Fashion Forward: Personal (Re)presentations of Clothing

Virginia Atkins

Introduction

Clothing is a necessity, but it also conveys a valuable cultural and symbolic meaning that make it more than what we wear. On a personal level, we identify with the fashion and clothing singularity of our own cultures1. In a broader context, clothing traditions are passed down from generations to the next, representing an extension of our cultural identity. The language spoken by our clothes universally represents traditions, culture, and above all, identity2. By designing a curriculum unit that focuses on clothes as a visible expression of identity, I aim to impact learning by exploring ways in which my students can take a defining role in how information is interpreted and applied.

Clothes are more than an extension of who we are as Virginia Woolf considers the role of Clothing as an expression of self-identity:

Vain trifles as they seem, clothes have, they say, more important offices than merely to keep us warm. They change our view of the world and the world’s view of us. There is much to support the view that it is clothes that wear us and not them; we may make them take the mold of arm or breast, but they mold our hearts, our brains, our tongues to their liking3.

This curriculum unit is an exploration of culture through fashion and Clothing and how students can make stronger connections to the way they think about themselves and the way they express the characteristics that define who they are. The design of this unit will help students have a better understanding of the cultural meaning of clothes while defining the characteristics and purpose of particular celebrations in Latin America. Students will understand and appreciate the diversity that exists in society and the positive contributions of various Latin American cultural sources through art and Clothing. Cultural patterns and relationships will be established, allowing students to gain knowledge from: (1) a richer vocabulary base, (2) a relatable experience to draw from, and (3) a context that will enable them to shape appropriate background for themselves that will foster foreign language learning. By making references to my student’s own clothing culture, I aim to promote not only interest but also build ownership in their learning process by designing a paperless curriculum unit. Also, authentic/real-world experiences will reinforce what students know and how they can apply their background knowledge. Students will be able to embrace what defines their world around them through their interpretation of what Clothing culturally represents4.

Background

A Spanish level-1 class at Howard High School of Technology (HHST) is the context for this potential instructional problem. This Spanish-I class is comprised of 28 students. The class is comprised of twenty-two freshmen and six seniors. The ratio between male and female students is likewise proportioned at thirteen male students to fifteen female students. Five female students in the class are receiving special educational support and can fully participate in all classroom activities. Twenty of the students are African-American, six are Caucasians, and two are Hispanic (Heritage Speakers). Students are at different levels of proficiency in the target language.

Each year, one-fourth of all eighth-grade students attending New Castle County public schools apply for admission to a vocational/technical high school (1). Howard High School of Technology (HHST) is 1 of 4 high schools in the New Castle County Vocational-Technical School District. HHST serves approximately 840 students in grades 9-12 and is located in the heart of Wilmington5. HHST has a long-standing tradition of providing competitive career and technical programs. The thirteen vocational programs offered at Howard supplement students’ academic education with a wide range of opportunities. These opportunities satisfy not only industry certifications but also substantial professional experience via internships and cooperative jobs that provide on-the-job training. In 2015, Howard victoriously emerged from three years as a Partnership Zone school. This period was the result of the identification of Howard as one of the State’s lowest-achieving schools, based on the academic proficiency of students on the State’s assessment over a period of four years6. For the past three years, Apple has recognized HHST as a distinguished school for its leadership and vision in creating a mobile learning environment that exemplifies innovation and excellence.

Content Objectives Needs and Goals

Content Objectives

The purpose of this instructional unit is to teach students how to recognize clothing choices based on given scenarios in the target language. In this unit, students will analyze Clothing based on scenarios by providing opinions and recommendations. Applying a proficiency model, this unit exposes students to their (1) Interpretive learning – with teacher-guided questions, (2) Interpersonal Communication –by sharing their opinions with their partners, and (3) Interpersonal writing - by composing a written sample of their recommendations. Following these modalities, we will explore Clothing as a communication system using a variety of Latin American paintings that offer examples that create and reveal the cultural and social identity, from the works of Stanley Coll7and Jose Andres Giron8 to Carmen Lomas Garza’s In my Family9.

