Genius Hour Wrap-Up!

Over the last five weeks, I have been on a quest to improve my Polish through a project I am doing called "Genius Hour".

At the start of term, Genius Hour was defined as a student-centred, self-initiated research project.  It allows students to entirely run the show in their own learning.  They are allowed to choose what they want to learn, how they are going to learn it, and when.  The reason it is called "Genius Hour" is because the learning/research is done during one hour a week (or day depending on the teacher). On my first week of class, when Genius Hour was introduced to me, I was both inspired, and a bit afraid. I had never been given so much freedom to do a project before.  I am the type of person who thrives on guidelines and rubrics when it comes to projects.  I need to know exactly what is expected of me and how I am expected to present it.  So, when our Professor essentially told us: "go pick something you want to learn, and spend an hour a week learning it", I was a bit dumbfounded.  I didn't know where to start, where to go, how to get there, nothing!

After a few hours of contemplation, I decided to centre my own Genius Hour project around learning Polish.  I was born into a half-Polish family.  My father's side of the family is Polish, while my mother's side is Canadian.  We speak almost no Polish at home out of respect for my mom, but I do speak with my Babcia (grandmother) almost daily in broken Polish.  I've always wanted my Polish to be better than it was, so I figured if I am to learn something for an hour a week, Polish is the one thing I'm interested in most!

While I cannot say that my Polish has improved dramatically in five weeks, I am confident in saying that it has improved!  I am now slowly learning more and more about the structure of the Polish language through the app Duolingo (an app which I highly recommend by the way). I've learned small grammatical differences between the spelling of words, and most importantly, have learned that Polish is a language in which nouns are declined - just like Latin!

Although five weeks (read: five hours) is too short a time to drastically improve anyone's Polish, these last five weeks has definitely sparked my desire to learn! I found myself wanting to go on the Duolingo app and take notes even after I had completed my Genius Hour research for the week.  I also found myself actually getting almost a butterfly feeling in my stomach when I learned something new or cool that I hadn't known before.  This type of learning project was so fun to do.

As a future teacher, I now fully see the appeal of Genius Hour after having completed my own project.  I was so motivated to learn, and found the learning fun and exciting since it was a topic that I cared about, was passionate about, and was eager to learn. Also, once I had finally accepted that this entire project was really in my hands, and I could truly do whatever I wanted with it, I really started to enjoy myself.  It took a lot of pressure off of me to hit certain standards/criteria.  I began to let go of "Is this enough?" "Is this what she wants?", and began to just go forward how I wanted.  I loved having all of that freedom in the end.  This was the least stressful project I have ever done!

 I want my future students to feel this way about their own learning.  I can see now how important it is to have students engaged and excited about what they're learning about in order to not only make their time in school more enjoyable, but to help them nourish their own minds in a fun and engaging learning process. Genius Hour is definitely a concept I will be using in my own classroom in the future!

Language Life Hack: Read the Discussion Page! - GENIUS HOUR #4

This week during my Genus Hour I discovered a few incredible things!

While I was on Duolingo on my computer practicing the "defining" section this week, I came across a question that I got incorrect.  The question looked like this: "Pies to (A dog is) ___________", and I had the option of choosing either "zwierzę (an animal)" or "zwierzęciem (an animal)".  I wasn't sure which one to choose, because in my mind, they both mean "an animal".  So, I picked "zwierzęciem" randomly and then was told it was incorrect.  That was when I noticed there was an option called "Discussion" underneath the correction of my mistake.

How have I not noticed this before?

Naturally, I clicked on "Discussion", and it changed my language-learning world!  The discussion page is a magical wonderland of questions and answers from those learning and those who are close to mastering the Polish language!  In this discussion section, someone had already asked why the answer was "zwierzę" and not "zwierzęciem", and the response they received was incredibly detailed! Essentially, when using the term "to (is)" in the sentence "pies to ________", the noun has to be declined in the nominative case, which is "zwierzę". Whereas, if the sentence were "pies jest _________", then the answer would have been "zwierzęciem", because after the term "jest (is)" the noun has to be declined in the instrumental case.  Both sentences mean the exact same thing and can be used interchangeably, which explains my frustration with trying to learn Polish by just listening to it!  I knew both words meant "an animal"!

So, today I learned that the grammatically correct ways of saying "a dog is an animal" are: "pies to zwierzę" or "pies jest zwierzęciem".

