What I Did When I Really Missed the Mark

These past few weeks have been hard ones. I gave my seventh grade students a writing assignment, and one class absolutely soared. I was in absolute shock at their writing ability. Some of these students already started to reach the intermediate level. For those of you who are not world language teachers, my mom recommended that I do a better explanation of what a novice learner looks like versus an intermediate learner. To help, here is a link to an infographic that I give my students to help them understand it.

I was so happy after reading these assessments; there was so much cultural knowledge tied in with their own opinions of Puerto Rico. I felt like super teacher.

Then, I read the same assignment that I gave to my other seventh grade class. I have never ever seen such a gap between students who are supposed to be at a similar level. Now, we know that there are individual differences for language learners in all languages. However, these differences were way too big for me to ignore. A colleague reminded me that these students are very different and are in a very different environment. I certainly understand that, but I was still feeling very very discouraged. I felt like crying, screaming, etc, and I did not know how to address this with the students.

I sat the students down, asked them to close their eyes and be honest. I asked them to raise their hands if they felt they put a lot of effort into the writing. No one raised a hand. When I asked if they put zero effort into it, the majority raised their hands. That actually made me feel better. Instead of getting angry with them, I decided to make them help each other. I did what I learned at the ACTFL conference this year, and I had the students form columns and write an opening line on their own. Then, they got into groups and picked things that they liked from each person's opening. Then, they got back into columns and write one tiny paragraph on their own with a focus on something they wanted to see in Puerto Rico, the definition of that place and then their personal opinion of that place. They returned to groups and had to give each person in their group feedback onto what they could add to make the paragraph better.

About a week later, I gave them the same writing assignment on their own unannounced. They did SOOOO much better. Mind you, they had practice with the prompt, but I believe that that's what this class needed. The issue wasn't so much the Spanish but rather basic writing skills. Once they knew how to set it up, they did much better. Fingers crossed that they do better on the next writing without any practice!

I also came across an issue with some of my sixth graders on a quiz in one of my classes. They recently learned how to express things that they have to do, which was very easy to teach communicatively. I realized, however, based on this quiz, that I did not give the students enough input with the "Ustedes (you all)" form of the verb. Since I do not give them paradigms, enough input is essential if I have any desire for them to acquire the language. To clarify, input basically means that they have to hear it and see it enough to be able to use it.

Quite often, I give all the students whiteboards and have them make guesses about me and other students, which ends up causing them to need to use the word "ustedes (you all)." I did not do that this much with this material because I feared that it was getting boring for them. It turns out that I was wrong. I sat the students down and asked them why that section of the quiz was so difficult, and they pretty much told me exactly what I thought. "We did not really use that very much." They also told me that they wished we had done the whiteboard activity because they said it really helps and is fun! Who knew?!

Now, we have moved on to stating what they can and cannot do. This has raised a question for me: we world language teachers often teach ar, er and ir verbs separately. If we are teaching communicatively, should we be separating language like that? I'm not so sure. If the students want to use an er verb to communicate a message, then they should be given the tools to do so. We, as teachers, should not always be saying "oh, you'll learn that next year." If our hope is for the students to be able to communicate, then we need to let them communicate what they actually want to communicate in that moment (within reason).

Trying to Make Non-communicative Topics Communicative

Hola:

As you may know if you have spoken with me or read my earlier blog posts, I have really had a tough time with the curriculum for the eighth graders at my school. There's a lot in there that does not necessarily relate to a classroom. Let me explain what I mean by that:

Something with which I have been struggling a lot is the topic that I think appears in nearly every world language classroom: the restaurant. This is tough for me because I really want my class to always be real and, unfortunately for me, my classroom is not a restaurant. I really struggled with this from the get-go this year. We were pretending that the classroom was a restaurant.  The problem I now see with that is that the students know the classroom is not a restaurant, and they start to view it as language practice; "my teacher wants us to pretend that the classroom is a restaurant so that we can learn this vocabulary/grammar." That really goes against my desire to make the language real and have as communicative of a classroom as possible.

I have been thinking about it, though, and I believe that there are ways to give the students the skills to be successful in places like a restaurant without pretending like the classroom is a restaurant. Phrases like "may I have...?" are phrases that can be used in the class without having to pretend to order something. One thing that I did this year that I liked was having the students guess each other's food preferences. That was fun because we were learning about each other, but next year, I will try to make a greater task attached to it.

I was also struggling with the sports vocabulary because it was soooo non-communicative. At the recommendation of a colleague--shoutout to Lauren Hayes--I decided to have the students start doing the best that they could to explain the rules of a sport. What I found was that, when the students tried to explain the rules, they came across vocabulary that they really wanted to use. When they came across something that they couldn't say, I told them to work around it and just jot down what they wanted to say. Toward the end, we worked as a class to communicate the messages they wanted in the target language. As we have continued to do this, I have been really impressed by the students' abilities to circumlocute and explain things using their limited language ability.

If there is one thing I have learned this year, it is the importance of staying up to date on the research in language acquisition and language teaching. Right now, my Amazon wishlist is a bunch of books about language acquisition because I just find it so fascinating! My love of learning about language acquisition has given me an even greater love of teaching. I really look forward to learning more and challenging myself, and hopefully I will soon find more teachers who understand language acquisition and proficiency to help me grow as an educator.