We will build and construct knowledge from Carmen Lomas Garza’s “Family Pictures-Cuadros de Familia”10. Garza, a Mexican American artist, depicts day-to-day life experiences and celebrates different aspects of traditional Mexican American culture through fourteen vignettes of art with a descriptive narrative. The specific paintings will inform the basis of object analysis as it relates to Clothing and culture. “Empanadas”11 or “Cakewalk”12 works well to establish a system of clothing identification, providing a portal into understanding cultural identity; “Tamalada”13 for inferencing and deduction; “Quinceanera”14 for the cultural narrative of a dress code; “La Feria en Reynosa”15 for comparisons and context.

These paintings get to the heart of how Clothing and culture play off one another to display and co-create identity, empowering students to look further into their pasts, their stories, and the stories of those around them. Students will move beyond the mere gaining of knowledge to a level that ensures a more comprehensive approach to skills development where the learning can become differentiated, personalized, and more relatable16. Student’s instructional goals are ‘all’ on a language proficiency-model that hones in on what the students ‘can’ do in the following modes of communication17: (1) Interpretive Communication (students listen, view, or read authentic text/advertisement with ability to question or answer information), (2) Presentational Communication (students establish connections with their peers in a presentational setting by sharing their ideas/research/ideas/opinions about clothes in general), and (3) Interpersonal Communication (after receiving feedback, students engage in expressing opinion and cultural meaning regarding clothes). Burnham and Kai-Kee suggest that:

words build interpretation and construct understandings of the works we encounter18.

To this end, this unit encourages understanding: (1) by strengthening Spanish interpretive speaking and writing skills, (2) by increasing vocabulary, presenting them with cultural context and information, and (3) by guiding how to write short texts constructed for real-world, authentic interpretation. Students will also learn to organize their communication skills while learning about multiculturalism.

Instructional Objectives

In my foreign language classroom, just as in many other classrooms, my students learn best when their learning experiences create connections to context, culture, language, and the real world19.

When describing Clothing in Spanish, students are not proficient in the primary idea identification. In Spanish, all nouns have a specific gender. Mastering gender for native-English speakers is a hard-to-grasp concept. English nouns do not have a gender, while in Spanish, each noun is either masculine or feminine. When studying clothing vocabulary in Spanish, students must first recognize the subject in order to assign the article “the,” el

(masculine), or la (feminine) that often accompany the noun in order to demonstrate which gender the noun is. The most challenging part of mastering main idea identification is challenged by adjective placement. Native-English speakers do not decode that in Spanish, the adjective generally follows the noun instead of before. Whenever students want to say “the red boots,” in Spanish, they would incorrectly say “las rojas botas.” Most all of the time, students overlook the correct version to be “las botas rojas” literally understood as “the boots red.”

If students are not able to identify the main idea, then students will struggle to recognize supporting details when expressing opinion and information about Clothing. When students are not able to understand the main concept, both reading and writing comprehension are hindered. In order to determine inferential concepts, students must first learn how to identify concrete and literal concepts.

Content Goals

According to Dick, Carey & Carey, an instructional goal includes the statement of learning asserting a measurable outcome20 and Piaget helps up understand that cognition should not be separated or isolated from its learning context because active learning occurs when a variety of cognitive activities are complemented21. Students will engage the target language in an authentic context, and the instructional goals will build upon the previous one in a sequential process rather than a stand-alone segment. The instruction will be student-centered and continue to build upon what students need, what they already know, and what they can do. Diverse learning styles will be evident but maximized for new opportunities as well while encouraging the development of a wide range of skills and learning strategies. I will be able to promote intercultural communication by exploring language structures in order for students to express opinions and interest in the clothes they wear using the target language.

