Dear novice-learner teacher - love, an AP teacher

foto Alex Fuentes

Twice for #langchat we've polled the following question:

What activities prepare students for AP from the very beginning?

I confess, I probably wrote this question, maybe with some help from something similar being suggested as a topic. Certainly I've voted for it twice. But for whatever reason--perhaps teachers of lower levels don't think much about AP or the question was polled with others deemed more relevant--this topic has lost both times. So as usual, I'll take my opinion to the blog. Because I can.

I'm currently in my fourth year teaching AP. I know I've learned a lot from it, and I've gotten better at it, but my students are also improving considerably, mostly, I think, from what they get before my class, not from what they get from it. AP is a fourth-year class at my school. My first year, I had just 2 students, scoring 1 and 2. Second year, 6 students scoring one 3 and five 1's (ouch). That year I was so mad at the College Board I won't tell you what I wanted to do with them. Last year I hit some things really hard and actually, I ended up with my eight students scoring one 4, three 3's, two 2's, and two 1's (yay!). This year, I have such a stellar group of kids that I wouldn't be surprised if all six of them pass.

Now, in all seriousness, I hate the AP. I hate the test, and I hate the College Board, and I hate the idea. I can't stand that one three-hour exam thinks it can predict how proficient my students are and will be in college in Spanish. That student my first year that scored a 2, he was conversationally fluent, at least an Advanced Low speaker, after 3 years (he'd skipped Spanish 3) and the most motivated learner I have ever met. Of the two students who scored 1's last year, one is majoring in Middle School Spanish Education and the other is minoring in Spanish.

Really, that's how I feel about all standardized exams (thank you, Alfie Kohn). But the fact is, most of my students care about it. It is our only fourth-year option, and last year they voted on whether to keep it AP (in which they are required to take the exam) or to call it Spanish 4 (in which they'd have the option to take the test). But all but one voted for AP. They want the weighted grade points, and the AP Advantage study hall, and yes, they want the extra focused preparation for the exam. They want the bragging rights, and they want the college credit. So, I'm about pleasing the students, and here we are again.

After four years of watching students struggle and succeed in their fourth-year AP class, here are my requests for you, the elementary teachers (which I also am) through middle school, Spanish 1, 2, and 3 teachers.

1. Please, please, PLEASE feed them ALL KINDS of authentic audio.
   This is my #1 because it's my #1 problem with my students. They get to me (in Spanish 3) and can't understand anything but learner language. The majority of audio on the AP is not learner language. It's stuff like BBC Mundo and Radio ONU (which I couldn't understand until, say, 10 years into my journey). More importantly, the majority of audio in life is not learner language.
   The common mistake is to think that novices cannot understand authentic media. The truth is that the difficulty is in the question and not in the source. If you're asking them to hear the word cinco that's a different question than if you're asking them to hear the word aprovechándonos.
   
   
2. Interact with vocabulary in real contexts.
   Asking students "what is the word for black? Good! Red? Great!" does almost *nothing* for their language acquisition. Trust me, from day one a novice learner can understand this question:
   ¿De qué colores es un oso panda? (2)
   Context is everything. My current AP students have not had a vocab quiz in four years and their vocabulary is incredible. Yesterday in our novel they were accurately identifying words like solía and lechuza. One of my Spanish 3 students actually asked for vocab quizzes the other day and we had to have a talk about how cramming does not create long-term memory. This is connected with the issue of authentic media - get students listening to and reading real materials and the vocabulary will just be there. I promise.
   
   
3. Ask questions that require critical thinking.
   Critical thinking is a life skill. Prepare your students for life by asking them real questions that make a difference. Stop asking 'what' and start asking 'why' and 'how.' To me, the true test of a critical thinking question is if there's no clear-cut answer. Instead of stopping with "what foods do you like?" ask "is a guinea pig food? why or why not? would you try it?" (In Ecuador, guinea pig - 'cuy' or as my dad likes to call it, 'barbecuy' - is a delicacy.)
   
   
4. Do speaking assessments. GET THEM TALKING.
   My current Spanish 3 students tell me that last year they had exactly 1 speaking assessment. Now, kids like to complain about teachers, but if it's anywhere close to the truth, it's far too few. They're now facing two speaking assessments each in every unit for sixteen in all and they're dying. They hate it, except for my one who's aptitude leans toward speaking and away from writing.
   The AP has a wicked guided conversation activity in which someone says something, then there's a beep, and the student has 20 seconds to think up and say what the test says they need to do. That's repeated about five times and that's the interpersonal speaking section. It's stressful and intense and unrealistic but there you have it. My current AP students are so used to talking back and forth in class that this year they were able to do this for practice without much anxiety much sooner than the students I had last year. Keep students talking -for the AP and for life.
   
