Immersive Cultural Learning Experience

In addition to making good use of genuine materials as teaching resources to help students learn in classrooms, ETA also created a learning environment that made for an immersive cultural experience for students. For instance, the ETAs even grabbed a broom to demonstrate “witch” to familiarize students with the words associated with Halloween-related spooky characters. To give the classrooms a bit more suspense, the ETAs did not appear in the classroom as usual; the LETs had the students guess where the ETAs were. Suddenly, the ETAs in Excerpt 38 and Table 10 popped up in costume and wore a mask, pretending to be Halloween characters, and the students appeared very excited to see the ETAs appear with these different looks.

Furthermore, ETAs’ facial expressions, body languages, and use of realia were all conducive to the creation of a Halloween atmosphere. ETAs taught students how to sing the “trick or treat” song, helped students to practice saying “trick or treat, smell my feet, give me something good to eat”, helped students to dress up to be ghosts or monsters, went “trick-or-treating” around different classrooms with students, painted students’ faces, and instructed students how to draw paper Jack o’ Lanterns. Therefore, students seemed to learn more about the origins and history of Halloween and have a good time by participating in these classroom activities.

Excerpt 38

Last week, I taught the students Halloween. That was a pretty fun lesson, because the 1^st, 2^nd, and 3^nd graders get really excited to learn or pretend to be ghosts, monsters, etc. I also taught a bit of the history behind Halloween… so I helped teach the trick or treat song, helped students dress up, and went trick or treating around different classrooms with them. It was a nice way to bring American culture… (ETA’s biweekly reflection feedback report, November 7, 2013)

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Table 10

Lesson Observation Feedback Report for Halloween Lessons Lesson Objectives:

1. Indentify three main Halloween spooky creatures (ghost, witch, pumpkin) 2. Chant Trick or Treat, Smell my Feet, Give me something good to eat 3. Understand Halloween Festivities

Activities Observed:

10:43 Students listened to the song…

10:48 After the review and pre-view… she made a very good use of facial expressions, body languages and realia to illustrate the vocabulary words.

ETA spontaneously grabbed a broom from the back of the classroom to illustrate “witch”.

10:55 LET secured students’ attention and asked them to take out their markers for the drawing activity coming up. ETA instructed students to draw nose…

eyes… and mouth on their paper Jack o’ Lantern.

11:00 LET foretold the students… Some students began to wonder where the ETA was. The LET had successfully kept students in suspension. All of a sudden, the ETA popped up at the door wearing scary mask and said, “trick or treat, smell my feet, Give me something good to eat……”. Students were too excited…

(Lesson observation feedback report, October 18, 2013)

In Table 11, according to the teaching advisor, the ETAs designed specific learning activities by incorporating “five stations” to provide students with

opportunities to enrich and enhance what they had learned about Halloween as well.

In terms of face painting activity, students were to respond to the ETA’s question,

“What do you want to be?” in order to have their faces painted. In the activity of vocabulary ring toss, students attempted to throw a ring to hit the corresponding pictures while the ETA was saying the word such as skeleton, mummy, spider, witch, ghost, or vampire. The rules of the Pumpkin pop activity were thus: while the ETA

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was saying a word, one student was to spell out the word as soon as possible in order not to give the other students chances to pop a pumpkin balloon with this specific word with a needle. The students were also to read a word in a vocabulary maze activity. These innovative activities were all employed to help students review Halloween-related vocabulary words.

Table 11

Lesson Observation Feedback Report for Lessons of Halloween Stations Lesson Objectives:

Review through Halloween learning stations.

Activities Observed:

The teachers incorporated one theme (Halloween) across five learning stations… Each group went to a station and then rotated…

Face painting: Each student choose a character from a list of four Halloween characters in response to ETA’s question, “What do you want to be?” ETA painted the picture on the student’s face…

Vocabulary ring toss: ETA said a word (skeleton, spider, mummy, vampire, witch or ghost) and the student threw a ring from a distance over a corresponding post.

Complete the poster

Pumpkin pop: The Special ed [sic] teacher said a word and the student spelt the word before the student got the chance to pop a pumpkin balloon with a spider needle.

Vocabulary maze: The student rolled a dice, moved a number of steps along the board, read the corresponding word…

(Lesson observation feedback report, October 28, 2014)

Besides Halloween lessons, in Excerpts 39 and 40, ETAs made cultural learning a more genuine immersive experience for students. Making a wish to the Christmas tree, teaching Christmas carols, writing letters to Santa, recording a short video to

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express thanks, and helping students to notice the similarities and differences when expressing gratitude in different cultures were all employed to engage students to learn English and experience how most Americans celebrate Christmas and

Thanksgiving. Again, instead of reading in the textbook about the ways to celebrate various holidays, students were actually able to experience what the textbooks are describing. For instance, the ETAs specifically prepared the classroom so that the students gained a more realistic experience of Christmas or Thanksgiving celebration.

This type of experiential learning has been acknowledged to benefit students greatly (Kolb, 2015). Also, participating in such culturally related language activities allowed students to become naturally socialized into the target culture. This practice of

learning through social interaction mirrored what second language socialization theorists advocate that language is best learned due to socializing effect (Dufon, 2008).

Excerpt 39

結合本校感恩周進行感恩節活動，讓學生了解不同文化感恩表達方式異 同，設計向聖誕樹許願、單字教學、聖誕歌曲教學等活動，讓學生在趣味、

潑的情境中學習英文。

(On Thanksgiving, schools also had their own Thanksgiving week regarding expressing how thankful they were to someone, in this way, students could experience how different cultures might use different ways to express gratitude.

On Christmas, ETA taught Christmas-related vocabulary and songs; ETA also designed an activity where students could make a wish and decorate a

Christmas tree together. Therefore, students could learn English in a more interesting way.) (LET’s feedback report, 2015)

Excerpt 40

A huge focus on my teaching thus far has been on American holidays and

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culture. I spent a lot of time teaching my students about Halloween,

Thanksgiving, and now Christmas… on Thanksgiving, I had them record a video of what they are thankful for, and for Christmas, I had them write letters to Santa.(ETA’s feedback report, 2014)