Weekly Reflection #5
For week 6 we had to choose two online seminars to watch.
The second seminar I watched was Live IT! Bilingual Place-based Learning K-7. The Live It earth website is such a cool resource for teachers to use with their students. It has a ton of videos on places, animals and plants from all over the world, along with worksheets and projects you can do along with the video. The films are about 20 minutes long and are available in English and in French. The quality in all of them are top notch, I would compare them to the level of Bill Nye’s videos from when I was a kid. The video we were shown in the seminar was on beluga whales. The videos are laid out very well, and everything is pronounced very well. There isn’t as much humor as the bill nye videos of old but there are some fun bits for the kids to laugh at and keep them interested.
The first seminar of the morning was about IDÉLLO: Introduction for K-7 French Immersion Teachers. I was in French immersion myself from K-7 and was curious about the resources for teaching French. At this point in my schooling I have zero interest in teaching French immersion, but I would like to make sure that I have resources available to me when I teach core French to my students. I also have my B-2 delf so on paper I am fluent in French, even though it has been 8 years since I spoke French every day. During the seminar we went over the Idéllo website, how to navigate the site, learning how to set up classroom videos and tips and tricks. The website and resources found on it are all free to use with your district email. The classrooms you can set up on the site allow you to share specific videos with your students that they can access on their own. As well the videos speed can be altered to allow students to slow down the speed if that helps with understanding of the language, subtitles can also be provided. There are also readings that can be supplied to the students that illuminate the line as you read it. Overall this is a great resource I will definitely be using in the future.