Google Calendar and Me – 7801

Summary

This lesson is designed as a performance task for students in French 1B. In this assignment, the students develop questions about their own study habits, track their habits using Google Calendar, and then export this data into an Excel spreadsheet. By manipulating the spreadsheet data in a variety of ways, the students can analyze their behavior, determine the effectiveness of their own practices, and reflect on changes that they should make to their own work habits. This analysis and reflection is written in a short essay prompt, which the teacher can use to assess the students’ French writing abilities, including proper use of “passé composé,” other verb tenses and grammatical structures, and use of specific vocabulary. The lesson is completed over a longer period of time (2-3 weeks), but the time commitment required of students outside of class is minimal, and the various stages of the lesson completed in class are short and spread out over the course of the assignment.

Lesson Reflection

Teacher:

“Most of the students got a lot out of the project.  They learned how to use Google Calendar, how to export material to a spreadsheet, and how to manipulate data using formulas in a spreadsheet. They did research to answer questions that they formulated themselves.  They became conscious of their study habits and analyzed them for degree of success. In some cases, the students confirmed what they suspected, but most of all, they discovered things that they could change to use their time more effectively.  They formulated plans for adjusting their habits in the future, and in a few cases, stated that they planned to continue using Google Calendar in the future, both for planning purposes and for recording events as they did during the project.

In French, they practiced their writing skills, especially the use of the past tense and transition words to connect concepts, as well as finding ways to express ideas that are more complex than those they generally deal with.

I plan to update the project for next year based on how things worked this year. Next year I will…

• Have students follow a template for reporting their findings: in one paragraph, introduce the project and state the research questions, in another, summarize the time spent on various classes and types of activities, and in a third discuss their analysis of what was more effective and what was less effective, and end with a statement of their plans for future change.
• Take them through a model of each part, at various phases of the project, and have them write those parts in steps as time passes.  That will help the procrastinators as well as providing a better model for completing research projects in general.  It should also enable them to write more effectively.
• Update the “useful expressions” section of the assignment, and practice using them in class, by providing various contexts that require students to transform them into various forms.  This should help them see how they can adapt them to their own needs and rely less on a dictionary.  And avoid using a translator!
• Have them use the formulas in small groups in class so they can help each other.”

ITRT:

“The idea for this lesson came when the teacher and I discussed a writing assignment that he had assigned in the past. In order to evaluate student writing and students’ appropriate use of passé composé, the teacher had the students write about activities that they had completed during the previous weeks. After a short discussion, we realized that many of the essays were lacking in content, not necessarily due to a poor grasp of the French language and past tense rules, but because the students often had a poor memory for past events. We decided to have the students use Google Calendar as a method for recording their actions so that the students could easily reflect on what they had done. Additionally, introducing the students to Google Calendar would give them experience with a tool that may come in handy for their scheduling and time management purposes in the future. A day or two later, both the teacher and I came to the conclusion that if the students were going to be tracking data already, they could easily use this information to solve some real “problems” related to their study habits.

Obviously not all students would enjoy tracking their own study habits analyzing their efficiency for completing school work. The teacher and I developed this particular activity for a group of high-achieving students with large workloads. However, you could take this concept and adapt it in a variety of ways to make it more appealing to other students:

• Have students track the time/methods that they use to practice or prepare for a sport of their choice. The students could develop questions about their personal preparation techniques, compare that data to their teammates, and analyze that information to change their own habits.
• Students could track the number of hours they spend on “screen time” (watching TV/texting/playing a video game). They could reflect on this information and discuss what effect this data has on their life.

One other suggestion for future implementations of this lesson is for students to include graphs and charts of their study behaviors along with their written analysis. Since the students are already using Excel to manipulate and display data in various ways, it would not be incredibly time consuming to add on this additional piece. This addition to the lesson would give students some extra practice with using Excel to visualize data, and help the students practice how to use visuals to justify their points.”