Escritura (Writing Process)

Been struggling all year with writing in my Spanish 5 class.  How do I get kids to write without compromising themselves or second guessing their linguistic abilities?  Without cheating?  What is cheating?  Do we decide together?  Do I tell them?  Do I require drafts?  Only assign writing in class on paper?

I have toyed with all those things and just today, I think it is finally going well.  Last Friday before break they wrote collaborative one-act plays about two sides of the same person.  (Based on She and Ella in Coser y Cantar by Dolores Prida).  They were all in a circle and in groups of three, each group had two minutes with they play, then they had to pass it on and work on another.  I think in 45 minutes we wrote 4 plays, as a class.  They were a little irreverent (okay-- a lot irreverent, but it was the last day before vacation), but it was fun, and funny, and we were all working together and most of us were writing. 

Then today they started work on their individual projects.  Same idea:  a one act play with two charachters representing two sides of one person.  We made a rubric together then they each began work on a google doc.  They had to invite another spanish speaker (someone in the class or elsewhere) and me.  So while the wrote, I looked over their progress and sent them little notes in the chat feature, or made some collaborative edits and could see their progress as they were writing. 

Another feature we have added is that all words that they look up, or use a translator to find, need to be in red, and then they have to put a definition of the word, in Spanish, at the end of their work.  This seems to be going well too and then we can use the lists as learning opportunities for the rest of the students when we do the peer reviews.  That will be next week.  Then they will perform their plays.  I wonder if they will let me video them?!

Last Minute Changes

I teach two sections of the same class and for better of for worse, I often make adjustments to my lesson plan for the second class based on what didn't go as I hoped in the first.  Yesterday, the first day back from Thanksgiving,  we were starting a new unit.  The first thing we did was to talk about what the date was and then draw a calendar on the board so that kids could get a good look at the time they have between now and the final exams in January.  This is a great warm up for kids because the have a good handle on days of the week and numbers and thing like "Navidad" can be explained by singing a few seconds of "Feliz Navidad".  I was reminded of the value of spending some time on this time management activity when a student said, earnestly, "We have exams after break?"  Then the sophomores or juniors had a quick chance (in English) to talk about exam period, conference day, all the ins and outs of this time of year.  It is a good opportunity for the upperclassmen to demonstrate leadership in the classroom.

Then we were looking at some new vocabulary about things we like to do for fun.  Coming back from break is a great opportunity to talk about this.  So we talked about "Mi restaurante favorito es. . . " and "Mi película favorita es. . . "  Then with that understanding the could catch on to the drawings of the place vocabulary (restaurante, café, cine, etc. . .).   But in my first group,  they were a little flat at this point; too much going from kid to kid and teacher directed repetition.  By the time we were doing some activities as a class I found myself cold calling a kid who wasn't paying attention just to "catch" him.  (I apologized to him after class-- felt terrible.)

So for the second class I tried to get them out of their seats more, duh.  After doing the calendar warm-up, I had them break into groups and draw the different places on the board.  Then as a class we talked about each one, with some prompts

• ¿Qué haces en un resturante?  Yo como. 
• ¿Qué es tu restaurante favorito? In and Out es mi resturante favorito. etc. . .

When they all had a chance to say something in this structured setting (I think all of them?) we turned it into a game.  We broke the class into 4 groups and then I described a situation (all in Spanish, of course) and they had to send a runner to the "place" that was drawn on the board where the situation was taking place and the first team to slap the "place" got a point.  It was a way better way of engaging with the material and they got practice listening for key words or cognates that would give them a sense of meaning.

Guess I will try this in my first class today.

It can't be "JUST BORING"

Last week I had the pleasure of seeing Sir Ken Robinson speak to the Schools of the Future Conference here in Honolulu. His talk was engaging, funny and thought provoking, per usual. One of my favorite moments came after his formal presentation when he was answering some questions.

He told a story of his daughter who struggled with French in high school. In a meeting with the teacher Ken and his wife were told that their daughter was acting bored and checked-out in class. Ken the suggested to the teacher that, perhaps. . . maybe. . . the class was boring. Of course the teacher went on the defensive and suggested that he would have to agree that there are some elements of learning a foreign language that are "just boring", but essential. (Verb conjugations, various rules of grammar, spelling etc. . . the list could go on and on.)

He responded (or so the story went), "Well, no, I guess we don't agree on that. I don't think that anything has to be boring. If you think school French has to be boring, maybe you should consider another profession." He went on, "Imagine if you, a French teacher, devoted to teaching French, think that something in your class is boring, how would the students feel who might not even be convinced yet that they like French?" Poor teacher, but what a great message for language teachers all over the world.

That is a great story for language teachers to think about. We often say things like: "You just have to memorize this." Or "just learn this." How positively unhelpful to our kids. It is our duty to find meaning and relevance in EVERYTHING that we do, not just the easy and "fun" stuff.

Here is a recent animation of another of Sir Ken's talks. (I showed this to my classes this week):

Dear Students

Queridos,

I hope you will be and do your best, not just in my class, but in life. Your talents amaze and surprise me every day. Your generosity, energy and enthusiasm for the work that we do inspires me to try to challenge you. You inspire me to teach and learn from you with kindness and care. When you stumble, I hope to help you get back up and try again. When you succeed, it is my deepest joy to watch you soar. When things are hard, I hope you will tell me. When things are too easy, I hope you tell me that too.

I hope you speak Spanish sometime in your life (today, tomorrow, in ten years) and feel glad that you can communicate something that is meaningful to you in a way that can be shared. And if you don't remember any Spanish, that's okay, because an easy and kind heart will help you get by in any environment and culture. Be the good people that you are. You are meaningful to me.

Un abrazo,

Señora