Thematic Units

One of the things I have often struggled with when working on thematic units is how to make them build upon one another. Too often, I feel as though the class really gets one theme and then all is abandoned as we move on to the next one. This has a variety of impacts, but the largest one is that students perceive that they know longer need the knowledge and vocabulary that they have acquired as we move to new material.

One of my goals for my Spanish two class this year was to try to improve the flow between units while still covering the necessary material. I love the flipped elements of my class and being able to know that the majority of the "why?" is covered before students come to class. I have needed to improve on the activities that go on during class time. Although I still have plans to implement PBL, it has not happened yet and my class activities and practice have become stale and aren't as interesting to the students as they once were. And, as we all know, when students don't find the material presented interesting, they lose the interest in the class and it goes back to something they have to "check off" their list.

In my Spanish 2 classes, I have revised the thematic units and it seems to be working. I have also found a class schedule that is working more efficiently and helping change things up often enough to keep students engaged. Here is what I have done this semester:

Review unit - Self and Family

Each year I begin with a review unit. This gives me the opportunity to asses the students as a group and begin to assess them individually. We use a familiar topic - self and family. I include activities in each of the communication areas - listening, reading, speaking, writing and a little bit of culture.

Can do statements for this unit include
I can describe myself and my family (orally and written).
I can tell someone what my family and I like to do.
I can ask someone about their family.

Grammar concepts reviewed/practiced
Present tense
Word order
Agreement

Culture
Appropriate addresses (formal v informal)

Assessments
Who am I writing
My family presentational
Speed dating - describing myself and family
Reading - Piratas by Mira Canion - Orally in class and in small groups

Unit 1 - Where I live

Can do statements for this unit include:
I can talk about where I live.
I can describe my house.
I can ask questions about someone's home.
I can compare my home with someone else's

Grammar concepts introduced/reviewed/practiced
Comparisons
Present tense (focus on irregulars and stem changers)
Word order
More complex sentences using cuando

Culture
Spain webquest
Euro v dollar - conversion
Comparing home types in US and Spain - House Hunters International
Comparing home listings in US and Spain - Internet search

Assessments
House plan creation and written description
Selling my house presentation
Comparing my house to yours - conversation
Listening to house descriptions and drawing floor plan
Reading in small groups (aloud) - Mi propio auto, Problemas en paraiso, Fiesta fatal

Unit 2 - My neighborhood and how to get around

Can do statements for this unit include:
I can describe places and services in my neighborhood.
I can give directions to someplace in my neighborhood using a map.
I can listen to directions to get to a destination on a map.
I can compare my neighborhood to someone else's

Grammar concepts introduced/reviewed/practiced
Informal commands
Present tense
Asking questions
Comparisons

Culture
How to move between tourist attractions in Spain on map
When to use formal v informal commands
Structure of towns - plaza, church

Assessments
Using student created neighborhoods students- give and follow directions, make comparisons between neighborhoods.
Reading in small groups (aloud and silently) with comprehension checks

Unit 3 - What I do in my neighborhood/free time

(This is a unit covered basically in Sp 1, but my students are struggling with vocabulary. Therefore I went back to this theme using more advanced vocabulary and high frequency verbs)

Can do statements include:
I can talk about what I like to do in my free time
I can have a conversation with my peers about what I did last weekend
I can talk about places I like to go
I can write about a favorite event in my past

Grammar concepts introduced/reviewed practiced
Difference between preterite and imperfect
Beginning use of past tenses
Asking questions

Culture
Cuba webquest
Music and leisure activities in Cuba
Cuba and US relations

Assessments
Conversation with peers about free time activities
Movie/ book review written
Reading in small groups (aloud and silently) with comprehension checks

Final exam
Listening, reading, writing, culture

Class schedule
In my school we have 90 minute blocks, and structuring them for success is an ever changing puzzle. This year, my students work best with a short warm up activity to practice unit vocab and concepts, then 20-30 minutes of reading in small groups. Then, they work on some written practice as well as conversation and listening practice in class. As always, grammar is done for homework by watching videos and students taking notes.

Student do work independently for the majority of class. I am facilitating learning and helping the struggling students individually. I have many more students on IEPs this year and it has made class more challenging to help those students with accommodations and keep the rest of class moving at a good pace.

Reading is still my favorite way to differentiate in class and I love when I get students grouped correctly so that they can work with their peers and continue their learning process. Giving students that opportunity is what makes the class more engaging to them. I try to give as much choice as possible with the assessments as well so students can personalize their learning. In every u to students must find personalized vocabulary which they must use successfully in assessments. This allows me to keep the required vocabulary lists short and the students to be able to invest in their own learning. It is also a great way for me to get to know my students better through the vocabulary that they choose. I have also expanded my own vocabulary learning the words and ideas that are important to my students.

AATSP June 9th Recap -3 Modes and Tablas de Noticias

Even after flight delays and very little sleep, I was excited to start attending sessions at the AATSP conference.There are so many offerings that are different than sessions I see offered at my state conference. I began with a session by Maritza Sloan from Plano, TX about the Three Modes of Communication and how to connect them to everyday learning.

