Service Learning Experience - Coursework Example

Service Learning Experience Project al Affiliation Service Learning Experience Project Service Learning Preparation of Organization: Location: Description/Purpose of Organization: What need does this organization meet? Description of the Structure of the Learning Experience: What did your schedule look like and how was it structured? In any foreign language instruction, students’ motivation to speak, listen, write, and read is crucial. The schedule for the learning experience involved tutoring Arabic language, improved instruction methods through various assessment tools and strategies, and providing appropriate feedback to student queries. Other services included administration and grading, placement tests for students at different Arabic learning levels, and interviewed first time students through oral tests to rank them and place them in appropriate classes that correspond to their knowledge. Additionally, the schedule for each day involved a distinct objective, appropriate materials for the lesson activities, presentation, practice, and application. Application involved providing guided practice, independent practice, and reviewing, discussing, or clarification by listening to the students as they talk about their performance and what their day was like. Why did you choose this experience/organization? This experience matches with my field of expertise which is a K-12 teacher. However, working with children is an innate quality and I always work passionately and with lots of determination to impact change in children’s lives. Given that the center is open Saturday and Sundays, I find it to be a great way of spending my time by impacting knowledge in children while enhancing my teaching skills, improving my confidence, and sharpening my presentation skills. I chose this center because I needed to improve my connection with students. This was possible because upon identifying the various teaching principles, I managed to connect what I do in the classroom with a comprehensive, evidence-oriented knowledge of how children learn languages (Cress, Collier, & Reitenauer, 2013). 2. Learning What skills did you develop through the activities? The experience of setting aside 20 hours to teach Arabic language to young children was amazing. Moreover, this experience made me learn numerous skills such as using textbook materials, establishing learning activities, and assessing the progress of my students (Cress, Collier, & Reitenauer, 2013). For instance, in a lesson learn about fruits, the presentation of the vocabulary was through picture cards while real fruits presented the vocabulary. How did this experience help you better link and understand ideas or subjects we have been studying in our course? At first, it was difficult connecting ideas with hands-on teaching and the theory learnt in the course almost seemed impossible to implement. However, with time, I gained crucial survival tips where I first sought the content I had to teach, the method to use, and identification of the student level. Then I would create a plan and orient myself with the available facilities like libraries as well as establishing relationships with students for interactive learning. Through this learning experience, what did you learn about: Myself, Working with others, and Community During my teaching, I realized that I took too much time before I could establish relationships with students, especially since the class had identical twins who could not easily distinguish. However, I managed to provide students with manageable homework and always met the expectations of the department frequently. Working with others gave me the chance to build teamwork skills which I found essential for promoting collaboration amongst teachers and between teachers and the administration. Through collaboration, the content delivered to students was uniform. I realized that the community is willing to have their students learn different languages at an early age not just from their parents, but within settings where professional teachers deliver such content (Cress, Collier, & Reitenauer, 2013). How will you use what you learned in this experience in different situations? For different situations, I will utilize a teaching portfolio to aid me with reflective practice such that any identified weakness is improved and each strong point maintained for personal development. Additionally, the portfolio will assist in documenting performance for use with potential employers. 3. Service What was the need for your service effort? To me, service learning provided an opportunity for me to get involved in meaningful service to the community while providing a way of linking the community to the classroom. For the community, service learning effort provided the opportunity to have their needs identified and met through students whose understanding of course content broadens and so is their sense of responsibility (Cress, Collier, & Reitenauer, 2013). Additionally, service learning effort was a crucial way of exposing me to real world career environment as I go on with my studies. This way, I learn how to balance classwork and service efforts thus improving my time management skills as I try to balance work and education. What contribution did you make? My contribution to the community involved assisting children with learning of foreign languages and establishes productive relationship with children leaving room for consultation and clarification of unclear concepts. Further, providing feedback to the community made the children recognize the best way of learning and dealing with different assignments. This way, children could learn the concepts and understand their applicability. How did your service affect the community? Involvement in the center provided additional human resource required to attain the goals of teaching Arabic language to the society. Additionally, the community gained and implemented new enthusiasm, energy and perspectives regarding the work of teaching Arabic and other foreign languages. Through teaching, any misconceptions are corrected while enlightening the community about key community issues. Finally, students gain volunteering attitude and this grows the community pool of volunteers as teachers share their experiences. 