This instructional unit lends itself an authentic route to promote communication in order for students to express clothing choices based on scenarios in a progressive approach. I find that using this proficiency orientation in my classroom promotes intercultural communication by exploring language learning and culture so that students can communicate appropriately and accurately in authentic contexts. In the process of acquiring a second language, one of the primary goals for my students is to begin communicating with their classmates, which leads to the social context of their learning. Within this social context, my student’s interactions will be defined by getting plenty of ‘classroom’ practice applying their clothing vocabulary. Moreover, as the new language structures are introduced, my students will learn from what is being modeled, and in turn, they will reproduce these new language patterns with confidence and added intrinsic interest to express what they prefer to wear throughout the year. As the facilitator of my student’s learning, my teaching is inherently one that is multi-level because I must effectively address their unique learning needs. Therefore, the design of this instructional

unit scaffolds learning in the sense that as one group of students may be strong at their interpretive communication skills, there is another one whose forte demonstrates an ability to do an outstanding job at their interpersonal communication skills.

Supporting such implications in my classroom, I planned this unit by:

1. Supporting students in developing their social interactions so that meaningful learning and engagement can take place. Unique contributions to maximize their learning will be created when students are aware of their role in their groups and of their peers.

2. Developing a flexible approach to accommodate not only different levels of Spanish learning but also different learning pace and instructional methods.

3. Selecting relevant activities that allow a degree of scaffolding for those students at the lower-levels with appropriate materials while adapting the information to challenge the higher-level students.

Instructional Strategies

When selecting the main strategies of the unit, I intend to connect the unit vocabulary with activities that would capture my students’ attention in order to make teaching and learning culturally relevant and to enable access to prior knowledge upon which new skills and concepts can be built. It will be essential to understand how my students’ cultural and linguistic backgrounds profoundly influence their experiences in the classroom and adhering to lesson plans that contain defined LFS strategies. The use of real-life weather scenarios will enhance how they can connect to the clothing vocabulary by offering non-verbal methods for communication. By providing a platform for students to create mental images and by integrating their own experiences, my students will have more opportunities to engage in new and varied approaches while gaining positive responses to learning, understanding others, and communicating their ideas.

My involvement in the planning of this unit will strengthen opportunities to challenge my students to recall their collective experiences. Throughout this process, I will be able to move students from memorizing information to meaningful learning and will introduce the journey of connecting culture through what they wear as a learning event rather than remembering fractional information. Besides, I would be able to promote a learning environment that is rich in multi‐media sources, cultural content, and visual references.

In the preparation and the delivery of this instructional unit, I plan to incorporate meaningful material that would give a glance into students’ culture and spark students’ interest with real-life material. This instructional design approach targets student’s motivation for language learning, their perspective, and their own previous language learning experiences in terms of background knowledge22. In the process of acquiring a second language, one of the primary goals for my students is to begin communicating with their classmates, which leads to the social context of their learning23. Within this

social context, my student’s interactions were defined by getting plenty of ‘classroom’ practice applying their ‘clothing’ vocabulary. Moreover, as the new language structures are introduced, my students will learn from what is being modeled, and in turn, they will be able to reproduce these new language patterns with confidence and added intrinsic interest to communicate in Spanish.

Also, the strategies for this unit focus to increase student’s proficiency skills by allowing opportunities for extended responses, thus providing prospects for students to respond in a familiar and in an “all-you-can-include” approach to what they have learned via formative assessments. These factors and strategies for assessments will include (1) well-defined tasks, (2) realistic learning goals, and (3) flexibility to students’ learning pace that involve an integration of real-world materials24. While the end of unit assessments provide a single snapshot of what students have learned, students will be given multiple opportunities to apply and use authentic language in a sequential and guided process beyond a written or spoken assessment.

Various grouping arrangements will be utilized to foster learning25. Each learning activity will incorporate an individual, collaborative, and small group element. This unit lends itself as an authentic path to promote the four modalities of communication (listening, speaking, reading, and writing) in order for my students to express their clothing choices based on the weather in a meaningfully approach via the use of iPads, authentic reading, and audio recordings. In this unit, reading, listening, and writing practices become feedback tools to provide students with the confidence to expand their knowledge and reinforce their concepts, so I intend to capitalize on these feedback-oriented strategies in order to minimize learning challenges.

