The Flamingo, Listening, and Culture

Hola hola:

The Spanish Flamingo:

This year has been absolutely incredible so far. As I stated in my last blog post, I started a new thing where I pass a flamingo around the room to students who are going above and beyond to speak Spanish in the class. This has been such a great motivator for students to speak the target language in the class.  I was worried about implementing this with the sixth graders because they have such limited language skills at the beginning of the year, but they are finding amazing ways to communicate in Spanish. A lot of them have been saying things like "Señor Chávez, ¿computadoras? ¿Sí o no?" "Mr. Chávez, computers? Yes or no?" I have never had students speaking this much Spanish in my classes, and it is causing them to pick up on more. I highly recommend this.

Interpretive Listening Assessments: 

As I may have mentioned in this blog before, I always have the students keep portfolios that help them see their progress throughout the year and from year to year. As I was looking at student portfolios, I realized that interpretive listening was a huge gap in my teaching. I was using some videos and songs and doing tiny activities, but I was never really giving students feedback on their listening skills. So, I decided to make that my goal this year; I want to develop more listening assessments.

Having written down this goal was very inspiring for me, so I already developed one using the song "Puerto Rico" by Jerry Rivera. I used the ACTFL template for interpretive assessments (which I had already used many times for reading assignments) and I made some tiny adjustments to gear it more towards listening. I used the assessment with my 7th graders, and I was so happy with the results. The students did very well, and they picked up on much more than I expected! I still have some concerns about how I did the Key Word Recognition and Supporting Details, so I am very open to ideas. Any world language teachers willing to share some listening assessments that you have developed? I love having the students make inferences, cultural comparisons, etc. but I am not completely convinced that my Supporting Details and Key Word Recognition sections are the best that they can be.

Culture in the Classroom:

I am also trying very hard to focus more on culture in my classroom with regard to products, practices and perspectives this year. It is clear to me that we have not done enough of this with our students.  I am going more in depth with my students about Tapas this year, and I am already so happy. It feels like it gives my teaching a purpose when we can make cultural comparisons, and I find that this is the stuff the students get the most out of. When I ask my students from last year about Puerto Rico, it seems like they haven't forgotten anything! I think it gives them more context to what they are learning. Whatever it is, it works, and it is great for me to do more research about other cultures!

I am still falling more and more in love with my job every day. <3

Gracias por leer,

Timothy