Flipped Out September - Assessment time for Spanish II

This month rivals April for how fast it goes. I really want to be posting more often, especially about my Spanish II class, but finding the time has been a real challenge! We completed the review unit in Spanish II, and are almost to the halfway point in our first unit - Where I live. The kids are starting to really understand the system, but so many are struggling with basics that they should have learned in Spanish I. We spent four weeks reviewing conjugation and vocabulary while working on listening, speaking and reading skills. I had decided not to give them a formal assessment for this review, and now I think that might have been a mistake. There seems to be so much that I feel like they should know that they do not, and now I am left trying to figure out how to solve this.

To preface, I just gave my first Benchmark Assessment, which is a short assessment which tests vocab and grammar. It is designed to see how the students are progressing on their way to the Summative Unit Assessment. First, I was surprised how many are such poor test takers. The vocabulary section was fill in the blank sentences, and they had a word bank. Now, this is very different from the Spanish I ¨kill and drill¨ daily quizzes that they are accustomed to. So, I anticipated some issues. However, what is wrong with students that leave half of the section blank when they have words to choose from? It is very frustrating.

Now, in these sentences, they are expected to conjugate the verbs correctly, make adjectives agree, etc. Is this too much to expect from a Spanish II student? I expect this from my Spanish III students, but I think that if they students are ever going to learn how to choose the right vocabulary and use it appropriately, they have to be held accountable somehow. Unfortunately, this accountability comes in the form of grades. I wish I knew some other way to make students see why it is important. Now, they don´t lose much credit, just 1/2 a point on a 2 point question.

Their lack of studying well always leads to other conversations with students, like how to study. It is amazing how many students feel that just staring at a vocabulary list for ten or fifteen minutes is studying. And for me, what else do I need to do to help them ¨get¨ the vocabulary? They do some written practice, listening practice with the words, reading with some of the words, Google Voice prompts for speaking with the works, and online journals where they need to use some of the vocabulary. At what point does it become their responsibility? Should we be doing more bell-ringers with the words? I want them to be successful, but I also think that it is their responsibility to learn vocabulary. Still searching for new and better ideas to help my students succeed. Ideas welcome.....

My favorite Saturday sessions at CCFLT

The last day of the conference had some fantastic sessions, but two stood out as my favorites. First was The Essential Question presented by Yo Azama. This session followed his great keynote, and was packed. (As a side note, when I first read the title of this session, all I could think about was Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.) this session was a great follow up to e session on mode assessments from Friday. When I create my thematic units, I have "essential questions" done, but I realized that I need to expand those questions for each of the different modes. He showed some wonderful examples of projects that he has done in his class with the assignment sheet outlining the summation and formative assessments for a unit. I am going to work on recreating the template for these assessments and one that is completed with an assessment. (Look for them soon in the Helpful Docs tab.)

The summative assessment that he outlined was for his technology/inventions unit. For the summative assessment, students create a new product that could be sold in Japan and the US and create a commercial for their product. For the interpretive, they need to explore Japanese and American products and commercials - demonstrate an understanding of the gist. The interpersonal summarize assessment was for the students to email product ideas to gather market research. The presentational was presenting their market research and their commercial. Lucky for me, this is the last unit I do in level three, so I think I will be "stealing" this idea!  **Check out my recreation of this doc in the Helpful Documents Tab)

Again, Yo is a great presenter, and is someone I would love to have a long chat with about how his class runs. I found the video samples that he showed impressive as well. Guess that is is why he is ACTFL's Teacher of the Year!

My other favorite session of the day was the last session of the day, and I was glad that the snow held off so I didn't miss it. "Three vocab strategies that change how kids communicate" was presented by Mira Canion and Ya-Wen Chang. Now anyone who has been to a language conference in Colorado has probably seen Mira. She has given fantastic presentations about getting kids reading, and I was so happy to see that she was presenting something new this year as well. The presentation centered on how we need to be teaching vocabulary, which even though is the crux of any language, there is so little time devoted to this topic. To demonstrate the technique, Ya-Wen taught us some Chinese (with some help from her friends). They presented words and sentences on the screen with pictures to illustrate what they were teaching. They also used props, like a basketball, chocolate, and a hamburger as well as exaggerated gesturing to convey meaning. They taught us some simple Chinese words and phrases, which I was pleased to realize that I still remembered today. They reminded me that the focus needs to be on healing students acquire the vocabulary, and it was our job to present it in a manner which would interest them and had them using the words right away so they could start adding them to their working vocabulary. After doing a basic presentation of new words and phrases, they suggested that we use them (orally) in a story as well since the brain is wired to remember words in a story.

I am ashamed to admit it, but after participating in this session, I realized what a disservice I am doing to my students. I have thought about new and different ways to introduce vocabulary, but it has never been something that I truly focused on. I had talked about playing games, having discussions, and other ideas for introducing vocabulary, but I haven't followed through. So, thank you, thank you, thank you ladies for making me realizing that I need to get with it and make this a TOP priority.