Strategies

=**__IMMERSION TEACHER STRATEGIES OBSERVATION CHECKLIST__**=

user:KathrynHin

//*Please feel free to post your own thoughts to the discussion board!//

The Center for Advanced Research on Language Acquisition's fourth annual summer institute on immersion education brought together immersion teachers, curriculum specialists, and administrators to better understand effective immersion pedagogy. Professional development activities drew from a variety of perspectives including research in immersion classrooms, practitioner expertise, as well as an engaging parent panel. In an effort to integrate research and practice-based information, institute participants collaborated to create "The Immersion Teaching Strategies Observation Checklist," to be used as a professional development tool. [|Center for Advanced Research on Language Acquisition]

Below I have summarized the seven important points of this checklist:

=1. Integrate language, content and culture=
 * The teacher focuses on using specific parts of a language's culture and relates it to every lesson/unit. This can include, history, music, artifacts, movies, poems, etc.

= =

=**2. Attend to continuous language growth and improve accuracy**=
 * The teacher guides students in improving their own growth in the language. This aspect focuses on creating opportunities for this growth, while giving meaniingful feedback yet not disrupting the flow of the lesson.

=**3. Make input comprehensible**=
 * The teacher, althought his/her speech is at a level above that of their students, uses methods to accomodate this gap. This may include gestures, slower speech, repetition, pictures, allowing for questions, etc. This may also include drawing on the students' prior knowledge to make connections and build on what they have already learned.

=**4. Create an L2-rich learning environment**=
 * The teacher extends the students' learning to outside of the classroom. This may include providing additional resources (magazines, newspapers, movies) as well as native speakers.

=**5. Use teacher talk effectively**=
 * The teacher makes his/her speech comprehensible to the students yet also stays mindful that teacher talk should be limited to give more opportunity for students to speak the language.

=**6. Promote extended student output**=
 * The teacher pays special attention to his/her own speech; he/she should be mindful that the speech should be authentic while at the same time catering to the fact that these students are in the process of learning the language.

=**7. Attend to diverse learner needs**=
 * The teacher uses a variety of activities that cater to a class full of students with different learning styles, such as visual, auditory, tactile, kinesthetic, etc.