Teaching Spanish with CI, #authres, #edtech, and love
Who’s excited for the world cup? Me!!!! I´ve been working on a unit for my 6th and 7th grade connections classes with a mix of learning targets for language use in Spanish and cultural understandings in English. I hope you can find something useful!
Lesson plans: lesson plans.docx
Slides: Click here
Song Worksheets:
I´ve been reading Breaking the Sound Barrier: Teaching Language Learners How to Listen by Gianfranco Conti and Steve Smith as a part of my professional learning goal for this year. I’ve been getting a lot of great ideas for how to teach listening, and how to teach grammar and vocabulary through listening. Today, I wanted to share an activity I created based off their activity “Find the object”, described on page 112 of Breaking the Sound Barrier.
find the object listening activity sound barrier p 112.docx
I created this activity for house vocab, but it could work for almost any topic – school schedule, food, and family come immediately to mind. It consists of a battleship-type grid with sentence starters on the vertical axis, and the ends of those sentences on the horizontal axis. As you read different sentences, students will shade in a the corresponding box in the grid. The trick is to plan out the sentences ahead of time, so that the shaded in boxes form a an object. The game ends when the first student correctly guesses the hidden object.
What unit would you use this for? I’d love to see your grids!
I am super excited to be headed to #SCOLT18 tomorrow! Here are the slides for my session, #AuthRes for the Novice Language Learner. I’m sharing tons of links to my favorite sources for finding beginner-appropriate authentic resources, as well as activities to go along with them. I’m also sharing three “ready to go” authres activities that I’ve used with my own students on leisure activities, school, and clothing. If you’ll be at SCOLT, I will be presenting Saturday at 9:00 – hope to see you there!
Basic “to-do” list on board, asterisks for what requires something to be written down, and a note on where to find instructions for each task.
I love how organized I am the first week of school…even had a box with extra handouts for the week on the shelf below.
I am jumping on board with Bethanie Drew and Allison Wienhold for Manía Musical de Marzo – March Music Madness! Gracias Bethanie for the fantastic idea and bracket!
Here’s my bracket bulletin board:
I want to do a different activity each round – maybe a cloze, a lyrics ordering activity, a reading about the artists, learning the coro, matching the meaning, describing the song, giving your opinion on why you like it, etc. We started today with La lista and Tengo tu love. Both songs are new to my students, and they loved them! Alas, there can only be one winner, and Tengo tu love took the victory:
Voting today was so much fun – I’m excited to see how it goes over the next few weeks!
Bulletin board files, if you want to copy: https://www.dropbox.com/s/pgmwvfwwuj6e0x4/mania%20musical%20de%20marzo.docx?dl=0
Assessment is a constantly evolving process for me. It is important to me to give assessments that give me meaningful information about what my students can understand and communicate in Spanish. My framework for a valid assessment has changed each year, and I’m still researching, experimenting, looking at other teachers’ examples, and generally trying to figure things out.
So here’s my question: What kind of assessment makes a valid quiz grade?
Admin mandates that tests are weighted 60% and quizzes are weighted 20% (the other 20% is homework and daily work), and also that each department give common assessments. I know my students are pretty solid on the vocabulary, and we’re working up to some more in-depth writing and speaking assignments, but I’m not sure what to do for a quiz grade. I want it to be comprehension-based, but more than translating individual words. I’ve looked at the Realidades resources….I don’t love them. The chapter test is ok, but I don’t care for the quiz materials at all – too much focus on conjugating, questions are confusing, and it doesn’t clearly measure what students understand. I’m thinking perhaps a reading passage with some comprehension questions in English (although I do find it difficult to write good comprehension questions), or maybe filling out a graphic organizer – like a paragraph about a school schedule, and they fill out a chart?
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So writing is reflecting, and after I wrote the above post, I went over to Musicuentos.com and read through the Assessment tag, and found this description of how Sara-Elizabeth did vocab quizzes in Spanish 1 and 2:
1) Ask random questions to elicit vocab, and the answer just has to make sense or be true. (¿De qué color son los ‘arches’ de McDonalds?)
So I could do something like, ¿Qué clase tienes primera? ¿Qué necesitas para la clase de matemáticas? ¿Quién enseña tu clase de literatura? ¿Cuál es tu clase favorita? ¿Por qué? Short and sweet, easy to grade (a must to sell it to my department!), and leaves vocabulary open-ended for students. I hesitate, however, because a wrong answer could mean either that they didn’t remember how to say the answer in Spanish, or that they didn’t understand the question. So maybe give the option, (or require?) that they also write what the question means in English?
