PART B - Application of TPACK

1. What is the TP knowledge for the solution?  (i.e., how does the technology you have chosen support the teaching strategies and methods you have chosen?)

I teach Spanish using the TPRS method, which is Teaching proficiency through reading and storytelling. The students learn an action for each word and they make the action as they say the word. As the teacher I ask a lot of either/or and yes/no questions in order to get the students practicing the words out loud and to increase the number of times that the students hear the words. The more times they hear the words the more likely they are to remember it. After practicing the words I read a story with the words in it and have some of the students act it out. The last step is for the students to read a story on their own and translate it to English.

This is a very hands on method of teaching that is hard to teach if you have never experienced it nor learned how to do it. Therefore, even if a substitute is able to speak Spanish they are unable to teach the class using the TPRS method. Taking a video of myself teaching while using this method really supports and continues the TPRS method even while I am out of the classroom. In the video I encourage the students to do the actions with me and to answer the questions. They are getting the full experience of my teaching method, minus me being able to tell if all of the students understand what I’m saying. But that is where the substitute comes in. The substitute should be monitoring the class, pausing the video when additional explanation is needed or more wait-time is needed or replaying part of the video if the students need additional practice.

2. What is the TC knowledge for the solution? (i.e., how specifically does this technology make the content in your problem more intellectually accessible?  Be sure to think about representation.)

Most often substitutes don’t speak Spanish and therefore don’t know how to pronounce any of the words. By using this technology I am ensuring that the students hear the correct pronunciation for all of the words and that there is no confusion about what the word means. I am giving the students another way to access the vocabulary that they wouldn’t usually be able to have when a substitute is present.

It also demonstrates to the substitute how I teach and what all of the information means. This would help if the substitute did speak Spanish and wanted to continue my method of teaching after the video was over. This would also help any non-Spanish-speaking substitutes so that they know what is going on and what the students should know or have learned based off of the video.

3. What is the PC knowledge for the solution? (i.e., how specifically do your pedagogical choices make the content in your problem more intellectually accessible?) Be sure to think about how the student will experience the content given these instructional strategies.

By using the TPRS method, I am able to reach all of my students through different learning strategies. The students have the Kinesthetic method of doing a gesture that directly relates to the word and many times doing the gesture will spark the student to remember the Spanish word or I can see who understands the Spanish word I say when they can demonstrate the meaning of the word with the correct gesture.

Then I have the auditory method where the students are hearing the word but they are hearing the word in context to ensure the most understanding. They hear the word repeated multiple times to give every student the opportunity to really learn the word.

Finally, the students also get to visually see the words when they read a story. Students have every way to access the content, though most significantly is usually the motivation. The students love making the gestures and acting out the stories. They know that they need to know the words in order to be able to know what to do when they act out the story, so they pay more attention.