4. Process My Help with Planning As a student, I had crucial class content that worked well in ensuring that planned course content is up to date with current requirements. Additionally, I managed to develop critical thinking and problem solving skills in ways that made it possible to identify areas that required improvement and areas that required elimination or inclusion. My decision that solved a problem With the knowledge and understanding of diverse communities and cultures, I managed to improve the instruction methods through assessment tools and strategies such as formative assessment, online assessment for reading, writing, speaking, and listening, and oral proficiency assessment. Were there any differences between the initial plans and what you actually did? Originally, it was all about assisting the community and fulfilling the requirement to participate in service learning. However, I ended up integrating working towards satisfying my urge for civic participation as I enhance my skills in communication, leadership, and collaboration areas. What data could you look at to assess and track improvement and progress toward meeting specific goals? I looked for the impact it had on my learning, personal and social outcome. I also evaluated the impact towards my career development, and the relationship I had to have the institution. What ideas do you for improving any part of the experience? On my career development, will seek to define stronger connections with community members and professional for effective knowledge and career opportunities. Additionally, career development would require stronger personal efficacy and leadership capabilities for improved opportunities. Journal entries Entry #1 Introducing Arabic Alphabet This day, the lesson involved introducing the Arabic alphabet to students. First, I had to ensure that the children understand the basics such as writing from right to left, and that there are 29 consonants and 6 vowels. Since most students were conversant with the basics, I concentrated on the long vowels and a few other consonants since they would assist in the pronunciation of some Arabic words. At the end of the day, I made students understand the importance of practicing beyond the classwork and the homework. This would assist them in progressively learning individual sounds. Being my first day in my service learning, the experience was nerve-racking. I was also horribly confused, and almost got frustrated not knowing the kind of students I would interact with. However, at the end of the first lesson, I realized my students were jovial and enjoyed being learning new knowledge in Arabic language. Although I had prepared fully, I realized that I needed to consult with my fellow students and set aside time to prepare. Preparation was crucial given that I had to be in class five days, and be in the service learning for the weekend leaving little time for preparation. I also observed that the students were willing to learn more than what was in my daily lesson plan and I decided to have more reasonable expectations where student engagement is not lost and have an anonymous class evaluation after several sub topics so that the feedback I provided assisted with identifying areas to develop. Entry #2 Teaching Nominal Sentences On this day, the students were eager to learn nominal sentences. Since most of them had knowledge of English, I began by telling them that like English nominal sentences, Arabic nominal sentences are equivalent since in both cases, they did not begin with a verb. This day I was excited since I was introducing a new concept to students. Like my students, I was anxious to introduce yet another area of learning Arabic language experienced through nominal sentences. In order to deliver this knowledge, I needed answers to questions like, ‘what is the best skill, attitude, or value to actively engage students in learning the material?’ during my preparation for the class, my plan to engage demonstration of pointing out fundamental aspects, supervising students during class learning activities, or talk to the students through the skill. While supervising the students in class, I observed that they had high frequency of grammatical errors and lacked variety in grammatical structures. At first, I thought it was because I used a poor approach of teaching but I later realized that the students lacked confidence in themselves, thus limiting themselves only to a small range of vocabulary. This made me realize that besides giving them examples, each student would then associate with their everyday lives in the real world to give two more examples. This worked well and despite the inadequacy in clear self-expression, students struggled to deliver their points. Besides participation in class through speaking and listening, students could also do some writing and roleplaying. Entry #3 Vulture Hunt This day, the focus was to assist students to develop and exercise their teamwork, conversation skills, and do some writing. In this lesson, the students would concentrate on descriptive words, and spatial terms such as near, next, and behind. For the activity, I selected 15 different items for use in the hunt, and placed them throughout the classroom, but not in places like drawers, or private property. I began by quickly explaining to the students what is expected of them