In November I decided to do a project with my Japanese 2 students where they had to use their interpersonal speaking skills as well as their presentational speaking skills. I came upon this amazing idea accidentally, when I was scrolling through my Twitter feed and saw the following post: "OFLA Tech @OFLATech Nov 6 Have students survey one another in the TL and report results in an infographic with http://piktochart.com It's a free infograhic maker." I was in the process of teaching a unit on preferences, and students had been practicing and utilizing ways to compare things and activities, as well as give opinions on items, choices, classes, hobbies, teachers, you name it. At first I went back and forth in my head about the possible topics I could assign, or what questions I could have the students ask each other. But then I quickly realized that I did not want to sit thorough 90 presentations on the SAME SURVEY. PLUS, this was not very student-centered. I really wanted this project to be student-driven, and like the focus of my class, I wanted students to have autonomy on choosing the topic they wanted to survey. Here are my instructions for this project: I had amazing results. The students had the chance to create their own sets of questions and this led to 90 very different presentations of students' opinions, likes and dislikes, free time activities, etc. It was personalized to what the students cared about, as well as utilized fun and accessible technology, and was a new format of presentation instead of the usual PowerPoint or Prezi. I loved that the piktochart website allowed for Japanese fonts and typing capabilities and for the most part was pretty user-friendly. Mostly, this project allowed students to practice language, as well as create with language, and give feedback to others. After gathering their survey data, they compiled it into an easy-to read format with small graphs and charts, and then used those visuals to GUIDE LANGUAGE PRODUCTION. Here is a link to an inforgaphic one of my students made. If you look at the infographic, there is very little text, and no full sentences. Now, of course not all of my students' work was like this example, but I really think that this format encouraged preparation at home, as well as using the visuals just as a guide instead of the typical READING ENTIRELY OFF THE POWERPOINT SLIDE ( like they do in other subjects as well.... am I right?) Here is a short snip bit of the same student presenting his infographic: My takeaways from this idea are this:
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AuthorI am a high school Japanese teacher developing my own comprehensive and communicative Japanese program in Marysville, Ohio. Archives
April 2023
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