I am off to a great start of the year this year. It's nice to be at the same school for a second year because I already know a decent amount of the students, so it made learning names much easier this year! Phew!
Anyway, last year, at the beginning of the year, I was working with a new curriculum, new students, new colleagues, etc. and it was very overwhelming (but great!). I was not fully invested in teaching for proficiency at the beginning of the year, so I am still developing a lot of new materials because I do not want to use what I used at the beginning of the year last year.
I decided to give 7th and 8th grade a performance assessment at the beginning of the year to see where they were at, and I was very impressed by the students' work. It showed me that the students were really ready for new material, which is great. On the feedback form (rubric) that I use, there is a section for cultural knowledge. I noticed a HUGE lack of cultural knowledge from our students, which means there is a gap in our curriculum in both sixth and seventh grade. I am going to try very hard this year to look more at products, practices and perspectives, because I think that this is extremely important. We are not just teaching students to speak another language; we are teaching them to think in different ways. If we are not discussing cultural topics in the target language, then I think that we are missing a huge chunk of world language teaching.
The sixth graders are eating the language up, and it is making me so happy. We are working on the alphabet right now, and this year, I thought to have them look up Spanish words instead of spelling English words to me and the rest of the class. This has been a really nice advantage because the students do not know the words that the other students are spelling, so they HAVE to rely on the Spanish alphabet. For example, I used to have the students choose any word, so they might choose something like "football." When they spell that to the rest of the class, I used to notice that the other students would often have the word "football" already spelled out on their mini-white boards before the student finished because they figured out the word. This year, if they want to spell "football," they have to look up the Spanish word, and spell "fútbol americano" to the class. This is great because the students have to actually listen to the person spelling until he/she/they finish. Phew! I am happy to have solved that problem.
With the 7th and 8th graders, I have been able to get to know them using the target language. We did a language pledge in our department this year, and it basically states that the students' first attempt at speaking will always be in the target language. If this means they have to use baby talk like "me want pen," then so be it! It's much better than having them rely on English all the time. This has been great for getting the students to express themselves, but has also been a great reminder for me to stay in the target language as well.
I have heard of many language teachers using some type of item that the students have to keep on their desks for using English too much. Then, they have to get rid of it by catching someone else speaking English. I am sure that this works great, but I was worried that it would become a distraction and would get the students to focus more on who's speaking English and less on the lesson (but I could be wrong!). My colleague, Kate McGonagle, had a great idea, however. She is planning on doing it the opposite way. She is going to give her mini-Eiffel Tower to the student who speaks the most French. In other words, it's more of a reward. I think I am going to try to do the same, so I will let you know how it goes!
We are talking about food in 8th grade, and it is so interesting to see what their likes and dislikes are. We also discovered that a lot of the students in the class have very different eating habits, which really really really surprised me! It's nice to use the language to really discover things about each other.
I did a check for understanding that I really liked this year. So, basically, they had just learned some food items, but I did not believe they were ready to produce the language yet. I wanted to know if they were recognizing the words for certain items without having to produce them, so I played this game "what color do you associate with..." It was really interesting to see some of the responses, and it actually sparked some good conversation. For example, when I said (in Spanish) "what color do you associate with steak," most kids said "brown," but some added "pink" or both. It was an awesome way for me to see that they understood the word for "steak" without making them produce the word themselves.
All in all, I feel much more prepared this year, and I am SO happy. I really really love my job.
Thanks for reading,
Timothy
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