Three Modes

* Is there one mode that you tend to focus on more than the others? Interpersonal/Presentational/Interpretive?

To answer this question, I decided to examine my morning class today, since I had already decided on class activities before I read the blog topic. Background:  beginning French-community college-tiny class (6) with two who do all the work, two who do some and two who do the minimum to barely get by. However, despite disparities in homework completion and study habits. all are good participants within class and work well with each other.

 CLASS 4/9
1-Nuts and bolts-who remembers the forms of 6 different verbs?--kind of review work. I wanted to make sure that they had the tools they needed to go on to the next activity:

2-Seasonal activities:   In pairs they discussed the activities they could do, would like to do and knew how to do in the season of their choice. They had to ask each other follow-up questions (with whom, where, when, why) as well. Interpersonal

3-survey:  choosing from a list of possible activities, each student had to perform a survey about individual preferences for a choice of activities, then present their overall finding to the class Interpersonal followed by Presentational.

4-I presented a story about a small boy's daily routine (reflexive verbs) and then showed the forms of the reflexive pronouns with different verbs. They had to follow the visuals of the story but it was not cultural interpretation but rather figuring out grammar.  

5-Last, they took posters from oral presentations earlier in the week and wrote for 20 minutes about the other person-presentational.

* What can you do/change to more intentionally include all three modes in student learning?


I had no interpretive in today's class, which surprised me because I would think that classes would be more interpretation heavy.  In fact, the class before this class was heavily interpretive, using a watch advertisement as a spring board to discuss what activities say about one's personality.   I think that it is a bit like having good nutrition. You don't have to have everything everyday--just in the long run (say a week) making sure you get everything covered.  I'm sure i could find a chart of sporting preferences for Canadians from Chatelaine, or something along those lines for interpretive.

* How do you think a distance learning environment will impact your practice?  

 I can see a lot of this being easily adapted to the distance learning, in synchronous modes (seasonal activities discussion and survey) and then in asynchronous mode (presentation of survey results, small write-up based on a project somone has posted and done a voice-thread commentary over).