Once I had read this explanation, I was immediately transported back into a stuffy little classroom at U of T when I was taking first year Latin!  I could picture my professor trying to explain to us how in Latin, nouns are "declined" depending on their context in the sentence.  Meaning, the spelling of a noun will change depending on how/in which context the noun is being used in the sentence.  I immediately remembered that the main declensions (contexts) in Latin are: Nominative, Genitive, Dative, Accusative, Ablative, and Vocative, because of a nifty little mnemonic device I created years ago to remember them all (No Good Doctor (is) Actually Able (to) Vote).

What does Latin have to do with Polish you ask? Well, both are languages that require the nouns to be declined!  So, Polish and Latin are actually very similar, even though they sound nothing alike!

This has really changed the way I am going to continue tackling the noble art of learning Polish going forward.  I have a very basic background in Latin after taking that LAT100 course, and I know that learning the meaning/context behind each declension really helped me to learn.  From now on I am going to try and find all of the noun declensions in Polish (since not all are the same) and learn their contexts, and then when I learn a new noun, I will research how to decline it in each case, just like I did in Latin!

This was a big day for me, and I hope I was able to explain it in a way that is clear and simple for those with no background in either Polish or Latin (which I am guessing is quite a few of you).

This will be my last Genius Hour discussion post before I wrap up, but I am so thrilled with my progress already and am very excited about what I have learned so far!  I will absolutely be continuing to learn Polish in my spare time, and will use every opportunity I have to speak Polish with my friends and family so that I can continue to improve!

Thank you all so much for joining me on this educational adventure, and I hope to be posting again very soon!

I Think I'm in Love with Duolingo?? NOT CLICKBAIT - GENIUS HOUR #3

This week's Genius Hour was spread out throughout the week. I worked roughly around 15-20 minutes a day on Duolingo and let me tell you, that app is revolutionary.  At first I wasn't sure about it, if you all couldn't tell from my previous post.  In reality I just needed the levels to get harder, since it had me starting at ground zero.

The more I worked, the harder the levels got.  I was originally taking messy notes that weren't really organized when I found the levels super easy, but now I am taking detailed notes, and underlining corresponding subjects, verbs, and predicates, so I can begin to find patters in the language that I didn't bother to look for before.

© Ella Wiernikowski, 2018

© Ella Wiernikowski, 2018

This has been immensely helpful for me, and I am actually starting to believe that this app really can help me improve my Polish over a longer period of time, if I continue to take the time to take these detailed notes and make sense of the language as I go.

So far, Duolingo has helped me understand the difference between the spellings: kobieta/kobietą (woman), mężczyzna/mężczyzną (man), and dziewczynka/dziewczynką (girl).  Before Duolingo, I was interchanging these words (and similar words with the same pattern) like a madwoman because I didn't really understand the difference, and to me they both sounded right.  I now understand that when these words are spelt with an "a" at the end, it means literally "a woman/man/girl", in the plainest and most basic form. Almost as if just reciting a noun on it's own, with no other grammatical context.  Now, if one were to say "I am a woman/man/girl", that is when the context changes, and the noun must be spelt with an "ą".  This would be the same for all the singular conjugations: "I am", "you are", "he/she is".  I have yet to learn if this spelling changes in regards to plural conjugations like: "we are", "you(pl) are", "they are".  However, I'm sure that practice is coming, and I am actually looking forward to learning it!

I really do love Duolingo.  I think it is wonderfully easy to use, and I love that I can use it across multiple devices.  When I take the time to practice on my computer, that is when I take these detailed notes. However, sometimes it's so easy to whip out my phone when I'm on the bus or in the car and just practice a couple levels while I'm on the go!  I did this on Thursday while my Dad and I drove to Niagara Falls for an event.  I practiced in the car, and when I didn't understand why my answer was wrong, I just asked my Dad and he would do his best to explain the difference.

I have been speaking Polish more and more around my Dad (sorry Mom), and slowly, small grammatical differences are starting to make more sense. It's only week three of practicing Polish, and I can say my confidence is definitely increasing!

I haven't felt this proud of myself in a long time, and I think it's fantastic that this pride has come entirely from setting my own learning goal, and working towards it on my own time, and in my own way. With each passing week I am experiencing the beauty of Genius Hour, and I know this will be something I will be implementing into my classroom.

For my final week of Genius Hour, I think I want to do more of the same!  I want to keep practicing a little every day on Duolingo, and have a few sit-down sessions where I take notes on what I am learning from the app.  I have found this to be the most helpful these past few weeks, even more so than watching Polish YouTube videos.  Why try to fix what isn't broken?