At the core of this unit, it will be essential to familiarize students with average weather conditions based on months. It will be required to assume the average weather conditions for each prevailing season, which is hot for summer, cold for winter, and cooler/raining conditions for spring and fall. Applying the weather concepts to clothing choices will create opportunities to explore real-world scenarios from formative feedback to the end-of-unit summative assessments.

Pre-Instructional Strategies

Students will 1. Discuss how culture, personality, and weather influence our clothing choices and 2. apply their opinion and preferences to the clothes they wear. To activate background knowledge, students will complete a Venn diagram with a clothing example for each: 1. Summer, 2. Winter (opposites), and 3. Both – Summer and Winter. Students will complete their activating strategies in Schoology, supporting a paperless unit.

I will encourage my student’s improvement by involving students directly in the feedback process. Using learning logs and “I can do statements,” I can elicit self-discipline among the students and provide an environment where the students can effectively self-monitor their progress. Using the student progress outlines which provide the student’s learning objectives in a student-friendly approach, the students can self-monitor their progress towards new content, providing me with a way to keep track of what they know.

Summarizing Strategies

Summarizing Strategies - writing prompts using a weather scenario - Students to use writing as a tool for learning. Students respond to a given scenario using at least five sentences to express what clothes they wear/do not wear/use/prefer/recommend for the season of the year selected. The open-ended questions will have no correct answers, providing students with many possibilities for extending meaning if students complete ahead of time.

Several of the formative assessment strategies embedded in this instructional unit will focus on how the student create connections that promote comparisons and connections to their real-world with the use of graphic organizers26. They include:

1. Frayer-Model Diagram - using a Question/Answer Relationship, students will apply their vocabulary to use explicit and implicit information about their clothing choices. 2. Painting Analysis - using a comparison matrix, students recognize similarities and differences while focusing on ordering information. Clothing items/characteristics and seasons are organized in a matrix, and students recognize specific reasoning for their answers analyzing Latin American art. 3. Writing Prompt - using celebratory depictions through art and a story wheel- Students will use writing as a tool for learning. This strategy will implement writing as a tool to explore thinking. Students will benefit from the ability to clarify their ideas, identify a specific point of view, integrate new information with their background knowledge, and deepen their visual understanding.

The writing prompt will present an open-ended question that students share with partners. The open-ended questions will have no correct answers, providing students with many possibilities for extending meaning. 4. Organizing information - using Quizlet Live, students will work in groups to respond and organize outfits based on seasons. This

formative assessment will focus on visualizing the season to help enhance student’s comprehension of their clothing choices.

Assessment Strategies

A diagnostic, formative assessment will aid in identifying specific student needs, inform placement decisions, and direct teaching and learning. Also, the integration of technology will play an increasingly important role in instruction, as exemplified by the expanded use of a digital curriculum, iPad one-on-one use, and educational software. The framework of the instructional assessments for this unit is twofold: It has been developed to provide district guidelines and to facilitate decisions at the school level about effective ways to deliver foreign language instruction. The unit focuses on the goal of communicative proficiency and cultural awareness through the development of linguistic skills, student performance expectations at various checkpoints, how students best learn the target language in varying ways as well as different ways to teach it. The instructional design plan incorporates assessments created by my PLC in order to implement the ACTFL Standards for learning into the curriculum at the district level and devising activities and lessons at the classroom level27.

The formative assessments in this instructional unit will continue to build upon what students need, what they already know, and what they can do. Students will arrive at the end-of-unit summative with an increased understanding of the grammatical components, a stronger connection on how to elaborate a writing sample incorporating clothing options based on season, and with the ability to apply their knowledge when presented with weather ranges. I will determine student progress by culminating in the instructional unit with a summative assessment at the end of the unit. My approach to what the students know is to provide constant feedback to improve language performance. When working in collaborative groups, I will use descriptive feedback with my students in ways to collectively emphasize language performance. Also, I am flexible to modify learning strategies as a result of assessment data.

