Another change: Survey says...

The "I CAN" goals in elementary are going well, so it's time to keep up the lessons learned from Central States and change something else.

One session I went to (a best-of-some-state) was about designing an entire year's curriculum around a theme. This teacher planned her whole year around the idea that her class was moving to Madrid. All the grammar and chapters and assessments, everything had to do with that. They were getting on an airplane, finding a roommate, finding an apartment, touring El Prado, etc. I enjoyed hearing about the activities they did (though wow-what a lot of work!). But I thought, what if my students don't ever live in Madrid? I've only taught 2 students in 8 years who have ever ended up living abroad, to my knowledge. What if I could tailor assessments and activities around what they actually wanted to do with Spanish? How can I find out?

Switching gears, part of my problem - which I'm sure is greatly magnified in other schools - is that we have a 15-year Spanish program. Students are required to start Spanish (15 mins/wk) in Pre-K 3-year-olds. The time of instruction increases gradually until in 9th and 10th grade high-schoolers are required to take Spanish 1 and 2 at 50 minutes/day. Then we offer Spanish 3 and our fourth year is AP Spanish. We have an eye out for a future goal of testing 8th graders into a Spanish 2 section in 9th grade which would enable us to have Spanish 4 and AP Spanish.

Wait, why would that be a problem? Well, you know the drill. Kids have different teachers and so they end up learning different things (or nothing at all) or the same thing 3 years in a row. Kids can't stand one teacher and so they choose to hate the required classes and skip out on the electives. This year I'm on a journey - I'm reading Drive and plan to read Punished by Rewards this summer - and I'm finally starting to give up on the thought that I can motivate kids. I can't. My job is to find out how they're naturally motivating themselves, and give them opportunities to channel that motivation and flourish. I'm convinced the only kids I've been reaching are the kids who are already motivated in the ways I've been teaching and assessing. Now I really couldn't care less if they "passed Spanish" but left my class with no lasting motivation to change something - anything.

So this week I'm doing a survey. I wish I could survey my first graders and see what they want out of their next 7 years in Spanish to pass on to my 2-8 teacher but I don't think they'd understand what I was asking. But I plan to survey 8th grade, 10th grade, and 11th grade. I want to know - Are you looking forward to next year in Spanish? Planning to take it at all? Why or why not? What would you like to do with Spanish? What's worked well for you? What's been hard? Easy? Frustrating? I'll pass answers along to my Spanish 1 & 2 teacher to help in planning next year, if she wants (and knowing her she will), and to my elementary/middle school teacher (so he can get some feedback).

I plan on doing the survey anonymously (and weeding out the nasty/stupid answers). Hopefully we'll find out something helpful!

Symbol Illustration

This post is part of my project to get rid of papers I haven't looked at in forever (but still contain good ideas) by making them 'digital' here.

The symbol illustration idea is from a course I took in graduate school on teaching literacy to (mostly elementary) English-language learners. It seemed to me an idea easily adapted to various situations, content, and levels.

Materials:

• colored paper
• scissors
• markers

Directions:

After reading and discussing some type of literature together (in my course it was Esperanza Rising),

1. Decide what you think is the most important object in the book.
2. Cut a large sheet of colored paper into the shape of that object.
3. In the middle of the object, write a sentence describing why you think that was the most important object.
4. In the rest of the space, draw other important objects, with a sentence under each that describes its importance.

My symbol illustration of Esperanza Rising:
Some variations:

Ask for an oral presentation of the symbol illustration when it is finished.

Make the illustration a timeline instead - on a long sheet of paper, draw a line horizontally in the middle. Above, put positive symbols. Below, put negative symbols. All should be sequential and should be used to retell the story emphasizing mood changes.

Ask students to choose a symbol that may also symbolize something in their life and describe this.

Use VoiceThread or other storyboarding or digital storytelling tools to make this project digital/paperless.

First 14 days of Spanish 1

A couple of posts down Jen asked if I had lessons to go along with the Spanish 1 scope and sequence and vocabulary list.

I do! A few, anyway, and at least you can see how I organize and move through Musicuentos. Here are the first 14 days of Spanish 1, in fairly good detail.

Enjoy.