, panels, and workshops on teaching Arabic L2. Last year we had eight sessions on Arabic that where well-attended by teachers of Arabic, French, Spanish, Chinese, and more. School teachers as well as college professes are strongly encouraged to share their teaching and research with teachers of other languages attend this annual meeting. For more details: http://bit.ly/Xf3aBL . |
Class Pager (http://bit.ly/112y1hT) offers teachers a free way to poll students during class, give exit tickets, or "page" students after class by text message to remind them of assignments. Say goodbye to students forgetting their books at home! Rocket Languages (http://bit.ly/ZJ82JH) offers Arabic Pronunciation Made Easy. This free resource uses web-based voice comparison software to check whether your students are pronouncing words and phrases correctly. Topics include greetings, hobbies, weather, and others. Note that the recordings are in Egyptian colloquial. Dropbox is a great way to store files on-line, and these utilities make it easier to use Dropbox when collecting assignments from your students: Students can upload work directly to your Dropbox with DropItToMe (http://www.dropittome.com) or email files to your Dropbox with SendToDropbox (http://www.sendtodropbox.com). Check out this website for more ideas on how to make the most of Dropbox in your classroom: http://bit.ly/11LFFOx . High School Summer Programs Aldeen Foundation (Pasadena, CA) is offering Stay Fit and Healthy June 17-July 5, 2013, a free Arabic summer program for beginner and heritage learner high school students. Language activities include sports, fitness, nutrition and role playing. Students who complete the online and onsite sessions will receive an allowance for mileage and college credit. Deadline to apply is May 31, 2013. For more information: http://bit.ly/Yjwab6 . The Middlebury-Monterey Language Academy recently received a grant from the Qatar Foundation International to provide student scholarships for this summer's four-week immersion Arabic Academy at Pomona College (Claremont, CA). For more information: http://bit.ly/17p1IP4 . Columbia University Middle East Research Center in Amman and King's Academy in Jordan are offering a summer program for 11th and 12th grade high school students June 23- July 20, 2013. Students combine substantive reading and coursework with first-hand experience in an Arab country, studying at Columbia University (NYC) and King's Academy (Manja, Jordan), and traveling extensively in Jordan.Students emerge from this program with a working knowledge of the history and cultures of the modern Arab world and rudimentary conversational Arabic. For more information: http://bit.ly/11HiFDo . King's Academy is offering a summer program for middle school and high school students on its campus outside of Amman, Jordan (June 30-July 25). The program will offer separate tracks for heritage and non-heritage speakers. Students will also engage in afternoon and weekend activities to explore the culture, traditions and history of Jordan and the Arab world. Students will live in King's Academy dormitories, supervised by school faculty. For more information: http://bit.ly/XUSgLB or email Joe Silvestri jsilvestri@kingsacademy.edu.jo. Choate Rosemary Hall is offering a high school summer program in Amman, Jordan (June 10 - July 10, 2013). The program will offer Modern Standard Arabic (at a level appropriate to proficiency) and intensive Jordanian colloquial classes. Students will also explore Jordanian History and learn about traditional Islamic arts, and students will live in pairs with Jordanian families. For further information: http://bit.ly/10CGmYr or email Georges Chahwan gchahwan@choate.edu. University of North Georgia is offering the Federal Service Language Academy, an intensive first-year and second-year Arabic program for rising high school sophomores, juniors, and seniors who are interested in international-related careers with the federal government. Includes a daily fitness program, career counseling from federal agency representatives, and possible high school credit. For further information: http://bit.ly/TYKd3B . Connecting With Teachers Connect with hundreds of Arabic teachers in America and from around the world on the Teachers of Arabic Language K-12 (TALK12) Facebook page. Teachers can chat, swap ideas, and give each other advice: http://www.talk12.org . Arabic teachers from Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut: the New England Association of Arabic Teachers has been supporting K-12 Arabic teachers since 2008 with workshops, material and resources, and regular meetings. To join, contact Steven Berbeco berbeco@bu.edu. The Marhaba! Project is facilitating biweekly Virtual Coffee Hours, where a small group of teachers "meet up" on a conference call to talk about classroom teaching, materials and resources, and educational technology. The next coffee hour will be April 27 at 11am EST. Contact coffeehour@marhabaproject.org if you have any questions or would like to participate. |