Supporting the needs of my students, I will maintain flexibility in my teaching approach to encourage improvement and continued development of the target language. Also, I will provide opportunities for students to feel safe to ask questions to encourage active learning by clarifying, modeling and directional feedback, I give by using a variety of techniques (simplification, restating, adjusting speed) during the implementation of the instructional strategy. I try to do so, keeping in mind the student’s progress in an overall learning outcome. In turn, my students will conclude this instructional learning unit with an increased understanding of the grammatical components, a stronger connection on how to elaborate a dialogue involving direct questions, and the ability to apply their knowledge in new learning situations.

Think-Pair-Share

Think-Pair-Share is a cooperative learning tool that is the instructional strategy selected for my instructional unit. It promotes students to 1. Work individually; 2. Group in pairs to discuss their thoughts and, 3. Share their ideas by presenting them to the larger group28. Think-Pair-Share (TPS) is a three-stage process that emphasizes what the students are doing at each one of those stages29. I am particularly interested in this strategy because it activates higher-level thinking while maximizing peer interactions during a discussion with the opportunities for real-life/authentic applications so essential in the foreign language classroom. Also, this strategy is hands-on for teaching all grade levels and class sizes, as well as versatile for the teacher in a multi-grade setting. Utilizing this strategy, students not only refine their ideas but also can build new ones from others.

TPS presents opportunities to bring together student’s motivation and hands-on, authentic learning activity that refines critical thinking within the collaborative groups. By leading students from thinking to pairing, to sharing, the strategy promotes confidence among students and enhances learning-through-sharing. In a meaningful cultural context, I aim to facilitate critical thinking by providing meaningful relationships tied back to the lesson content and, at the same time, allowing my students to become life-long learners. As Fogerty points out on Dewey’s concepts of learning experiences in which he advocates field studies and immersion experiences to stimulate learning, real-life scenarios in the classroom provide activities that enhance student motivation30. Fogerty further elaborates on the mission for today’s teachers:

Teachers must design learning that empowers the learner to make meaning through the careful manipulations of input. Furthermore, these new architects must blend the art and science of teaching into creative cognitive designs31.

The overarching theme related to the application of this strategy is focused on the clothing unit, and the clothes students like to wear. In order to explicitly teach TPS as a collaborative strategy to complete a graphic organizer, the class will be divided into four groups, each with four students. To promote cultural sensitivity, a heritage speaker is assigned to each one of the collaborative groups. My students recognize the value of having a heritage-speaker student in their group, and thus this awareness promotes a richer social environment. Each group will be responsible for completing a graphic organizer that corresponds to a season of the year, i.e., spring, summer, fall, and winter. The intent of this instructional strategy is twofold: to provide interest and to increase motivation to establish a student-centered environment32.

TPS will tailor an appreciation of student’s heritage and cultural norms in connection with the clothes that define them. Rather than disposing of the clothing opinions as part of their identity in order to fit in with the collaborative groups, students gain a stronger

voice regarding their clothing choices. In sharing with the whole class, students are enthused in sharing the ideas/opinions of what they had come up with and establish a motivational factor for my students to listen to each other. Students further refine new information to their existing graphic organizers from each group’s findings. Students take turns discussing examples of their clothing selections as the rest of the class completes the last section on their graphic organizers regarding how climate influences what one should wear year-round. Overall the students are assessed in a formative assessment that requires them to order/analyze/classify clothes they wear throughout the seasons using the graphic organizer produced while working collaboratively.

Task-Based Learning Strategies

Task-Based learning focuses on the completion of specific tasks through which the target language is taught and applied. Language learners use the language that they know to complete a variety of assignments, acquiring new structures, forms, and vocabulary as necessary. In this instructional strategy, three- to four-day segments are dedicated to a specific topic within the unit overarching theme of Clothing: style, culture, color, style, celebrations, etc. Students will learn about a specific topic, step-by-step, using a variety of resources, with each unit culminating in a final graphic organizer such as a story wheel or a reflection log. Activities will be similar to those found in a communicative classroom, but they are always based around a single, specific theme.

