Shifting the focus in an introductory program

**Update** - 6/7/16 - Elena López has developed more resources to go with the story below. Click here to see them.

In my new position as Academic Coordinator, one of my roles is curriculum coordination for grades 7-12. Our middle school students get  Spanish A for a quarter and/or French A for a quarter. If they do well in those courses, they take Spanish 1 or French 1 in eighth grade. If they don't do that well, students take Spanish B for a quarter and/or French B for a quarter. In my opinion, the goal of the Spanish/French A and B quarter classes should be to give the students lots of comprehensible input and see how enjoyable Spanish/French class can be when there is communication happening.

The current curriculum consists of a variety of traditional "units": greetings, commands, the alphabet, numbers, days of the week/months/date, colors, school supplies and some other similar units. In my opinion, these units are not very communication focused, nor are they very interesting and/or engaging to students. Also, it is difficult to maintain that goal of 90% in the Target Language. Most of these topics can be integrated/embedded into the curriculum in a more meaningful, engaging way. So, I am working with the two middle school Spanish teachers with the goal of using more TPRS and CI to improve instruction and language acquisition. Both of these teachers are very open to the idea, but wanted to see it in action, so I am teaching their classes and doing a mini-unit in each class so that they can see TPRS/CI in action.

These are the reasons I am hoping that we move more towards TPRS/CI in our department:

• TPRS/CI is much more engaging to students.
• Differentiation is much easier and almost automatic with TPRS/CI, particularly with the use of technology, such as Textivate, which has such a wide range of activities.
• TPRS/CI is more communicative. Instead of learning the alphabet and how the language works, students are focusing on chunks of useful language and actually learning about the sound so of different letters in a more meaningful way.
• TPRS/CI allows the teacher and the students to stay 90% in the TL.
• Depending on the story, culture can be much easier to include in the curriculum. It is not an "add on," but rather part of the lesson.
• Grammar is not a focus, but students are acquiring/learning lots of it... without even realizing it.
• There is such a variety of activities that can be done with a story, including: listening and identify the picture, listening drawing, retelling with drawing, acting out the story, Kahoot, Textivate (put in order, gap fill-ins, etc.), question and answer, creating alternative endings, etc. 

So, my first demo lesson was three days long with an eighth grade Spanish 1 class. This class is "easy" to teach because these students are motivated, high achievers. I used Billy la Bufanda as the "story." Thanks to Carrie Toth and Elena López for creating the slideshow that I adapted here. You can see the mini-unit packet here, along with the "I can" statements and some links to Textivate, Quizlet and Kahoot activities. The mini-unit went pretty well, but I wish I had had more time. Student feedback was good, but some thought it was a bit childish (understandably).

My real test will be with the Spanish B students starting today. I will be teaching them for 5-6 days and using a story that I created using the music video for the song "Chau" by No te va gustar. The slideshow below and this unit packet explain what the goals are, what the unit looks like, and what the evaluación at the end of the 5-6 days is. The last page of the unit packet has my plan for each day that I am teaching this mini-unit.

I thought this story would be a good transition story to TPRS/CI because it still includes some of the traditional vocabulary that is taught in the school supplies unit, but hopefully students will acquire the vocabulary and structures in a much more meaningful, engaging, and interesting way. There is also room for a cultural comparison, as students will see an authentic resource: a music video from the Uruguayan rock band No te va gustar.

 (If you want to use this slideshow and adapt it or embed it, here is the link to make a copy)

I am by no means a TPRS/CI expert, but I think I have learned a lot this year, especially because of the shift I made in my Spanish 1 class. I completely ditched the textbook and went full TPRS/CI (here is the curriculum grid with resources linked - big thanks to Elena López and Amy Zimmer for all their resources and guidance). Hopefully, others can use some of these resources above to make the shift in the beginning levels!

Lo Sobrenatural: Cortometrajes

My last unit in my Cultura y Civilización course is called "Lo Sobrenatural," and it is a fun one with tons of fantastic resources. Big thanks to Kristy Placido who shared her Essential Questions, ideas and resources. And thanks to Elena López too for her slideshows!