QFI's Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics (STEAM) Program is announcing its Request for Proposals for teachers interested in applying for curriculum development grants up to $50,000. This would be a great opportunity for your colleagues to further develop and strengthen their curricula, while becoming more acquainted with QFI and the Arabic program and faculty at their respective schools. For information on applying: http://bit.ly/12gX3Pt . Application deadline is May 3, 2013. For questions, contact Marianne Nari Fisher mfisher@qfi.org. The ACTFL Arabic SIG has announced the Dora Johnson 2013 award for K-12 teachers who wish to attend the ACTFL 2013 convention in Orlando, FL. To be eligible, teachers must be ACTFL and Arabic SIG members, and either first-time attendees or confirmed conference presenters. Application deadline is May 31, 2013. For more information: arabicsig@gmail.com. Job Openings ABC Languages (New York, NY) is seeking a part-time Arabic teacher for classes in Westchester county. To apply, send your resume to: westchester@abclang.com. The American School of Dubai (Dubai, UAE) is seeking a Director of Arabic Language as well as an elementary school Arabic teacher, both for the 2013-2014 school year. To apply: http://bit.ly/10I1woV . Roland Park Country School (Baltimore, MD) is seeking a full-time high school Arabic teacher for levels 1 to 4. Candidates should be able to teach Levantine or Egyptian in addition to Modern Standard Arabic, and they are expected to integrate technology into the curriculum. To apply send your resume to Associate Head of School Carla Spawn-van Berkum: vanBerkumC@RPCS.org. Chicago Ridge School (Chicago Ridge, IL) is seeking a full-time elementary school Arabic teacher for the 2013-2014 school year. For more information: http://bit.ly/16yGbjH . Newark Collegiate Academy (Newark, NJ), a KIPP school, is seeking a full-time high school Arabic teacher for the 2013-2014 school year. For more information: http://bit.ly/WL05YE . American Councils for International Education is seeking a Summer Assistant Resident Director for the NSLI-Y program for high-school students in Amman, Jordan (June 11-August 1, 2013). For more information: http://bit.ly/16Ck3XJ . The Awty International School (Houston, TX) is seeking a Classical Arabic language teacher to teach in the middle and high school IB program for the 2013-2014 school year. For more information: http://bit.ly/13PbScW . Albert Einstein Academy for Letters, Arts and Sciences (Los Angeles, CA) is seeking a part-time high school Arabic teacher for the 2013-2014 school year. For more information: http://bit.ly/13MlNzK . Loomis Chaffee School (Windsor, CT) is seeking a full-time high school Arabic teacher for the 2013-2014 school year. For more information: http://bit.ly/YKDtDe . E.L. Haynes High School (Washington, DC) is seeking a full-time middle school Arabic teacher for the 2013-2014 school year. To apply: http://bit.ly/YcJBE3 . |
Nada Shaath (Bell High School, CA) suggests: Storybird (http://bit.ly/11fkvpM), short, art-inspired stories you make to share, read, and print. Sign up for a teacher account to manage students without emails, create assignments, and bulid beautiful libraries. Read them like books, play them like games, and send them like greeting cards. They're curiously fun! |
Belal Joundeya (Renaissance Academy, UT) suggests: Find The Missing Word. Make a worksheet with a specific amount of pictures based upon the number of students in the class plus the teacher (for example 15 for 14 students and 1 teacher). Give each student one whole worksheet and give each student one of the pieces from it. Keep one in your pocket. Give them a time limit of 5 minutes to discuss with each other in Arabic about their items until they eliminate all of them and know the one in your pocket. |
Jay McTighe and Grant Wiggins on "Essential Questions"
By Kim Marshall | Marshall Memo #481, April 15, 2013, http://www.marshallmemo.com In this important new book, backwards curriculum-unit design gurus Jay McTighe and Grant Wiggins further explain the use of "essential questions", including lots of examples. Here is a sampling from world languages: - What should I do in my head when trying to learn a language?