I'll check in one more time next week to tell you my final thoughts and findings on how I've progressed through all my Genius Hour endeavours! Thanks so much for reading along so far, and I'll talk to you all in my next post!

Ona je jabłka! - GENIUS HOUR #2

This week during my genius hour I decided I would go down the route of Duolingo!

It was a painfully humbling experience taking the placement test at the beginning, as I knew what all the phrases and sayings meant, and I was able to translate well enough (when there was a word bank at the bottom), but failed miserably when I had to write what I heard.

Now, I definitely understood what I heard.  Copying it however, was another story.  In Polish, there are apparently different sounds for the letter "ż" and "rz"as well as "ś" and "sz", but to me, they sound exactly the same.  So, when typing what I heard, sometimes I'd use "ż" when I was supposed to use "rz", or "sz" when I was supposed to use "ś".  This caused me to somehow fail the entire placement test, and I was to start the app at ground zero.  Now, I am aware that this is the exact opposite conclusion of what I had posted last week, but alas, I trust that Duolingo does not lie.

So, I spent 15 minutes a day this week practicing my Polish, and I only made a few mistakes!  I knew to tap each verb and each pronoun as they popped up, and wrote down the way it was spelt and the context in which it was used, so that I can look over it later on when I'm reviewing all the different conjugations.  That is, after all, my biggest struggle when trying to learn Polish.

I have now mastered that "oni" is the masculine plural of "they" and "one" is the feminine plural of "they".  This was an issue I struggled with for years! I knew one was masculine and one was feminine but I was never able to figure out which one was which.  I have also formed and translated every possible way of saying "he/she/they/ is/are eating an apple".  I'm at a point now where if I hear "ona je jabłka" (she is eating an apple) one more time I might throw my phone!


This week I was also able to practice a lot of my Polish while working at the farmers market.  I work with my best friend Nina and her family, the owners of "Wanda's Farm".  They are a full-blown Polish family, and so naturally attract a lot of Polish customers.  I did my best this week to speak only in Polish to our Polish customers.  A lot of the time I start by saying "dziendobry" (good morning) to our customers, and then swiftly move on to English when they have questions about our produce.  This week I was wearing my brave pants, and vowed to answer in Polish, even if I made mistakes.

Let me tell you, it went pretty well!  No one looked at me like I was an alien, or like I wasn't making any sense.  They continued to respond in Polish, and one woman even told me I had a very nice accent!

From the market, I have learned the words: "miękie" (soft), "dojrzały" (ripe), "mięsisty" (meaty),  "morela" (apricot), and "węgierski" (translates to Hungarian, but used to describe Italian plums).

It's working my friends. I am slowly building my way up the ranks!

I plan to continue using my Duolingo app for 15 minutes a day, and taking notes each time!  I also plan to continue watching videos on Youtube from Polish Youtubers, just to get used to the speed of their speaking, and to expand my vocabulary a lot more.  Lastly I plan to keep asking what words mean when I don't understand them.  I wouldn't have learned any of the words above had I not just asked later on what they meant!

I'm so excited my friends.  I love expanding my Polish. I feel so much more Polish than I ever have!

Note to Self: We Aren't Starting From Ground Zero! - GENIUS HOUR #1

So this week's Genius Hour was all about exploring how this is going to work.  How am I going to go about improving my Polish?  I figured I'd start with the basics, and searched for a video on YouTube. I searched "Learn Polish", as I thought being broad would be better.  I came across a video made by a channel called Learn Polish with PolishPod101.com.  The video was titled "Learn Polish in 30 Minutes, All the Basics You Need". You can watch the video for yourself here!

Very soon into watching this video, I realized I am much more advanced than I give myself credit for.  Granted, there were a few things I did learn, like saying "przyjemność po mojej stronie" (it's my pleasure) as a formal way of saying "you're welcome".  That was new to me!

I decided while I watched this video, that I was going to make a list of things I already know! The list is as follows:

© Ella Wiernikowski, 2018

While I was watching the video, Joanna would speak in English before speaking in Polish.  When she was explaining how to formally say "it is nice to meet you" to a woman, I preemptively tried to say it out loud in Polish before she did, to see if I would get it right.  To my surprise, I did not get it entirely right. My word for "Ma'am", "Pani", was different than Joanna's word, which was "Panią".  I know that "Panią" is a grammatical variation of "Pani", but what I don't understand is why it was used.  

