Koehler and Mishra (2008):
TPACK is
the basis of effective teaching with technology and requires an understanding
of the representation of concepts using technologies; pedagogical techniques
that use technologies in constructive ways to teach content; knowledge of what
makes concepts difficult or easy to learn and how technology can help redress
some of the problems that students face; knowledge of student’s prior knowledge
and theories of epistemology; and knowledge of how technologies can be used to
build on existing knowledge and to develop new epistemologies or strengthen old
ones. (pp 17-18)
Technological
Knowledge
Technology has become a part of
almost everything we do. Children use technology in the classroom as much as they
use it outside the school. The students that enter our school come from all different parts of the world and they
bring their own technological knowledge with them. Specifically, using
technology to meet the needs of English language learners in the mainstream
classroom has been growing across the globe and this technology can be a great
tool to support those growing needs for both students and teachers.
Implementing technological devices
and applications in the classroom can “provide scaffolding for students with
limited English proficiency to demonstrate concepts, connect meaning, and add
relevance, depth, and texture to a topic of study” (Zainuddin,
Yahya, Morales-Jones, & Whelan-Ariza, 2011, p. 358).
In the Living things science unit, we
will initially do the read aloud books for the class using the smart board to
project non-fiction electronic books on living things, using tumblebooklibrary.com and starwalkkids.com.
Students will engage through discussions with the teacher as they are
following, reading, listening, and writing the meanings of the classifications
of animals, specifically the animals that are in Oman. The teacher will also
provide tasks for the students to do after the online reading of e-books such
as collaborative work using the smart board while working on matrix diagrams
and Venn diagrams, these graphic organizers will be used for the
classifications of the animals learned. The final technological tool that the
students will use is an application on the iPad called Book Creator. Students will create their own electronic book about
an animal of choice that they have investigated and researched on. Students
work will be displayed on a class blog for their families and friends to view
across the globe.
Technology now offers many possibilities to education,
technological tools can be used to communicate in real-time across the globe
and used to search quickly for information. This ability has provided educators
the support to provide more and different ways for teaching to help learners.
Revelle, Reardon, Mays Green, Betancourt, & Kotler (2007) claim in their
research that there has been a positive impact on the cognitive development of
students when technology is integrated into learning.
Pedagogical Knowledge
Pedagogical knowledge applied needs to support students
developing their English language skills and this is clearly a priority for
educators. Cheung and Slavin (2005) have observed that implementing cooperative
learning, vocabulary and literature-based programs were highly correlated with language
development for students. The pedagogical view in this project integrates
English and, thematic and task-based lessons using specific vocabulary from the
living things unit, as well as building background knowledge used as approaches
to teaching ELL students. Integrating these approaches in our curriculum for
language learners’ gears them to engage in the tasks and make it meaningful for
them and thus lead to an increase in their language proficiency (Richards &
Rodgers, 2001).
Bate, Day and Macnish (2013), and Harris and Hofler (2009)
all examined how teachers implemented the TPACK model and their results showed
that their pedagogical practices had changed as they followed the TPACK model,
while their content goals remained the most important element when making
instructional choices. Prince (2014)
concluded that these results, “about the TPACK model, pedagogical shifts, and
importance of content goals when using educational technology lay a foundation
to explore what happened…and these prior findings indicate there may be shifts
to the teaching and learning process when iPads are introduced” (p. 28).
The content introduced in this
project is the Science unit from the curriculum and based on living things,
specifically, Animals of Oman. This unit
is taught and aligned with the mainstream class teacher. We align the contents
simultaneously to help language learners build on their background knowledge.
Although, we keep in mind that it is flexible, since our learners need more
time learning specific contents.
Context
This module was created for English
Language Learners (ELL) in grades 1 and 2 at an American International School
in Oman. The students are pulled out of their mainstream class, during an
English lesson, and are taught English in our ELL classroom. These
learners’ proficiency levels in English range from emerging to developing, and according to the Common
Framework Reference (CRF) the language learners are considered to be on the CFR
Global elementary scale between A1 – A2 (Government of Saskatchewan, Ministry
of Education, 2012). These students are engaged
through contents taught in their mainstream class. The content that that will
be taught in this module is the Science unit on living things. The learners
will learn using technological tools assigned to tasks to be done during the
lessons. The learners will also be taught by the IT teacher all the
applications used for the content prior to starting the lessons, as well the
teacher will help the students as they work collaboratively and create their
online e-book on the animal of their choice prior to giving the students the
independence to create their own e-book.
Ultimately,
my goal of this module is to learn to connect and “effectively teach” (Kimmons,
2011) all three components of knowledge; technological, pedagogical and content,
while considering the needs and goals of my global language learners.
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