Update 10/4... Getting There

Hey y’all!

Whew…another week in the books! I gotta say this was a pretty good one, and I had a lot of solid stuff going on that I’ll share.

My Rose…

…this week, for sure, has been the success of this activity that I’ve been doing to open up my thematic units that I’m calling “Selon ChatGPT,” or “According to ChatGPT.” Basically, I get ChatGPT (or whatever generative AI platform) to come up with some trivia questions about statistics in whatever theme we’ll be approaching. Then, I set up a “The Price is Right”-style game with students in teams where I present the question, they have to confer and give an estimate, and then whoever is closest without exceeding the actual number wins a point.

For example, I’m doing a Communication & Technology unit and there are questions like “at what age, on average, do Americans receive their first cell phone?” (but in the target language). A few of the immediate benefits that I’m seeing include that they’re getting this really fun exposure to key structures and vocabulary for the unit; also, most of the questions lend really well to follow-up PQA, or personalized questions and answers (“How old were YOU when you received your first cell phone?” Etc); and lastly, an extension activity that I’m doing and I think is really dope is that I’m super clear the whole time that these numbers are just “according to ChatGPT,” and that I have no idea if they’re actually accurate. So once we’ve gone through them all (and done readings and all that based on the information covered), I assigned certain stats to students to then go look up and see if they can affirm or disaffirm those figures with any legitimate studies. In other words, we’re exercising some serious media literacy and critical thinking, specifically about generative AI and I think it’s pretty awesome.

I recorded some segments of this in action that I'll upload soon! So keep in touch..

My thorn…

Is that life has just been so much lately and I’m having a really hard time keeping up with everything. There are always 5 things to juggle and I feel like I can’t afford to let any of them fall. I’ve seen a meme floating around that says something about “forgive me, I’m severely understaffed at the moment,” and I felt that with my whole soul. I’m on it, but it’s a lot.

And my bud…

Is that I’m really excited about some of the great work I get to do in the very near future. I’ve got some workshops with different schools and organizations over the next few weeks, so that’s always a win. I just genuinely love tinkering with this work and I’m so grateful for the folks who invite me to tinker with them. This goes 10 fold for the amazing folks of the AfroFranco Teacher Collective PLC. I’m so so excited to be working with yall.

Anyhow, as always, thanks for following and supporting and showing love! I’m super grateful for the community of folks that I know are in my corner. Thank you all so much and I’ll be in touch!

Rose, Thorn, Bud (French) | CI Lesson Plan

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