She began with the Pecha Kucha. This is 20 pictures that students talk about for 20 seconds. The time goes by very fast (we tried it in the session), and is a great practice for the interpersonal portion of the AP exam. I am thinking about including this as a warm-up or closing activity for class. I did a few quick searches online and found photos quickly to use in this activity for a variety of topics. I like this picture which could be used to help explain the concept to students. Because the photos go by so fast, even if there is one the students are stuck on, it moves on quickly, so students stay focused on the conversation.

Interpersonal 

Think, Pair, Share

She had some great examples of using Think, Pair, Share. Although this is not a new idea, I liked how she broke it down to make it work in different situations in class. 

• What I think
• What you think
• What the group thinks

I am looking forward to using this to help students make more cultural comparisons as well as a review for students after reading short texts or listening passages. I think that if I give this task to the students in a more formal manner, such as in a chart, it may help keep class conversations more focused and on track. 

Sloan also suggested using this in conjunction with a Quick Write. Students are given a question and then have 1-3 minutes to write on the theme. Students can then use the Think, Pair, Share to compare their ideas and improve them and then be able to participate more actively in a class discussion about the topic. Some suggested question starters were:

• ¿De qué manera......?
• ¿Cómo podría...?
• ¿Qué influencias...?
• ¿Cuál sería la mejor forma....?

An interesting point that she made was that we shouldn´t give students selections longer than 10 minutes to read. I think that this is a great idea, especially when pushing the students to read more challenging selections in level 4 and AP. Shorter readings will keep students from becoming too frustrated with the text and less likely to give up.

Word Charts

She also gives her students word charts where she gives students challenging words they will need when completing activities only in Spanish. She divides the words into verbs, nouns, etc. The class then works together to define recognizable words, identify root words that lead to being able to define the vocabulary. This can then lead to a pre-reading activity where students can use the vocabulary to hypothesize titles and themes in the reading. 

Presentational Ideas

Photostories and Online Posters

A few of the presentational ideas suggested were creating a photostory presentation, with Glogster or another online poster program (I think students could even do it with Power Point or a Poster). Students are given a question, such as ¨How do climate changes affect the poverty stricken in Honduras?¨ (Just made that question up--not in presentation.) Students could then decide their answer and create a series of pictures to help them present their point. So a photostory for this question could be pictures of arid fields, empty shelves, hungry children, empty pots and dishes, etc. Although students would need to do prep, this would be a great way to increase presentational skills without notes, reading from slides, etc.

Let´s Fight About It

I also liked her idea ¨Let´s fight about it¨. Students are given an easy situation and they get five minutes to come up with a scenario that they present to the class. The given example was a husband and wife-the husband comes home and forgets to buy the milk like his wife had asked him. This is great because they are ¨real¨ conversations and the students can participate at various levels. The presentations are two minutes long and are excellent to help students practice ¨spontaneous¨conversations. 

My favorite quote from Sloan´s session was ¨Vocabulary is the gas that makes the conversation go.¨ This is a great way to approach vocabulary acquisition and I think is something my students can relate do so they better understand why we are doing some of these activities.

The second session I attended was Tablas de Noticias presented by Parthena Draggett. I am pretty sure that she may be my favorite person in the whole world right now. She does a fantastic project with the students where students work on finding resources and doing interpretive work on their own for homework. They are required to find numerous sources with different types of content for interpretation (videos, songs, articles, stories, podcasts, etc.) for each theme. Her handouts for students included the essential questions as well as more specific breakdowns of the types of information in each category. Check out this document here. Students are required to complete the chart on the assignment sheet (here) 

Although the assignment is written for AP, it is certainly doable in levels 3 and 4. Students are required to do 1 per semester in 3, 2 per semester in level 4, and one per month in AP. This is also a great summer homework assignment for AP, and I always have a hard time finding good summer homework assignments for AP. Draggett grades this homework as formative, and uses the information from them to spark pair and group conversations and activities. She evaluates the work for completion and gets ideas for conversations to encourage based on the information that they students have found. 

For example, with the new vocabulary, she has students make flash cards and teach their partner the new word, including using it in a sentence. The students then switch places so each person in the pair is learning the new vocab.Then, as a class (in conversation circle type format) all the students in the class can teach each other the new words. This is fantastic because since the students are using the words repetitively and in context, it helps them truly learn the new words. 

She also writes the themes on the board and has students group the vocabulary from the worksheet in the appropriate theme´s column. I love this idea, and it reinforces the idea of having an online dictionary that the students can have access to when they want to review vocabulary learned in class. (Now all I have to do is figure out how to create this.....).

She also discussed using this assignment as a jumping off point for deeper cultural discussions. I know in my class, I focus on making comparisons between various countries and the US, but I need to do a better job of having students compare the cultures of different Hispanic countries. 

The final session for the day was from Joe Roberts, The Language Classroom Upside Down. Joe is someone I have interacted with online via Twitter and I was very pleased to meet him in person. He did a great job of giving the basic overview of the flipped classroom and some ideas for how he incorporates this into his high school and college classes. There was not too much new for me, but I enjoyed his presentation and watching him interact with the participants.

Wednesday is a full day, including my presentation at 12CST. I am looking forward to it and to continuing to learn from the other knowledgeable teachers here at the conference.