What do quizzes look like in your classes?
Last March, I went to an excellent presentation at FLAG by Lee Burson and Erin Smith called “Halls, Walls, and Using it All.” The presentation was all about creative ways to utilize your available space, getting students up and moving around. So here’s an activity I learned from them called four corners: basically, you just need four categories, and four separate physical areas – corners, walls, whatever. Label the areas, call out a word or phrase, and students decide which category it fits in, and move to that area. So, for example, my categories today were Soy, No Soy, Tengo, and No Tengo (I am, I’m not, I have, I don’t have).
I call out a word or phrase in Spanish (blonde hair, artistic, lazy, brown eyes) and then direct my students to physically move to the appropriate area. After they sort themselves out, I have each group repeat the phrase – I have blonde hair/I don’t have blonde hair, I’m artistic/I’m not artistic.
Objectives:
Adapt it:
Do you use stamp sheets? I began using a form of stamp sheets three years ago, and this is my second year using stamp sheets consistently. While there are many reasons I LOVE my stamp sheets, they also drive me a little crazy. In this post, I want to share a little bit about what I love and don’t love about using stamp sheets.
Love
I love how stamp sheets clearly communicate learning goals and organize my units. Just as Kara said in the post linked above, stamp sheets make me plan out my goals for each unit ahead of time. The I can statements guide my lesson plans, and communicate very clearly to students and parents my learning expectations. If a student is out and I don’t have a worksheet they can just do at home (which is often), I can tell them which goal we practiced and point them to vocabulary resources online to work on that goal independently. I also like to show stamp sheets to parents to show them what their child is learning how to do in Spanish class, and maybe even challenge a parent to complete a few of our goals – often, they’re impressed at how much they remember from their high school or college Spanish courses!
I love how stamp sheets give me an opportunity to listen to each student speak, and give individual feedback. Stamp sheets are a great “check in” for student learning. Quiet students often hide in the crowd of a big class, and having these mini-assessments built in gives me a reason to hear from all students, even the quiet ones. I don’t always notice who is struggling, until I hear them attempt their stamp sheet goals, and I’ve been blown away on several occasions by quiet students who never volunteer in class, but speak beautifully when it’s time for them to do stamps.
Stamps are a relatively low-pressure speaking assignment. I do take stamps for a grade, so there is some pressure to “get them done,” but I also consider them part of the learning process, and a teachable moment. So I give feedback, I coach, I prompt, we practice and I let them try and re-do.
That being said…I’m at the end of a unit and finishing stamp sheets is driving me crazy. Here are a few things I don’t love about stamp sheets:
Memorize and forget. This makes me nuts! Most of my students *know* their stamps when they do them for me, but there are always a few who have clearly memorized a statement and will forget it a minute later. How do I teach for long-term retention? I love how mini-goals are explicit and manageable, but by giving a checklist of mini-goals, am I promoting “memorize and forget”?
Finishing stamp sheets takes forever. I do my best to limit the number of goals on my stamp sheets, and yet, they still take so much time to do! In the post linked above, Kara says,
A. If you observe a student doing the goal during class, stamp it.
B. Give everyone a written or spoken quiz at the end of class or on a specific day. You can cover one stamp or several.
C. Students self-assess themselves. Keep one specific stamp design out that they can use.
D. Pick a few students every day to show what they can do.
She makes it sound so easy, but I haven’t figured out how to balance it! Here’s my unit two stamp sheet:
16 goals, five classes of 32 students each, equals 2560 mini goals to listen to. If each goal takes ten seconds (some students are fast, some are slow, some need multiple tries), that’s 426 minutes of class, or two whole days of class doing nothing but stamps. For one unit. I try to do stations, and have stamps as a station, where I can listen to individuals and have the rest of the class be productively occupied, or give written work, where again, I can listen to individuals while the rest of the class is occupied, but I’m finding it really difficult to find ways to balance individual assessment and feedback (which is so important!) with simultaneously instructing and managing 31 other students.
What to do? I’d like to write more on stamp sheets later this week – I have a few thoughts on ways to modify how I use them – but I would also love to hear from other stamp-sheet using teachers. What stamp sheet strategies work for you?
So I thought my lesson today was going to be awesome, until I taught it and it wasn’t. Perhaps the anticipation made the subsequent failing all the worse? Pride goeth before a fall, and whatnot…
Anywhere, my goal was “I can describe my personality,” and for my fast processors, “I can describe someone else’s personality.” So I was presenting personality adjectives, and not being something readily illustratable or TPR-able (on first thought), I went with an idea I saw on the Creative Language Class awhile back – sorting the vocab words into meaningful categories. So I assembled a vocab list on quizlet, printed flashcards, and planned the different ways we would sort our words.