For learning to be maximized, communication needs to be useful in the construction of student knowledge33. Fashion will be used as a form of non-verbal communication to represent self-identity, and Clothing will be used to exchange information about social and cultural identity. The framework of this instructional strategy encourages a student-centered learning environment, and I have aligned teaching strategies that foster critical thinking skills with how students will apply their clothing vocabulary to create and (re)create a sense of self, sense of community, and sense of place for this instructional unit. Task-Based-Learning (TBL) as an instructional strategy fosters critical thinking skills while developing writing skills into content classroom instruction in a way that is non-threatening yet meaningful for students34. While distinguishing the importance of the construction of personal and cooperative meaning, TBL is a multi-stage strategy that supports individual construct and cooperative learning. With this strategy, learners actively apply background knowledge, discuss findings, and share responses with a larger group35. Central to the alignment of instructional strategies to the curriculum standards is the notion of learners actively engaging in ‘constructing’ their meaning. When learners play an active role in developing specific knowledge, and they are inclusive of a small group, cooperative learning is maximized. As a cooperative learning strategy, TBL establishes a relationship among learners and promotes positive interdependence among the group36. TBL is a type of strategy that also promotes the importance of a common goal. A significant outcome of TBL is the development of the learner’s autonomy in their learning process within an environment rich in social interactions37. The social co-

dependency among learners within an educational environment is highlighted on essential team-working skills expected of 21st-century critical thinkers.

TBL encompasses a multi-step cooperative organization. Implementing TBL requires students to listen to a question first, think and record their responses on the graphic organizer, discuss findings with their paired partners, and lastly, share responses with the group of four students. According to Ngozi, TBL has effective reactions38. It is a collaborative strategy that is easily implemented while eliciting metacognition for students to examine their thinking and analyze their position.

For this instructional unit, the use of TBL ensures that students have an opportunity to consider their oral responses, written work, thinking, and ideas with another student in anticipation of what they will be expected to share with a larger group. I maximize student response through instructional planning that is focused on a meaningful context. I look for opportunities to empower my students and reflect on their attainment of the essential question objective meeting the expected goal at the end of the lesson. Also, I aim to incorporate authentic material to facilitate understanding of the lesson essential question. While I recognize that my student’s learning styles influence how they approach learning a second language, I use real-world connections to engage, stimulate, and advance student learning. The focus of this instructional strategy is to align new learning with background knowledge as to 1. Encourage students to use the language activities to explore a particular theme, 2. Plan activities that help students reach functional objectives; 3. Engage a variety of activities to accommodate learner differences, and 4. Plan activities that are appropriate to the proficiency level of students39.

Classroom Activities

Day One to Day Three

In Classroom Instruction that Works, Dean and Marzano broadly support the use of non-linguistic representation activities that encourage students to create, store, and manipulate information either mentally or with concrete tools and displays40. In the first activity for this learning unit, students are guided to develop input through the use of graphic organizers as formative assessments. Students will identify their clothing vocabulary in Spanish by classifying which articles of Clothing they typically wear year-round and which clothing items are specific to each season of the year. The use of language and sentence structures that students learned in the previous learning unit will facilitate the use of background knowledge. Applying sentence compositions when developing the worksheets is also identified as an additional measurable factor. I will use instructional questions and answers to assess the understanding of the concepts. I wanted this learning activity to be completely formative as to gauge how well the students can reconcile the old concepts with the new vocabulary before moving forward. This skill is essential in

Novice High performance, a level that the students are expected to reach by the end of the unit. Getting students to use metacognition to think about how they can use previously applied sentence structures to discuss new topics (the clothing unit) will support practice and eventually use this skill reflexively.

