Reflection on Course 4 Final Project

For my course 4 final project I chose to create an independent vocabulary study unit and assessment based around our ISB K12 ESL standards that incorporate the ISB TAIL (Technology and Information Literacy) standards. I had originally wanted to incorporate the ISB TAIL standards into our EAP 10 course unit on comparative writing and had discussed and begun to articulate how such a unit would look with Dennis Harter and Jeff Utecht (our two instructors for course 4) but was unable to then convince my EAP 10 team my 'technologically enhanced' vision for the curricular unit would sufficiently enhance student leaning to offset the extra time, effort and learning (and possible failure as we would be dealing with technology) on the part of the students and teachers in order to go forward with this unit plan.

I thus decided that I would lead by example and chose to integrate the ISB TAIL standards into a course in which I am a singleton teacher as there would then be no other teachers who not having taken this course need to be convinced it's our responsibility as educators to provide a 21st Century classroom where students can learn the skills, understandings and attitudes they need to be successful in the today's wired world. The class I chose is my Foundations Communications Class. The class is for 'near rank' beginners and has just been extended from a semester to year-long course, so as of yet there is no 'set' curriculum or curricular time line to work around so that a unit can be created from scratch integrating the K-12 ESL and TAIL standards. I chose to develop a vocabulary unit for the Foundations Communication class as the HS ESL department for the past two years has made vocabulary acquisition our HS ESL organization goal. Our department goal has been to improve and challenge student learning so that each student will achieve or exceed his or her expected annual learning progress in vocabulary acquisition. Furthermore, the team had already agreed to incorporate technology tools into our goal work by setting up a wiki website for students and teachers to collaborate on and demonstrate student learning as they work toward building a personal glossary of newly acquired words. This goal work was being done in grades 9-12 with all EAP (English for Academic Purposes) students but not with the Foundations students. It thus seemed ideal to choose to bring this goal work to the Foundations students while developing a brand new Foundations vocabulary unit incorporating K-12 ESL standards and TAIL standards that could serve as a model for the grade 9-12 EAP classes vocabulary units.

An initial sketch of this unit can be found on our course wiki.