Cultural activities across the levels

This time of year is the worst for teachers. Students have realized that their grades are not what they should be and are in full panic mode, and parents are on alert as well. The holiday season is also around the corner, and even though Christmas decorations have been up in stores for weeks, I am not ready for the work that comes with the holidays! With all of this going on, it is easy to focus on the negative and the frustrations in the classroom, but I am doing my best to focus on the positives.

This past week was a crazy one, with our fairy tale unit ending. As I have mentioned before, I have been working on a cross-level project between the Spanish 1's and Spanish 3's. I have felt that we spend so much time focusing on the harder vocabulary and more difficult conversations that the upper level students forget how to say some of the most basic things...the conversations that would be most important if they were in a foreign country.

So, the idea behind this project was to have the upper level kids create stores and sell to the lower levels. We planned and wrote assignment sheets and talked about vocabulary. I let my students choose what type of store to have, because as I have mentioned before, I firmly believe we need to give students choices whenever possible. Here is a copy of our assignment sheet. (I also put a copy in the Helpful Docs tab.) We also gave the kids a handout to practice key phrases, and add phrases of their own that they thought necessary.

The students created all types of stores, including music, movie, cafe, clothing, and a party store. I was so proud of my students. They stayed in the target language, even when the principal tried to talk to them in English. They were so generous, giving juice, soda, cookies, party favors, etc. to the lower level students. Since we were using Monopoly money, I had assured students they would get all of their items back.

Now, my PreAp class is during a time when there is no Spanish I, so we tried something  little different. We did a "Tourist Day" between Germany and Spain with the German III students. In this project, some of the students set up stores, and other students were tour guides. The tour guides were in charge of teaching key phrases and helping their groups at the stores. The stores were based on what a tourist would need: a hotel, souvenir shop, tour/ticket office, and cafe. The students then took turns leading the tours and shops.

The kids were excited about this and it went very well. The students learned a few new phrases in a new language. They were also exposed to situations where they didn't understand what someone was saying, or how to respond and had to figure out how to get what they wanted. It was a great communication exercise for all of the students.

I was liberal with the assessment scores. I felt that if they were communicating in the target language during the duration of the activity (about an hour), and they helped the lower level students communicate as well, that was A work.

For me, it was a good week. Students did tons of communicating and had a great time. Hopefully this will be an annual tradition and something the students can look forward to. Now all I have to do is figure out how to do it again in the Spring. I think I will put my students on it! They have the best ideas.

Demonstrating Proficiency using PBL and the ACTFL scale

This year, my focus is going to be having the students demonstrate proficiency. I am moving away from the old written tests. I want my students to demonstrate their proficiency with new and old skills and concepts. I know, many of you may be saying "Duh", and although I have known this is the way to go, only recently have I found a way that I think will really be effective. I working to utilize Project Based Learning. If you are unfamiliar with this, check out this recorded webinar. It is a fantastic explanation of PBL.

In order to demonstrate not only proficiency, but movement on the ACTFL scale, I am also beginning the year with a baseline speaking assessment. I am going to do a baseline written assessment at the end of the review/beginning of Unit 1. I am hoping that these assessments will not only help determine students progress as we move through the year, but help me to identify common gaps in learning so that I can address them quickly.

My assessment plan for the beginning of the year
Students will be given videos to review previously learned grammar points. They will then do quick written practice and then demonstrate their proficiency with basic grammar and vocabulary through projects of their choice. I am giving them a question to answer, and they can demonstrate their proficiency in any way they choose. The first one is shown below. I asking for a 1-2 minute presentation from my regular Spanish 3 class, 2-3 in PreAp and 3-4 in level 4. My thought is to begin these PBL projects small so the students don't get overwhelmed. The project for Unit 1 is more involved and complex. I am also giving students three of these projects in the first 2 weeks - Present, Past, and Future.

As students are working on these assignments, I will be administering individual benchmark speaking assessments. I will be using a rubric that I was discussed in the Creative Language Class blog. They did a great series on assessing on the ACTFL scale and if you haven't read it, you should check it out. The challenge in this benchmark assessment is to find a way to do determine student abilities without demoralizing them. I am using a prompt that I found on the Creative Language Class blog which is as follows:

Your class has been working with students in Barcelona, Spain and you have shared lots of information about your daily lives with them. It’s time to find out more about what students’ lives are like in Spain so you have to interview a student there to find out what his/her daily life is like. Since your partner may not remember what you said about your daily life, be prepared to answer any questions he/she might have about your daily life. You may want to find out:

What your partner does daily at home, school, and/or work;
What your partner does most every week at home, school, and/or work;
Anything else you would like to learn about daily life in Spain.

Remember to greet your partner and thank your partner for his/her time. And don’t forget, your partner will probably ask you questions about your life as well.

After much consideration and searching the net, I decided this was a good benchmark for level 3 because the students should have enough knowledge to answer the questions coming into the class, and there is room for the students to show growth as we progress through the review and Unit 1. For me, I need to give the same assessment to be able to determine growth accurately. I will be assessing the students with this prompt after Unit 1, Challenges in Teen Life. With the new vocabulary students learn in that unit, as well as the continuous language use in class, I am expecting to see a big increase in abilities. My best guess is that students will score Novice Low - Novice Mid on the benchmark assessment. I hope they will be at Novice High when I reassess in October.

My goal for the students in level 3 is to be able to be consistently at Intermediate Low, and level 4 to be at Intermediate High in all activities by the end of the year. I am hopeful that with the tools from ACTFL* I will be able to accurately assess not only where students are, but be able to show them the areas where they need to improve.

I realize that approaching assessment in this way will be a big change for the students, but I am hoping that they will quickly embrace it. I think it is so much better for students to demonstrate their knowledge using these tools and projects then be stuck staring at huge tests. Since school starts on August 20th, I don't have long to wait to see how these new changes are received.

*I am adding the Performance Assessment Rubric from the Creative Language Class blog to the Helpful Class Documents tab.

**Many of my students have not done conversation and listening in a meaningful way in level 2, which is why I believe that they are going to begin low on the ACTFL scale. (I hope they prove me wrong!)