and gave them the list of what to seek. Upon finding an item, students were to name it and where they found it using Arabic language. I felt that this activity added a new insight and dimensions to class discussions and activities given that children had to work as a team and divide roles amongst themselves as they learnt. I observed that the students’ interests in learning Arabic language were enhanced through such activities and none reported absent within the course of my service learning. After this activity, parents reported role playing at homes as children practiced with different items at home and even involved their parents where possible. From this observation, I realized that children liked activities that they could relate with in their daily lives in the real world and this improved their range of vocabularies to include items not readily available in classroom settings. This activity made me generate the idea of incorporating songs in class activities, and considering world issues like pollution to come up with class themes such as recycling. Entry # 4 Singing The focus was to enhance listening, reading, and word association skills. The selected song determined the unit to be studied. In this activity, the song selection was the responsibility of the teacher such that it would accommodate students within a given age and level. Normally, the song fell within the target language. For instance, the song Happy Birthday would work for these children because they were little and worked well in associating words with events and items. When singing is involved, children’s participation improves and they can put in the necessary emotions. For me children singing generated the idea of involving them in song writing such that the words used are not too difficult for their pronunciation. However, I had to guide their choice of words so that they could include concepts, themes, or ideas learnt in class. I observed that practicing a new song was hard for some students. I decided to play a song twice for the students after which I placed the words in the song on the overhead. Each student also received a copy of the words such that upon hearing the song play, they would follow along. After the following along the playing song, children would then underline unfamiliar words for my explanation. From the observation, I realized that some students required slower paced songs at first so that they could follow along with ease with time and I gained the idea of incorporating songs and dances with book reading time to give them some rest. Entry # 5 matching and puzzle activities Today, learning involved identifying people, animals, and colors. The focus was to help children to gain creative expression skills in their writing, listening, and speaking. I did this activity differently because I cut pictures of different items, people and color into two pieces then scattered them around the classroom. Then I called upon the children to assist me with putting them together. In the course of this activity, I would introduce a vocabulary. For instance, I would hold one half of red color and ask the children to assist me find the other half and after they catch up, I would give them each a half and let them find the other half. This activity was engaging and I felt that the children were not just learning new words but also associating them with real world items. In the end, I could review the lesson by asking the children for the items individually by shape, color, or the introduced vocabulary word. I observed that children at this age are very energetic and they can be fun. This introduced the challenge of trying to harness that energy to have it focused on the Arabic lesson. The challenge generated for me the idea of flipping my classroom to make it more student-oriented such that they could confidently connect their energy and fun moments with the class concepts and ideas. My realization from this lesson was that, it was my responsibility as the teacher to establish lessons that offered children the right connection with vocabularies. Only two days to the start of my service learning, I was filled with anxiety that made me feel very nervous and unprepared to face the project. Worst of all, I doubted my capacity to conduct a class or have the children understand what I was trying to teach. I remember almost inciting fellow course mates to reject the requirement, claiming we were not fully prepared for it. However, I remembered a quote by my nanny that used to wake me up, “Face your troubles with confidence because only fools and fanatics are always certain of themselves while the wiser people always have doubts”. Upon realizing that I doubted myself, I told myself that I must be smart and ready to face my troubles. In my teaching profession, this quote makes me face my nervousness and doubts with courage such that the students I will teach will always look upon me and have a mentor and a role model. The children do not just want a teacher from whom they gain academic knowledge, but a person who can assist them with real life situations. So besides teaching, I make sure that I speak to the students about living with their parents and guardians, obedience, and working with each other. The most memorable thing to me is the day I had to deal with a first time Arabic language learner who joined my class after five weeks of teaching. At first I wanted the child out of my class, but I realized it was my opportunity to light up the child’s life even through two overtime hours each weekend. By the time I left, the child was doing well. References Cress, C. M., Collier, P., & Reitenauer, V. (2013). Learning through serving : a student guidebook for service-learning and civic engagement across academic disciplines and cultural communities. Sterling, Virginia: Stylus Publishing. Read More