Mr. Baldonado is one of our French Immersion teachers who shares more than one class. He teaches grade 6/7 (with Mme Power), grade 5/6 (with Mme Cork) and grade 4/5 (with Mme Blumel). This classroom blog is based on a visit in his 5/6 class last week. I did blog about these students when Mme Cork was teaching them, but this lesson sounded so like a lot of fun, so I dropped in for a visit and thought I would share.

The class was working on Science, and the students were exploring pendulum motion. Hands on lessons is a very rewarding way of teaching a science class, but it can have its challenges. Students are given a task (or a series of tasks) and have to carry them out in pairs or groups. Effective group work is something we teachers need to teach, and we need to be purposeful in how we form our groups. Groups formed without forethought can sometimes have trouble staying on task or completing the learning activity. It can be very challenging finding the right combinations of students for successful group work, and we need to give children the opportunities to work with many different people.

Group work can also challenging to assess.

• Do we mark the work as individuals, or is their a group mark?
• Is there a way of creating both a group mark and an individual mark?
• Should all group work be marked?
• Do we mark too much?

I was not in the class when the groups were made. By the time I came in, they were gathering up the necessary materials, and getting started on with their experiments. I asked students what they were doing, and I received multiple answers. I think they were to be doing the same activity, but not everyone was able to explain it right away. Asking students to tell me what they are doing or learning is a simple way to see if they are engaged or have paid attention to their teacher. It also helps get the groups talking about their plans.

Here is what I learned they were asked to do (Mr. Baldonado might clarify this later if I got it wrong). Each group was to make up an experiment using a pendulum. Their materials were; string, paper clips and a stop watch. They were to come up with a question, design an experiment, run the experiment and then report out.

Some pendulums were swinging with a couple of paper clips as their weight, while others made use of anywhere between 6 and 30 paper clips. Some groups had several pendulum with one clip on each, but the strings varied in length. Groups were timing and counting, recording data, cooperating with one team members, and seemed engaged the whole time I was in the class. It was a pleasure to watch.

This is a French immersion class, and as the teacher circulates, he speaks to groups in French and they respond quite comfortably in French. It is wonderful to see the students speak fluently with their teachers on a variety of topics.

There are some challenges in a French Immersion class that I must share (sorry kids).  When Mr. Baldonado moved on to another group, many students quickly revert to English. Their teacher is not looking at them or within hearing distance, so the students start to use their English. I did have to point this out to the groups. They looked up at me with a little grin, and tried to speak to me in English. Sorry. En Français, s’il vous plaît.

They tell me they speak in English to help me understand what is being said. Sorry. I understand more than you think, and if I want to get better, I need to hear French. But thanks for thinking of me. 🙂

I think I will visit the class later this week to ask about what they learned from experimenting with pendulums. I will ask them to start explaining in French, but if I have trouble, I might have to ask them to switch to English. I don’t think they’ll mind.

Take care.