I even had a Wordle projected on the board as they came into the room:
Problem #1: Too complicated to explain in the target language.
But I had to ask them in English what they understood in the word cloud…how do you check comprehension without L1? Please, wise language teachers, educate me. But back to Spanish for the sorting activity, yes? Because clasifica is a cognate, and they know comprendo/no comprendo – but I gave instructions in Spanish, and they didn’t get what I wanted them to do. So I told them in English. And they did it…but then I wanted them to sort again, but they didn’t quite get it, so I switched to English, again. And again. And by 7th period, it was 90% English, with the only input coming from the cards. *facepalm*
Problem #2: Poor timing, poor transitions
This one I actually was able to rectify throughout the day (I teach the same lesson 5 times) – I realized that I was moving on too quickly, while some students were still engaged in the current task. I also realized that I needed to be very clear with instructions about the activity up front. Solution: give detailed instructions explaining the WHOLE activity as we begin it, more wait time, observe where my students are in the process (don’t rush it because it “feels” like it’s been long enough), and do a transition between each round of classification.
Transition/summarization activities:
After Opposites – ran through flashcards on quizlet with both English and Spanish showing, and asked students for the opuesto (en español, por favor).
After Soy/No soy (I am, I’m not) – turn to your partner and say a sentence starting with Soy and a sentence starting with No soy
After un buen/mal profesor and un novio excelente/terrible – discuss, write adjectives on board, then point to each word I’ve written and have students translate. I also gave them sentence starters for a quick speaking break with their partner.
Problem #3: Asking for production of new words before they have audio input.
So when I was asking for them to say the opposites of each adjective, en español? Terrible pronunciation…and entirely my fault, because while they were getting input from the flashcards, it was only reading input, and they had maybe heard each word once or twice. Once I realized this, I ran through the cards on Quizlet and had them repeat, but honestly, I should have known better and planned to introduce with audio input.
Problem #4: Should have picked the target vocab better.
In the set of flashcards, I included Soy and Es, plus some adjectives for physical descriptions (tall, short, pretty, etc). I wish I hadn’t done that, and rather had focused purely on personality adjectives. It was confusing for some of the categorizations, like opuestos, because many of the words didn’t have an opposite. Furthermore, they know appearance adjectives pretty well, and it probably would have been better to give them fewer flashcards to work with (I gave them 30….but in my defense, half or 2/3 were already familiar or cognates). Perhaps if I had been more careful in choosing the words, I would have had more success in giving instructions in the target language.
Reflection:
TeachThought‘s Reflection topic for day 15: Name three strengths you have as an educator.
Honestly, I wasn’t feeling very strength-y this afternoon. Today ended up being very whack-a-mole-y (with discipline and classroom management – that’s what I get for a poorly planned lesson), and I was exhausted and frustrated. But then I read reflections from some other world language teachers:
http://beirregular.blogspot.com/2014/09/jour-quinze-three-strengths.html
http://misclaseslocas.blogspot.com/2014/09/3-strengths.html
http://getyourspanishon.com/2014/09/16/heavy-lifting-makes-you-stronger/
http://lasclasesdestilson.wordpress.com/2014/09/15/reflective-teaching-day-15-my-strengths/
http://cbeyers.blogspot.com/2014/09/day-15-passion-persistence-and-joke.html
And thought, oh, me too – yes, I’m good at that too – oh, yes, that sounds like me – over and over (except the part about being super organized, haha. I’m with Señora Spanglish on that one, over there in “still developing” organizational skills! ). And I decided that a bad teaching day does not make me a bad teacher, and the humility to recognize and learn from a failed lesson is a strength in itself. So my three strengths:
1. Reflection – I learn from my mistakes (see above).
2. Resourcefulness – I cannot do everything on my own, I cannot plan engaging, CI, proficiency-based lessons all on my own, and I’m not a Spanish-English dictionary and cannot answer every ¿Cómo se dice…? inquiry instantly, on the spot. However, I’m aware of my limitations, and I know how to find help – on the internet, with my colleagues next door, and in my online blogging, pinning, and tweeting PLN.
3. Growth mindset – for myself and my students. I’m not where I want to be as an educator, but I’m working in the right direction. Mastery is an asymptote, and learning to teach is a life-long pursuit.
Today was station day in Spanish 1! Today we were practicing giving descriptions, as well as reviewing numbers and time.
