Pillar Four: LanguageDARIAN SPERRYKATEY DANIELSNATHAN MILLER

What Is It?• Language is any set or system of such symbols as used

in a more or less uniform fashion by a number of people, who are thus enabled to communicate intelligibly with one another

• Language is a body of words and the systems for their use common to a people who are of the same community or nation, the same geographical area, or the same cultural tradition

• Language Arts is the study of grammar, composition, spelling and sometimes public speaking, typically taught as a single subject

Why Do We Care?• Communication with others

• Accurately relaying your feelings and emotions

• Build relationships with others

• Stay in contact with people from around the world

• Expand your knowledge of cultures around the world

• Further develop your mind

• Discover and understand new information on a global scale

How Does That Apply To 21st Century Education?• The world is evolving

• We have to keep up with it - only way our children can do that is if they are taught

• We can no longer afford to be the only industrialized country in the world with only one major language

• To compete on a global scale, our children need to learn language in a new and innovative way so that it will stick with them as they age

Where Does Technology Fit?

• Podcasts: Read along with a second language, can be taken home and worked at your students own pace to develop further understanding and reading comprehension

• YouTube: Look at videos of people talking in other languages, find pronunciations, look up a How-To for a certain cultural tradition

• Smart Board: Play interactive games to get students interested in actually comprehending what they say/write

• Blogs: Look at international blogs from world travelers, foodies, blogs actually written in another language to see conversational text

• Twitter: Find Tweets from around the world! Have students reach out in that language and see if they can hold a conversation, Twitter is like a giant pen-pal service in under 140 characters…without the added hassle of sending out a letter with personal info!

“Study Abroad”• In this project students will be broken into groups of four

• Each group will be assigned a language (Portuguese, Spanish, French, German, Swahili, and Dutch)

• For the duration of one semester, groups will need to study their given language a country where the language is widely spoken and at the end they will give a 20 minute presentation

• Groups will be required to make an in depth presentation that includes a PowerPoint about their country that includes traditions and several common phrases to teach the class

• Each presentation will also include a food native to those who speak their language that they will learn to prepare via YouTube tutorials or web search

“Study Abroad”• Podcasts and YouTube will be used to understand the language and hear

pronunciations, and clips of ones that stand out as particularly helpful should be included in the presentation

• Blogs will be required from each individual group member documenting/journaling their experience exploring another country and it’s language more in depth, the links to these will be turned in at the end of the project

• Groups will be required to reach out on Twitter and have a conversation with someone in their assigned language to test their knowledge of conversational phrases, snapshots of these conversations should be included on students individual blogs

• To end their presentation, students will also be required to make, edit, caption, and turn in a video acting out a common childhood story from their country, talking in their language and posted to YouTube.

“Study Abroad”• This assignment will immerse students in the culture of the language they are

assigned

• Being as interactive as the project is, hopefully the knowledge students obtain will stick with them for years to come

• Hearing about the culture of the people who speak these languages may encourage students in the group or from others to study them further in a specialized class

• The people these groups reach out to on social media can possibly become life long friends, prompting them to travel abroad and embrace other cultures. At the very least it will allow them to become comfortable with reaching out to people across the world, despite language barriers

• Because it is a self-guided assignment, students will need to search for what they feel is the most important part of the language and culture they are learning instead of being told what they should know, this can encourage them to do more of this in the future

Works Cited • http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/language