How many of you start out year one talking about dates, numbers, the alphabet, colors, etc.? This blog post is about why I think that this practice should not continue in language classrooms.
I know that this post may ruffle up some feathers, so I want to start by saying these three things:
1. You are not a bad teacher if you do this.
2. Up until this year, I had done this.
3. This is my opinion.
My experience in the past:
In my few years as a language teacher, I have always started out the year with the concepts that I have mentioned above. But what does this mean? To me, it means that we are not really communicating much information about ourselves for at least the first month (maybe more) of school. It just seems like a loss to me because we are hoping to get our students to really start communicating as soon as possible, but how much can they really do with the date, numbers, and the alphabet?
Last year, I noticed that I wasn't really learning about my students in the target language until about two months into school because we start with those concepts mentioned above and then go to weather (which is communication but not communication about themselves).
Why is this a problem?
Well, for those of us who see the power in target language use by the students AND the teacher in the classroom, this is a huge issue because we are not giving our students tools to express much right off the bat. This makes it nearly impossible for the first few weeks of the language to be "full immersion."
The other problem is that we are spending a lot of time on a "unit" that really could just be an everyday routine. Why do we need to even do a unit on the date? Can't we just talk about the date every day and give students input that way?
In the past, I have always told myself that my classroom is like a kindergarten class, and that's what they start with in kindergarten, so it makes sense to start with that in a language classroom. But my class is NOT a kindergarten class (and even if yours is, I still don't think that this is what we should be starting with). Here's my thinking behind that: kindergarteners have already had years of exposure to the language. Kindergarteners go to kindergarten with some ability to communicate in their native languages. They know how to express their wants and needs, likes and dislikes, etc. So, starting with the date in kindergarten does make more sense.
Our students in Spanish 1 (in my case, 6th grade), do not usually have that language, so I think that that's where we should begin our Spanish 1 curricula.
What I did this year:
If you read my last blog post, then you know that I have been developing a lot of thematic units this year. My goal was to do it just for 8th grade, but it's just too good to only do with one grade.
Before beginning use of the target language in my 6th grade classroom, I spent the first few days talking about the various proficiency levels with regard to presentational skills. I wanted the students to understand the various levels; otherwise, my feedback on assignments is useless to the students.
It is important to start out with essential vocabulary for the classroom. This includes stating your name, answering how you are, etc. I don't think we can leave this out because we need to get to know our students, and knowing their names is essential.
After that, I started with useful classroom phrases to help the students express their needs. These phrases include things like: can I go to the bathroom? Can I go to the water fountain? I don't know. Can I have a pencil/paper/a pen? Can I go to my locker? I forgot. My computer is dead. How do you say...? Never mind. How do you spell...? Etc.
I think a lot of us do that, which is great. But I think there should be more. I have a circumlocution wall, and I want the students to know how to use it as soon as possible. As a result, this becomes the next part of our language acquisition process. We learn to describe things: It's an animal. It's a person. It's *insert color*, etc. Now, these things are on the wall all year, so as long as students can recognize what they mean, then that's the most important thing. They do not have to produce every single one of these yet by any means.
Now, this is where I used to go into teaching dates, numbers, the alphabet, etc. This year, however, I brushed that stuff aside, and taught the students how to express their likes and dislikes. For the first time ever, I had the students really talking to me about themselves in the first few weeks of school, and I was able to implement a Spanish only classroom MUCH sooner than in the past. And this does not just include "I like" and "I don't like." I just don't think that's enough. What about "I love," "I hate," "I kind of like," "I don't care about," etc.? Seeing where my sixth graders are at this year compared to last year is a HUGE difference--and I mean huge. I also learned A LOT about them, and they learned a lot about me from my input. My sixth graders actually call me "Señor Pepinillos" (Mister Pickles) this year because they learned early on how much I despise pickles. (I threw in the alphabet at the end of this unit, but I only spent a day or two using the letters because they picked up on them so quickly. And I did NOT teach them the alphabet by teaching the alphabet song this year, which is another thing I highly suggest.)
I had read in many blogs/heard at many conferences that people do not explicitly teach numbers. I never understood how that worked until I pushed this stuff to a later time. Finally, my students have acquired numbers in a much more authentic way. I give out group points, so they were exposed to them that way. We play quizlet live, so they were exposed to them upon entering the game code. There were so many times that I was using numbers in class without having to explicitly teach them.
Now come the thematic units. I won't get into the details of this thematic unit because that's not the point of this post, but I started a unit on the weather (but in much more detail than in the past). This has allowed me to teach about other countries and has given me the chance to use numbers again in a more realistic way. I had the students learn how to convert Celsius and Fahrenheit for the first time this year. This has required students to use numbers (obviously). Each day, they were assigned a Spanish-speaking country, and they had to state the date in that country (aha! I found a way to include the date later on in the year!), guess the weather in that country, look up the weather and temperature, guess the season based on the weather/location of the country, and state the time in that country to see the time difference. This unit requires A LOT of input (as does any unit).
There's a lot here, but it works out. I was able to teach dates, time, numbers and weather expressions in a meaningful way. This will mean that, later down the line, I won't have to spend much time teaching "time" because they have already used it. This will give me more time for more thematic units! We have kept a running list of the countries/territories and have marked the seasons for each after each lesson. At the end of the unit, students are to discover the different seasons for Central America, South America, etc. based on the information they have gathered throughout the unit.
Conclusion:
I think it's important to reiterate that I really do not think that you are a bad teacher if you do this, and you are welcome to disagree with me! I just think we have spent so many years following textbooks as if they were the curriculum that we haven't stopped to think about what's truly essential to our students' communication skills. It's important to be willing to make changes and try new things. I was nervous to not teach numbers explicitly this year, but I went for it, and I am really happy with the results.
On my end-of-term-one evaluations, all my sixth graders wrote that they felt that we talked about real things/people in class. This is the first year that I have ever gotten that response from sixth graders on this feedback form at the end of term one. They always used to write that they felt like we were not really communicating in class, so I think the students see the value in the language more if we teach them to talk about themselves sooner rather than later.
My amazing roommate, Megan Waring, reminded me today: "Don't ever feel the need to apologize for trying to be the best." I love this quote. On your road of curriculum development, there will be some rough patches with administrators, colleagues, students, etc. Just keep doing what YOU believe is best.
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