List of stations on the board: I let my kids free-range (no time limits or specific order to do the stations in), so writing the list on the board helps let them know what activities are available. Later in the day, I rewrote the list and starred the “required” stations, and specified where they were in the room.
Writing station – instructions and an example on the board. I make multiple copies of the instructions so students can take it back to their desks. One of the beautiful things about stations is that it lets students work at their own pace – they can take as much time as they need to do the writing, without feeling like they need to keep up with their classmates.
This is the second time we’ve done stations and my kids are trained! Taking a picture of the instructions is always acceptable, and saves on paper and clutter.
This is just like last time – get a bag of questions, and practice out loud with your partner. I used the same bags of questions, and added ¿De qué color es tu pelo? ¿De qué color son tus ojos? for the current unit focus. “Wait, what do we write? How will you know we did it?” Nothing. I’ll know you did it because you learned it.
Reading/drawing station: Forgot to take a picture of the instructions, but basically, it’s “Draw What I Say” based on a text instead of listening. I typed up some short descriptions, and had them choose four of them to draw and label. Later in the day (I always learn as I go!), I also offered the option to summarize in English instead of drawing – the point is to demonstrate comprehension, and I’m happy to let them do that in the way that they are most comfortable with.
Jenga: practice with numbers. Plus, it’s fun! Had to reduce the time limit to two games, then to one, because they’re just too good at it 🙂
Yep, that’s a hump day shirt.
More practice with time. Yep, we did that matching activity two weeks ago. #ShamelessRecycler
Guess Who: I printed these Guess Who Boards with Spanish names in color last year (google “Quién es Quién to find them – bet there are other languages, too!) and laminated them. I provided students with a list of questions (they understand pretty well, but producing these questions is beyond their current ability level), and let them play the game, marking the boards with a dry erase marker. They don’t erase perfectly (these boards might have another year in them), but it’s pretty good for a cheap version of the game.
Reflection
We spent about 40 minutes on stations today, and I plan to give them another 15 or 20 minutes tomorrow. I found last time that two full days was too much time, and the behavior started to deteriorate. *Most* of my students really enjoyed the day, but there’s always that one who doesn’t, and I find it’s the negative comments that stick with me more than the positive. I had a student (at the ripe old age of 16) tell me that my class was too “freshman-y” today, and honestly, it really stung. It did inspire some reflection, though, and that comment sparked a few changes in how I managed the stations in the afternoon – mainly, clarifying that the reading, writing, time, and conversation stations MUST be done, but playing games was optional (as long as you are doing something related to Spanish), and giving the option to translate instead of draw at the reading station. I refuse to give up the [instructionally useful] silliness and games [that provide opportunities to practice language in context], but I can also find ways to incorporate options that appeal to a variety of students. Autonomy and choice are HUGE motivators, and it’s my goal to incorporate activities that allow students to learn and show me their learning in ways that are comfortable and meaningful to them. It also occurred to me that the freedom to manage your own time and participate in the learning activities that you prefer with minimal supervision from the teacher (I’m there, but on station day there’s no way I can be on top of every student simultaneously) takes a certain amount of maturity, and the freshmen and sophomores totally blew it out of the water today. 🙂
Bloom into style, expression, and comfort
Reflections and thoughts on language teaching
Teaching Spanish with CI, #authres, #edtech, and love
Teaching Spanish with CI, #authres, #edtech, and love
Teaching Spanish with CI, #authres, #edtech, and love
Teaching Spanish with CI, #authres, #edtech, and love
Teaching Spanish with CI, #authres, #edtech, and love
Teaching Spanish with CI, #authres, #edtech, and love
Teaching Spanish with CI, #authres, #edtech, and love
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Teaching Spanish with CI, #authres, #edtech, and love
Teaching Spanish with CI, #authres, #edtech, and love
Teaching Spanish with CI, #authres, #edtech, and love
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Teaching Spanish with CI, #authres, #edtech, and love
Teaching Spanish with CI, #authres, #edtech, and love
Teaching Spanish with CI, #authres, #edtech, and love
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Traveling the proficiency path, one step at a time
Teaching Spanish with CI, #authres, #edtech, and love
Teaching Spanish with CI, #authres, #edtech, and love
Teaching Spanish with CI, #authres, #edtech, and love
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Teaching Spanish with CI, #authres, #edtech, and love
teacher, author, and teacher-trainer
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Teaching Spanish with CI, #authres, #edtech, and love
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Ideas, Strategies and Reflections on Comprehensible Input for World Language Classes
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