Lake,+Matt,+Inclusion+strategies+foreign+language

__**1. PERSONAL INTRODUCTION**__
Hola a todos! As ya'll know my know is Matthew Lake but since there are so many dang Matthews in this MAT program I guess I've just started to go by Mateo. Something interesting about me is that I spent two full years living in western Venezuela as a Missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Those two years were incredible and I wish so badly that I could go back and visit all the great people that I met while there. This was no vacation and I think that is what I loved most about it. After a short time, I began to see myself as Venezuelan, just trying to be like the local people. Being immersed in another culture for that amount of time taught me so much and was a catalyst for many of my current beliefs about people and cultures in general. Another interesting fact about me is that I am the parent of a sassy 17 year old senior at Ashland High School. NO I didn't get started at age 10 :), rather my wife of 5 1/2 years and I adopted her little sister after they lost their mom to a tragic accident 6 years ago. My wife and I have loved this experience of raising her sister with all it's taught us and we have been greatly blessed from it.

All my life, my passion has been sports and I always wanted to be a P.E. Teacher and a Coach. Venezuela taught me that another passion of mine is the Spanish language. I would love to be able to teach both subjects eventually.

There are countless things that bring me joy, the first of which is spending time with my family. I'm kinda a homebody and really love hanging out with my wife and good friends. I consider myself a disciple of Jesus Christ and find immense joy by living by his teachings and trying to be more like him every day.

My greatest fear of being a teacher is being forced into teaching students in one specific way and losing my excitement for working with kids. I really love connecting with students and if I'm not able to be myself, I can see that being a difficult task.

One of the hardest things I've had to do was learn Spanish. To put it in perspectice, I was a completely uninspired Spanish student in high school and managed to pass my classes without really learning anything. I barely knew how to hello when I arrived in Venezuela yet I had to talk with people everyday in the streets as a missionary. I felt like a hermit crab just wanting to escape into my shell but I was in Venezuela. I couldn't just go home and speak English with my family and friends. If I wanted to survive the next two years, I was going to have to work at it. It took a substantial amount of time before I felt comfortable conversing on my own with people in Spanish but it was well worth the effort. The difficulties I faced will help me connect with students who also have various learning difficulties and feel inadequate in school.

In this course I want to become more familiar with the various issues that many students face that can make learning more difficult.

__**2. INCLUSION STRATEGIES IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE**__
I decided to research the topic of //Inclusion Strategies in Foreign Language// because of how important it really is to differentiate instruction styles in a foreign language classroom. My personal experiences working and teaching in a foreign language class has shown me that the effort required to learn a new language has the strong tendency to put many students on an even playing field, regardless of whether or not the student is learning disabled or not. I chose this topic because I aspire to be a great Spanish teacher and in order to do that, I will need to be aware of the many different ways that students learn a foreign language. I believe learning Spanish provides students with a legitimate skill that will help them in their immediate and future life endeavors, and I want to be able to provide my students with the best instruction possible in order to acquire this important skill.

__**3. TOP 5 THINGS I LEARNED IN MY RESEARCH **__
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 * 1) I think one of the most important things that I learned while researching was that the vast majority of the inclusion strategies that I could implement in a Spanish class are strategies that would not only help learning disabled students. These strategies will help all students that I teach because the strategies will encourage me to use differentiation in my teaching that will appeal to various learning styles.
 * 2) Providing inclusive instructional strategies in foreign language classrooms is part of a philosophy that recognizes the uniqueness of every individual student. Providing differentiated instruction isn't just a set of strategies and activities that challenges students in different ways, but rather a belief system. This belief system states that every students has untapped potential when they come to the class.
 * 3) Modern research shows a strong correlation between native language learning skills and the ability to learn a foreign language. Native language skills are shown to serve as the foundation for foreign language learning.
 * 4) Most at-risk (LD) foreign language learners who are taught Spanish through the //Multisensory Structured Language Approach (MSL)// showed improvement in their foreign language performance, experienced success in the foreign language classroom, and reached proficiency levels comparable to non LD students after two years of language study.
 * 5) The five most common language issues that cause problems for at-risk foreign language students are poor pronunciation, poor vocabulary knowledge, slow reading with incorrect word decoding, poor understanding of grammar, and poor comprehension of material, and these primary symptoms often lead to a whole set of secondary symptoms that affect foreign language learning.