During the end of the year, we have lots of interruptions with AP exams, field trips, and other things, and yesterday was one of those days when a third of the class was missing. I wanted to do something fun and light, but still related to the chapter. So, here is what we did:

Cortometrajes sobrenaturales:

• With a group of classmates, watch a cortometraje sobrenatural and write a summary, but leave out the ending.
• Read the summary to the class. Classmates will draw or act out what they hear. List any new vocabulary on the board.
• Don't tell them the ending.
• Classmates will predict the ending.
• Watch the cortometraje and see the ending.

Cortometrajes:

• Monstruo
• Knock Knock
• El Hoyo negro

This was a simple, fun way to keep them engaged and focused on our unit on a day when we were missing many students. Here are the summaries (not edited and/or corrected by me yet) that they wrote. I may even use their summaries with other classes in the future. 

Also, there are so many good cortometrajes (check out Elena López's pinterest boards here and here), this could be done with any type that has a twist at the ending.

César Chávez

At my school, we are in the process of moving away from our Realidades textbook units (with the vocabulary lists and specific grammar points) in Spanish 3 and moving towards more engaging, more culturally-related, more communicative units. One recent unit that we developed is one about César Chávez. The other teacher that teaches Spanish 3 has shown the César Chávez movie, but has not really done anything else with it. The movie is in English with a little bit of Spanish. To me, it seemed more like a social studies activity... valuable, but with very little Spanish! So, we decided to make a cultural mini-unit around the movie. Our rural New Hampshire students had never even heard of César Chávez. So I started by showing them this table, which shows the states that observe a César Chávez day: 

(*Note* According to a comment below, Wisconsin does not observe César Chávez day. But, according to this article in Time, it does. )

That got them interested and from there I introduced the Essential Questions, the "I can" statements, and the Evaluaciones for the unit.

Essential Questions for the unit (unit packet for students):

• Cuando hay mucha desigualdad en la sociedad, cómo puede cambiarla una persona?
• ¿Por qué son los movimientos sociales importantes dentro de un país?
• ¿Por qué es César Chávez tan importante?

"I can" statements for the end of the unit:

• I can understand spoken and written information about César Chávez. (slideshow) (slideshow for listening quiz and vocabulary quiz)
• I can read about César Chávez and identify the important parts of his life and his movement. (slideshow and Quizlet practice)
• I can describe the life of César Chávez, the movement he started, and why he was so important.

Evaluaciones:

• Formative: Prueba de vocabulario
• Formative: Prueba de escuchar - Listen to statements about César Chávez's life and identify which picture corresponds to each statement.
• Summative: Evaluación escrita - Answer the Preguntas Esenciales. You will be expected to use the information from the slideshow and the movie, and the vocabulary that you learn throughout the unit (here and here). You can prepare notes before the test and use them during the test.

With the help of Arianne Dowd's slideshow, I was able to start with an explanation his life and the importance of it. The words in red were "vocabulary words" that students wrote in the unit packet as they listened to me talk about César Chávez. I created two Quizlets to go along with the slideshow: one for vocabulary (Spanish to Spanish) and the other with the information in the slideshow. My students are big fans of Quizlet Live these days, so we played a few rounds of that. Students also did a write-draw-talk activity that is in the unit packet.

After spending some time learning about César, we watched the video below. We watched it a few times, once on .5 speed. It was amazing how much the students could understand! And just another way for them to see the importance of him.

Then, we had some more vocabulary (the other teacher created this list to go along with the questions) and played some more Quizlet Live. Then we watched the movie in parts and answered comprehension questions along the way. I bought the questions here.

Students did exceptionally well on the final unit assessment! Their writing was definitely in the intermediate range as they had a variety of tenses and were creating (messily) with the language. Also, many said how surprised they were that they knew nothing about him before this unit. And it was a nice break from our normal units. 

This was the "song of the week" that we had for the week. It is tangentially related :)