So, I've come to the conclusion that when speaking Polish, a lot of the time I know which words to use, I just don't know how to use them correctly.  After having done a specialist in Linguistics during my undergrad, I've grown to have a real appreciation for grammar.  I think this is why I'm so motivated to improve my Polish, because it's the only one out of the three languages I can speak where I have next to no understanding of the grammatical structure.

So where do I go from here? What do I do with this new epiphany? Moving forward, I know now that my focus has changed from just "learning Polish" to "learning Polish grammar".  I am now on the hunt for a helpful website or program that will walk me through Polish grammar, not just Polish basics.  I can also speak to my father and grandmother, who I have asked to speak to me exclusively in Polish for the next six weeks, and ask them questions throughout the week as to why they used x instead of y in a sentence.  I'm hoping that the more I understand a word, the more likely I will be to use it correctly in a sentence next time!

I also plan to periodically read (simple) books and maybe watch a couple YouTube videos done by Polish YouTubers so I can expand my vocabulary and work on my fluency before my next Genius Hour.

I'll be sure to keep you all updated on my progress, so stay tuned next week for more!

What is Copyright?

As teachers, we have a very unique position when it comes to copyright. Everything that is created and put on the internet is copyrighted by law, and you have to have permission to use it in your day-to-day life.  So, what does that mean for teachers, since we essentially use copyrighted products every day of our teaching lives (unless you're a superhero and create brand new and innovative materials, that don't already exist, for every single lesson you do).

For the rest of the 99.9% of us, we use and adapt other peoples work all the time in our lessons, so we have the responsibility every day to properly cite and credit other peoples work by order of the Copyright Act.  Not only do we have the responsibility to cite and credit by law, but we have the responsibility to demonstrate proper accreditation to our students to give them a good base/foundation of citation/credit when they go on to secondary and post-secondary!

Dany13. (2011, April 21). Pict0400/Paris City/Notre Dame de Paris/Parvis. [Online Photo]. Retrieved from https://goo.gl/images/2fAm5P

Jarvis, Dennis. (2016, September 22). Poland - Old Town Market. [Online Photo]. Retrieved from  https://flic.kr/p/NiPApS.

Welcome!

Hi everyone, welcome to my blog!

For all my new readers, my name is Ella Wiernikowski, and I am currently a teacher candidate doing a Bachelor of Education at Brock University. Before this, I did my undergraduate at the University of Toronto.  I graduated with an Honours Bachelor of Arts having done a Specialist in French Linguistics.  I love French, and really just languages in general.  I speak three languages at the moment, English, French, and Polish (not fluently).  I've also started the exciting journey into learning ASL, but that's going to be a long work in progress.

If you couldn't tell, my hope is to be a Primary/Junior teacher in a French Immersion school.  I knew I wanted to teach French when I was about 13 years old, and have modelled my life around that goal ever since.  When I was in the 12th grade, I applied to be an Au Pair for the Wells family in Paris, and thankfully got the job! In very quick succession, I graduated high school, turned 18, and by the end of August I packed up and re-settled in Paris for the year! It was incredible. Feel free to contact me if you have any questions about my Parisian journey! Since getting back I did my undergraduate degree in French, and have worked at summer camps and with Polish Scouting to get more work with children under my belt.

I do enjoy things other than languages my friends, so don't think I have a one-track mind! In my free time I love reading, doing yoga, watercolour painting, and bullet-journaling (if you don't know what that is, I highly recommend looking it up).

This blog is going to be centered around my life as a teacher, and my Genius Hour project. What is a Genius Hour project you might ask? Well, in my spare moments for the next six weeks, I am doing a personal project to help improve my fluency in Polish.  I am half Polish (in case my last name didn't give it away), but my other half is Irish/Canadian.  We speak next to no Polish at home, and aside from talking with my Babcia (grandmother), I don't get in a lot of practice. I'm hoping that by the end of my project, I feel more confident speaking, can read Polish with a bit more fluency, and am able to have a small conversation with a family member/loved one without using any English fillers!  A lot of these goals (aside from fluency while reading) will be hard to measure in scientific terms per-say, since I don't really have a way to measure my prior knowledge. I will be measuring my success mostly by how I feel while speaking, and if I can achieve a lesser amount of English fillers while speaking (none at all would be preferable).

I hope you decide to come on this journey with me, and maybe, learn something new!