   
5. Teach and require idiomatic expressions.
   It's a sad fact about general proficiency guidelines and about the AP that the difference between one level and the next can come down to one single phrase - an idiomatic one. Three years ago the one student who passed said she went in determined to use the phrase "vale la pena." Honestly, she was the most proficient student in the class but I wouldn't be surprised if it made the difference between 2 and 3 for her. Keep an idiomatic expression on the wall, once a week or every two weeks. Reward students when they use them. Do an activity that requires a particular one. Point them out in authentic texts. Realize, and help students realize, that language is idiomatic.
   
   
6. Do assessments that require extrapolating and synthesizing main points from multiple sources.
   A couple of years ago I did a KWLA presentation called Prompts with Power. It was about finding authentic sources and asking students to answer a question, orally or written, based on the sources. Teach students to draw their own conclusions after comparing and contrasting two other opinions. Or three. Similar or different, it doesn't matter, but it's a life skill -and an important one on the AP- to be able to look critically at what other people think and use those opinions to develop an informed personal one.

Perhaps it's good I had to write this here and not on #langchat - this is certainly more than I could have explained in snippets of 140 characters. Thanks for putting up with it.

Got the rubric!

After making my first new assessment description, I've finished the performance assessment rubric. It took a long time to make but hopefully it will be adopted for every assessment from 6-12 grades at my school. Again, I stole most of it from the great people at @JCPSWorldLang (with a special shout-out to @tmsaue1 for all the sharing they do over there). They got it all on one page, but I wasn't willing to put my text that small, or my document-creating abilities just aren't up to par. ;-) Thoughts?

New year, new units, new assessments

At last I've turned to working on my own classes (after looking at Spanish 1 all summer for our new teacher) and I'm (once again) re-doing my Spanish 3 units. This year I'm trying to make them more realistic. I've been heavily influenced on this by a particular #langchat last year on making assessments authentic. My assessments were fun, and used a lot of language, but didn't have a whole lot to do with what students really would do with language.

So, back to the drawing board. I've come up with the assessments for Unit 1 (titled "El esparcimiento") and just did the assessment description for interpersonal writing. What do you think?

(Of course I have to give a shout-out to @JCPSWorldLang, from whom I stole almost completely the format for this.)

Proficiency & tacos

photo by Steven de Polo

So, about informing our students on proficiency.

One of the great ideas that came from that PD I went to was this 'taco' activity. It's designed to be done in the first days of school, preferable on the first day unless your first day is taken up with 'administrivia.'

Divide students into four groups, or tell them to divide themselves into four groups.

Tell students that you want them to tell you what a taco is, in English. You can choose any other common object or activity, such as the circus. For the first group, tell them that they can only use individual words to talk about the taco. In the second group, they can use phrases. In the third group, they can use simple sentences. In the fourth, they can use descriptive language in compound sentences joined by transition words like 'next' and 'also.'

When students use their 'proficiency level' to describe the taco, assign the proficiency labels to what they have done. Talk about which description gives the best idea of what the object/activity really is and why that level should be a goal. We also discussed having students write on large chart paper their descriptions, so that you can put them up on the wall. Then you can post on the chart 'novice low' and 'approaches expectations' and 'C' or whatever your assessment feedback language will be, and the students can have a visual reminder all semester or year of what exactly your expectations are.

Several teachers mentioned that this activity gives students a real idea of how accessible language is and gives everyone in the room a realistic view of where they could be at the end of the level. For the group of teachers I was with, their expectation is Novice High at the end of level 1 and Intermediate Low at the end of level 2 (they haven't done level 3 yet).

I thought this was a great way for students to be introduced to proficiency levels and get away from the vague 'here's a list of units we may or may not finish this year'-type goals I've done before. What do you think?

Proficiency levels shouldn't be a secret

photo by SamikRC

I had a wonderful PD opportunity last week to sit in with the truly vanguard Jefferson County Public School world languages department. They have spent at least the last two years developing communicative, proficiency-based, performance based units, assessments, and rubrics at levels 1 and 2 for Spanish and French. I have been so inspired by them that even though I put in a lot of work mapping out our Spanish 1 and 2 last summer (which I don't even teach-I was doing it for a new teacher), I have realized how disorganized, unstructured, and not-proficiency-based it was and I'm doing it all over again, even more deeply, for our (third in three years) new teacher.

One of the big questions of the week was this: How do we inform our students about proficiency levels, and keep them informed?
What, you mean my students are supposed to know what these are? Before about a year or two ago, I didn't know what they were. But it makes perfect sense. Proficiency levels shouldn't be a secret; they should be incredibly clear to everyone: students, parents, teachers, administration. So how do we inform them? My answer is fairly basic - I pushed my students to try to sustain the past tense in order to cross the barrier from Intermediate to Advanced, because that's what the ACTFL (past) president Eileen Gliesen said to do in a workshop I went to. And I made proficiency-based very detailed rubrics. That's about it. And you? How do you inform them?