The activity starts with activating background knowledge utilizing three questions during the warm-up.

1. What are your favorite clothes, and why?

2. What do clothes mean to you?

3. Is there a relationship between clothes and your culture? Why do you think that?

In sequence, two sentences are posted for students to read, and the activity is followed by modeling how to say what clothing item a student has and how to describe it based on (1) day, (2) week/weekend, (3) month and (4) season. We then proceeded to work on our first graphic organizer based on a Frayer model for vocabulary development. The use of non-linguistic representations is taught explicitly and promotes the use of graphic organizers as a way for students to enhance their learning experience. In order to explicitly teach this segment of the learning activity, the class is divided into four specific groups (the seasons of the year), and each group is assigned a Frayer model (figure 1) to complete using clothing characteristics for each one as shown below:

Figure 1

By working in collaborative groups, students apply the vocabulary in context by working as a cluster for each ‘independent season’ (winter, spring, summer & fall). During the collaborative groups’ activity, the students will take two roles: essential/non-essential characteristics of clothes in their given group. Introducing a kinesthetic component in the learning activity will increase motivation and establish stronger connections to the language.

As each collaborative group shares their findings and explain their discussed examples, the other groups complete the section on their quadrant as presented to them. Each group had 6-8 minutes to discuss and complete their remaining seasons’ quadrants. A whole-class discussion about each season is followed, and the students further refine new information to their existing organizers.

Day Four to Day Seven

Students work individually in filling out their graphic organizers using their context of Clothing. The students are assessed in a formative assessment that requires them to identify/classify/describe the clothes they wear throughout the seasons using the graphic organizer shown below. Students classify information and come up with their percentages of clothing types and how often they wear them by organizing information on each section of the diagram based on the seasons (figure 2).

Figure 2

Day Eight to Day Twelve

The work of Carmen Lomas Garza references the next set of activities and focuses on common cultural practices of the Mexican heritage. The following activities incorporate an authentic opportunity for students to express opinion and intention in analyzing Lomas Garza’s artworks. In this activity, students use symbolism to identify and depict a tradition or practice of their own culture in a painting. Real-world connections to culture promte the use of background knowledge and activate extensions of the language structures. Students will explore their heritage and gain a better understanding of it in order to reflect on and express their experiences. In doing this, students will also have the opportunity to learn about other cultures; students will not only gain further knowledge of other cultures but learn to appreciate each other’s differences.

Students will study how the artist uses perspective and color in her works to inspire how they will use those elements in their writing prompts. They will consider the point of view that would be most beneficial for explaining their clothing descriptions and demonstrate their knowledge by creating a writing sample of their own experiences with color, clothes and their own culture (figure 3).

Figure 3

Appendix

Developing listening, speaking, reading and writing skills, students will be able to:

Communications 1.3 Students present information, concepts, and ideas to an audience of listeners or readers on a variety of topics.

Communities 5.1 Students use the language both within and beyond the school setting.

Cultures 2.1 Students demonstrate an understanding of the relationship between the practices and perspectives of the culture studied.

Connections 3.1 Students reinforce and further their knowledge of other disciplines through the foreign language.

Communications 1.3 Students present information, concepts, and ideas to an audience of listeners or readers on a variety of topics.

Cultures 2.1 Students demonstrate an understanding of the relationship between the practices and perspectives of the culture studied.

Cultures 2.2 Students demonstrate an understanding of the relationship between the products and perspectives of the culture studied.

Comparisons 4.2 Students demonstrate understanding of the concept of culture through the comparisons of the cultures studied and their own.

Cultures 2.1 Students demonstrate an understanding of the relationship between the practices and perspectives of the culture studied.

Cultures 2.2 Students demonstrate an understanding of the relationship between the products and perspectives of the culture studied.

Connections 3.1 Students reinforce and further their knowledge of other disciplines through the foreign language.

Comparisons 4.2 Students demonstrate understanding of the concept of culture through the comparisons of the cultures studied and their own.