__**4. MY TOP RESOURCE**__
By far the most helpful resource that I would recommend if you could only see one of my resources would be the article titled "Best Practices in Differentiating Instruction: Identifying and Teaching Learners with Special Needs" because of how directly it deals with the question of what a teacher can do to bring the best out of the students with special needs. The article was written by Elke Schneider,Ph.D. of Winthrop University; Leonore Ganschow, Ed.D. Professor Emerita of Miami University, Ohio; Richard Sparks, Ed.D. of College of Mount St. Joseph; and Karen Miller, M.Ed. of Friends School of Baltimore. This resource touches on everything from specific language learning problems of students with special needs to specific teaching strategies to address the issues that students are facing today. The article also clearly identifies primary characteristics exhibited by students struggling to learn a foreign language as well as the interconnected secondary symptoms that come up as complementary issues. Most importantly, as opposed to simply providing research about the topic, the article provides actual examples of how the research might look in daily classroom application.

__**5. 8 ADDITIONAL RESOURCES**__
1) Poor pronunciation is one of the primary symptoms of something that is likely to cause problems for at-risk or LD foreign language students. This video provides an extremely thorough lesson on some basic pronunciation rules in Spanish that would help any student establish a firm pronunciation foundation. (rating-5/5) [] media type="youtube" key="DSkG7L5fyyI" height="213" width="319"

2) This video is amazingly inspiring and shows from a firsthand perspective how important it is to engage all the different learners in a class and to see the potential in every student. This video doesn't relate directly to foreign language instruction but so many of the ideas expressed by Temple Grandin are very helpful and applicable to teachers of any content area. (rating-5/5) [] media type="custom" key="12789376" width="90" height="90"

3) Poor vocabulary knowledge is a sign of language weakness and a primary symptom that often shows up with LD foreign language students. Among many other possible exercises that could be used to practice and retain new vocabulary, this video provides a great resource to learn new vocabulary. Their are so many videos on the internet that teach vocabulary lessons and I would encourage students to watch as many as they'd like. A few things that make this particular video a good resource is the use of song, the use of pictures, and no English. Through song and pictures the video engages different styles of learners and by not using English, students have to continue to learn by contextualizing. (rating-4/5 for being a little too fast) [] media type="youtube" key="1iDlAd1L9FM" height="251" width="336"

4) Difficulty reading and decoding words on a page are common mistakes in the foreign language classroom. A common portion of this problem is simply not understanding how phonetic the Spanish language really is. This video resource helps beginning Spanish language learners to understand how to break down individual Spanish words and make any word less intimidating when reading. (rating-4/5, I would like to have seen less familiar and more complicated words broken down to simple syllables) [] media type="youtube" key="DvU4CA2mziI" height="251" width="336"

5) Another primary symptom of language weakness that can create difficulties for at-risk language students is the understanding of grammar rules. What is great about this video resource is that it provides thorough grammar explanations at a pace that is difficult to do is a Spanish class because of time restrictions and the necessity of helping other students. I also think this is a great resource because there are some many supplemantary videos that are connected to it that teach other grammar rules as well. (rating-5/5) [] media type="youtube" key="1s8sVnNNIbs" height="250" width="336"

6) Analyzing your personal teaching methods and reflecting on what can be done better in order to intellectually reach each student is crucial to being an effective teacher. This article provides great recommendations for differentiation methods that can be utilized to improve instruction in a language classroom. It covers the philosophy behind the importance of changing things up in a class and provides examples of lessons and activities that can be implemented in any language class. (rating-5/5 because)

7) This video is an excellent resource for demonstrating how difficult the language acquisition process can be for students learning a foreign language. A great quote from this video that demonstrates what foreign language teachers need to remember is “It is only much later after listening, and lessons, and communicative practice that she finally masters the grammar rule.” This is a good video for a teacher with any students whose disabilities are causing difficulties in the language learning process. (rating-5/5 for the clear explanation of the language acquisition process) [] media type="youtube" key="3_LOBBLmgYc" height="219" width="294"

8) This video provides a great example of how a good language lesson involves variation and differentiation. It clearly explains that some parts of language acquisition are the same for all learners, but the delivery needs variation so that language learners can absorb the new language. The video shows an example of a lesson that applies to many different learning styles. In the lesson, repetition is used, pictures are used, adequate pacing is used and the lesson is effective. [] media type="youtube" key="NiTsduRreug" height="251" width="336"

__**6. COMMUNITY BASED LEARNING PROJECT**__
