Planning for more!

Reflecting at the end of another school year is one of my favorite things to do. I have been working hard to revamp my curriculum (so happy to have a school district and principal that gives me that freedom!) to make it have a more communicative focus. I want students to have more interest in the topics that the units cover and therefore be more interested in learning the content that goes with it. Most of my work this year was done in my Spanish 2 curriculum so this summer I am focusing on how I can build on that with a revamped Spanish 3 curriculum.

For example, in Spanish 2, we always do a unit on food (as many WL teachers do). Instead of just another boring food unit, I changed the focus to living a healthy lifestyle. This enabled students to ave a focus for choosing their own vocabulary - we did this as a class for the first time (I was inspired by Amy Lenord, but have to find a better way for this because it took almost an entire class period!). Students chose many words and activities that I never would have thought of putting on a list. It had the added benefit of having each class have different lists so the cross-class copying for practice couldn't continue. ;)  We then did a variety of activities, interpretive reading with infographics. Like this one and this one. I also used this Coke commercial as a CI listening introduction to the unit.

What I found was that by changing the focus of the unit to a question - "How do you live a healthy lifestyle?" - Students naturally wanted input on vocabulary and activities. They also always had an opinion and had something to say so conversation practice came more naturally. They were at first freaked out by some of the TL activities because they didn't know every word and in some cases, couldn't even find a translation for words and had to use their brain to figure out what some words meant. The summative for this unit was open to student choice. They did a presentation about healthy lifestyle. For some this meant demonstrating how to play sports, for others, a cooking demonstration of a healthy recipe, ideas to replace junk food with healthy alternatives, etc. It turned out to be one of the best units I have ever planned and some of the best work from the students. As if I didn't know that things went better this year, my enrollment for Spanish 3 tripled for next year. Yea!

Of course, in hindsight, I realized we never talked about ordering in a restaurant and asking about items on a menu, which is something "real world" that students want to be able to do, but next year, I will make sure to add an activity to help them practice this as well.

So, with this success, the question is how to I work on the other units to make them as engaging for students? I have long wanted to change my Fairy Tale unit in Sp 3 and really need to make my Future life and decisions unit better, but how.? This is part of my summer homework.

Making the best of less class time - 20% time!

This last week has been a struggle for me, as I am sure it has been for many of you (or will be soon). This has been a week of standardized testing. This has turned into a completely lost week for me since 9th, 10th and 11th graders are all testing. Between kids that took the test, opted out, and just stayed home, my classes have looked like a ghost town. In hindsight I realize I should have taken this time to work individually with the students that were there (5 out of 29 in my Sp 2 classes). However, since I had missed so much of the week prior because of the SWCOLT conference and grades are due on Friday, I chose giving the kids a study hall and have been grading like my pen is on fire.

The testing has been challenging this year, and I am sure it will be a whole new ballgame when we have to do it again (yes, again) the first week in May. However, I will have a better plan when that happens. I always do my choice projects in Spanish 3 at the end of the year, but I am working on a plan for a similar project for my Spanish 2 classes as well. This way, no matter who is in class, they can be working on something for class. 

In Spanish 3, the choices are wide open for the end of the year project. They can choose anything that they want to learn more about. I believe that in Spanish 2 those students will need a bit more structure. So, I am thinking about letting them choose to expand on any topic that we have covered this year. That will give them families/friends and communities, celebrations, travel and health. These are all topics that we have covered the basics of, but there is so much to learn. 

Once the topic is chosen, Sp 3 is required to find two audio selections, two readings and write two letters as they research. Then the create a presentation for the class which includes something the students watching can do to interact with the topic. But again, I think that is quite a bit to expect from the Sp 2 students. Maybe I need to conference with each student about their topic choice and help steer them in the right direction as far as resources? Can I require my high achieving students to have more resources than the lower achieving students? Will I still require the audience participation portion of the presentation? I am trying to juggle what I would like to see with what the students can do and the amount of time they will have. 

I would love some advice from anyone who does a 20% project. (Next year, I am doing this differently and we will work on it on Fridays throughout the semester.) 

As always I will keep posting.....

PS - My PLN is the best! Check out this great idea for student created finals from Sara-Elizabeth Cottrell - this is exactly what I was hoping for. 

We are the medium

(This is a post I started a month ago, but only now am finishing.)

Last night, I was helping to facilitate a webinar with the inspiring Laura Sexton, who is a leader in the use of project based learning (PBL) in the target language. I have seen Laura present before at ACTFL, and always look at her blog for ideas and inspiration, so I wasn't really expecting a big Ah-ha moment last night. But, I was wrong.

Laura said something that really resonated with me. We (WL teachers) are the medium for our students viewing the world. Without WL education, students rarely see and experience the culture of other countries beyond their own towns. How powerful is that???

There is so much focus on target language use and comprehensible input that I know sometimes I miss the bigger picture. I am not a just a teacher of the Spanish language. I fell in love with Spanish so many years ago, not because I can conjugate verbs or know the difference between the preterite and the imperfect. I fell in love with the Spanish speaking world....and that led me to travel to many other countries to discover a love of other cultures as well. This is what I want to do, I don't want to just teach Spanish, I want to open the world for my students.

Exposing students to culture is sometimes very easy. I plan trips to Costa Rica, Peru, etc and the small number of students that accompany me get a real picture of the world outside the US. All of my students know that almost every Hispanic movie has a sad ending. :( However, I think to really open up the world for our students we have to open the door for them, teach them something they can relate to in another country. Then, we need to encourage them to take what they learn as a stepping stone to learning more.

Students have to have time and the freedom to make some choices in their learning. That is when learning truly becomes their own and has the added benefit of wanting to continue their Spanish (or other language) learning to continue to learn more about the world around them. So, when you hear people talk about 20% projects, Project Based Learning, or other methodology, remember our job is to facilitate the learning. Just teaching is depriving our students of so much life has to offer.