Resources

For Teachers

ACTFL Performance Descriptors for Language Learners. Accessed April 20, 2018. Retrieved from http://www.actfl.org/publications/guidelines-and-manuals/actfl-performance-descriptors-language-learners .

Bada, S. O. (2015). Constructivism learning theory: A paradigm for teaching and learning. Journal of Research & Method in Education, 6, 66-70.

Burnham, Rika., and Elliott. Kai-Kee. Teaching in the Art Museum: Interpretation as Experience. Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2011.

Davis, F. Fashion, culture, and identity. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 1992.

Dick, W., Carey, L., & Carey, J. O. (2015). The Systematic Design of Instruction, eight edition. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.

Fogarty, Robin. (1999). Architects of Intellect. Educational Leadership, 11, 76-78.

Garza, Carmen Lomas, Harriet Rohmer, and Rosa Zubizarreta. Family Pictures. San Francisco, Calif.: Children’s Book Press, 1990. 1990. Accessed October 14, 2019.

Goldsmith, W. (2013). Enhancing classroom conversation for all students. Phi Delta Kappan, 94(7), 48-52.

Gronow, Jukka. Taste and Fashion: The Social Function of Fashion and Style (Acta Sociologica. 36, 1993) 89-100.

Hyslop-Margison, E.J. (2004). Technology, Human Agency, and Dewey’s Constructivism: Opening Democratic Spaces in Virtual Classrooms. Australian Journal of Educational Technology, 20(2), 137-148.

Keene, Ellin Oliver. Mosaic of Thought: The Power of Comprehension Strategy Instruction. Portsmouth: Heinemann, 2007.

Marzano, R. J., Pickering, D. J. & Pollock, J. E. (2001) Classroom Instruction that works. Alexandria, VA, ASCP Publications

McTighe, J., & Lyman, Jr., F. T. (1988). Cueing Thinking in the Classroom: The Promise of Theory-Embedded Tools. Educational Leadership, 45(7), 18.

Ngozi Ibe, H. (2009). Metacognitive Strategies on Classroom Participation and Student Achievement in Senior Secondary School Science Classrooms. Science Education International, 20(1/2), 25-31.

Omaggio, Alice. (2001) Teaching Language in Context. Heinle & Heinle; 3rd edition (2001)

Patrik Aspers and Frédéric Godart, “Sociology of Fashion: Order and Change,” Annual Review of Sociology 39, 2013.171-192, https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-soc-071811-145526.

Piaget, J. (1970/1983). Piaget’s Theory. I Kessen, W. (red.): Handbook of Child

Psychology, b. 1. New York: John Willey & Son.

Raba, Ahmed Amin Awad. The Influence of Think-Pair-Share (TPS) on Improving Students’ Oral Communication Skills in EFL Classrooms. Wuhan, CHN: Scientific Research Publishing, 2017.

Reid Lyon, G., and Beverly Weiser. “Teacher Knowledge, Instructional Expertise, and the Development of Reading Proficiency.” Journal of Learning Disabilities 42, no. 5 (2009): 475.

Robertson, K. (2006). Increase student interaction with “Think-Pair-Shares” and “Circle

Chats”. Colorin: Colorado. Accessed June 18, 2019. http://www.colorincolorado.org/article/13346

Srinivas, H. (2010). Global Development Research Center: Collaborative learning. Accessed June 16, 2019. http://www.gdrc.org/kmgmt/c-learn/.

For Students

ACTFL Performance Descriptors for Language Learners. Accessed April 20, 2018. Retrieved from http://www.actfl.org/publications/guidelines-and-manuals/actfl-performance-descriptors-language-learners .

Garza, Carmen Lomas, Harriet Rohmer, and Rosa Zubizarreta. Family Pictures. San Francisco, Calif.: Children’s Book Press, 1990. 1990. Accessed October 14, 2019.

Goldsmith, W. (2013). Enhancing classroom conversation for all students. Phi Delta Kappan, 94(7), 48-52.

Notes