- How do native speakers differ, if at all, from fluent foreigners? How can I sound more like a native speaker?
- How can I explore and describe cultures without stereotyping them?
McTighe and Wiggins believe good essential questions have seven key characteristics: - They are open-ended; there isn't a single, final, correct answer.
- They are thought-provoking and intellectually engaging, often sparking discussion and debate.
- They call for higher-order thinking – analysis, inference, evaluation, and prediction.
- They point toward important, transferable ideas within (and sometimes across) disciplines.
- They raise additional questions and encourage further inquiry.
- They require support and justification, not just an answer.
- They beg to be revisited over time.
McTighe and Wiggins go on to clarify how three kinds of questions are useful in teaching but are not essential: - Questions that lead – They point to a single, correct answer – for example, Which letters in the alphabet are vowels?
- Questions that guide – These are a little more robust than leading questions, but they still point students toward previously targeted knowledge and skills – for example, Can you state Newton's 2nd Law in your own words?
- Questions that hook – At the beginning of a lesson or unit, a teacher uses these to grab students' attention and provoke wonder – for example, a science teacher in an Alaskan village asked students, Are we drinking the same water as our ancestors?
Should essential questions be posed at the beginning of every lesson, as some principals require? McTighe and Wiggins think not. Essential questions are designed for the curriculum unit; they are "too complex and multifaceted to be satisfactorily addressed within a single lesson," they say. "In particular, essential questions are meant to focus on long-term learning and thus be revisited over time, not answered by the end of a class period. Not only would it be difficult to come up with a new EQ for every lesson; the predictable result would be a set of superficial (leading) or, at best, guiding questions." Why use essential questions? "For the majority of learners," say McTighe and Wiggins, "school is a place where the teacher has the answers and classroom questions are intended to find out who knows them. Ironically, many teachers signal that this is the game even when they don't intend to communicate it – for example, by posing questions that elicit only yes/no or single right answers, by calling only on students with raised hands, and by answering their own questions after a brief pause." Essential questions, on the other hand: - Signal that inquiry is a key goal of education;
- Make it more likely that the unit will be intellectually engaging;
- Help clarify and prioritize standards;
- Provide transparency for students (Where are we going with all this?);
- Encourage and model metacognition;
- Provide opportunities for intra- and interdisciplinary connections;
- Support meaningful differentiation.
Essential questions are also important in professional learning community discussions of interim assessment results and student work – for example: - Are these the results we expected? Why or why not?
- Are there any surprises? Any anomalies?
- What does this work reveal about student learning and performance?
- What patterns of strengths and weaknesses are evident?
- What misconceptions are revealed?
- How good is "good enough"?
- What actions at the teacher, team, school, and district level would improve learning and performance?
Essential Questions: Opening Doors to Student Understanding by Jay McTighe and Grant Wiggins (ASCD, 2013). |
Palestinian Hip Hop Group Visits Campus
By Emily Eggleston | Loomis Chaffee Campus News, April 15, 2013
Source: http://bit.ly/11l00bh Mahmood Jrere and Tamer Nafar, members of the Palestinian hip hop and rap group DAM, visited campus recently to meet with students of Arabic. The musicians are featured in the documentary film Slingshot Hip Hop, an official selection of the Sundance Film Festival in 2008, which the students had watched earlier this year. The students had a chance to ask the guests questions in Arabic and in English, to discuss the artists' lives and their music, and to hear a live performance. Students asked about the group's musical influences and what they hope to accomplish through their music. "I want to document my generation," Mr. Nafar said. "I want to keep improving as an artist and give all I've got before I leave this earth." When asked if he feels stereotyped as a Palestinian musician, Mr. Jrere expressed the frustration he feels as an artist when he is interviewed by journalists. "Where I come from is more important than being an artist. I don't have the freedom to just be [an] artist." DAM, which has toured throughout the world, is "the first Palestinian hip hop crew and among the first to rap in Arabic," according to its website. The visit was co-sponsored by the New England Association of Arabic Teachers. |
| |
