If I Still Had To Use A Textbook & Preparing for Mitten CI
As I sit here preparing my presentation for Mitten CI, I can't help but reflect on how far I've come in my teaching practices in the past few years.
Two years ago, I was still using a textbook to guide my instruction. I was giving my students vocabulary lists to memorize, and while I tried my best to make those activities "fun," it was really pretty miserable for them (and me). I also would use the grammar activities in the textbook and teach the grammar "rules." Again, I tried to make it as interesting as possible, but it was also pretty miserable for everyone involved.
That's why I'm SO fired up to give my presentation on "Using the Textbook to Develop Proficiency" at Mitten CI. You guys, if I had known these incredible strategies years ago, I could have made my textbook units SO much more compelling and comprehensible for my students. It also would have made my transition from textbook to CI much less stressful! There are so many ways to weave communicative activities like card talk, picture talk, and stories into a textbook.
For example, I'm going use my old textbook (which shall remain un-named! ha!) unit that focused on shopping, bargaining, and jewelry/items you'd find at a market. The grammar focuses were stem-changing verbs and indirect object pronouns. So here's the short version of what I would change now if I were still using my textbook and had to teach to a textbook style assessment.
These are just some rambling thoughts tumbling through my brain right now...
Vocabulary: use a "chuck it bucket" to narrow down essential/meaningful words (I'd do this before starting the unit). Then I would probably set up a quizlet or quizizz that the students could practice on (voluntary) at the beginning of the unit of the smaller list. I would use the vocab/verbs in context to make it more meaningful. I wouldn't just put "costar - to cost" I would put "Cuesta demasiado - It costs too much" or something along those lines.
Picture talk: I would have students send me pictures of a gift they were given or gave, pictures of the strangest gift they ever received, pictures of a piece of jewelry they/their parent owns... then I would project these, discuss the pictures, and play a guessing game to see if the class could guess who it belongs to after the discussion... I would also intentionally try to use the verbs from our vocabulary and use indirect object pronouns throughout my questioning/discussion.
Card talk: I could also do card talk to have the kids draw a picture of something they've had to return to a store before, their favorite store, etc and then have a whole group discussion on those. I hold up the card and walk around the room while I ask questions. Sometimes when I do card talk, I am able to spin wild stories based on the student drawings or responses. For example, I did card talk once on what my students want to be when they're older, and someone drew a dog... so it turned into a discussion that this person wants to become an animal and we discussed where they might live, what kind of dog they would be. Off topic? Sure. Compelling and a super long class discussion with rich input in Spanish? YOU BETCHA. Totally worth taking the time? 100%!
Write and Discuss: Using my document camera (you could use a smart board, projector & Word/docs, or just your whiteboard), I would write and summarize what was discussed during the picture or card talk that was interesting or memorable in class. We would write it out like the story of our class. At the end I would read it to them, they could chorally translate it, they could volleyball read it to each other, or we could do any number of extension activities. I would also use this time to ask the students if they noticed anything about the way Spanish is written and take this opportunity to discuss indirect object pronouns (oh yeah! that "le" means it was given to him/her") etc.
Stories: I love stories and so do my students... especially when they are ridiculous and entertaining. I would come up with a short script trying to include and repeat vocab/grammar that is needed. I would do story asking (allow students to choose details of the story). Then I would have them illustrate it, act it out, or do any number of extension activities.
After all of that was said and done, if I had to, I would take some time to do some language study with the kids and teach them the "rules" or have a vocabulary game day (play quizlet live, quizziz, around the world, fly swatter game etc).
The idea is to give them as much exposure and time to make connections with the content before doing study of the language.
Assessing this? That's a huge can of worms that totally depends on your situation... I would choose to assess reading, listening, writing, and speaking if I could. I would NOT give vocab/grammar quizzes like I used to. I'll save more thoughts on assessment for another day! Feel free to drop a question below and I'll try to help you out.
Two years ago, I was still using a textbook to guide my instruction. I was giving my students vocabulary lists to memorize, and while I tried my best to make those activities "fun," it was really pretty miserable for them (and me). I also would use the grammar activities in the textbook and teach the grammar "rules." Again, I tried to make it as interesting as possible, but it was also pretty miserable for everyone involved.
That's why I'm SO fired up to give my presentation on "Using the Textbook to Develop Proficiency" at Mitten CI. You guys, if I had known these incredible strategies years ago, I could have made my textbook units SO much more compelling and comprehensible for my students. It also would have made my transition from textbook to CI much less stressful! There are so many ways to weave communicative activities like card talk, picture talk, and stories into a textbook.
For example, I'm going use my old textbook (which shall remain un-named! ha!) unit that focused on shopping, bargaining, and jewelry/items you'd find at a market. The grammar focuses were stem-changing verbs and indirect object pronouns. So here's the short version of what I would change now if I were still using my textbook and had to teach to a textbook style assessment.
These are just some rambling thoughts tumbling through my brain right now...
Vocabulary: use a "chuck it bucket" to narrow down essential/meaningful words (I'd do this before starting the unit). Then I would probably set up a quizlet or quizizz that the students could practice on (voluntary) at the beginning of the unit of the smaller list. I would use the vocab/verbs in context to make it more meaningful. I wouldn't just put "costar - to cost" I would put "Cuesta demasiado - It costs too much" or something along those lines.
Picture talk: I would have students send me pictures of a gift they were given or gave, pictures of the strangest gift they ever received, pictures of a piece of jewelry they/their parent owns... then I would project these, discuss the pictures, and play a guessing game to see if the class could guess who it belongs to after the discussion... I would also intentionally try to use the verbs from our vocabulary and use indirect object pronouns throughout my questioning/discussion.
Card talk: I could also do card talk to have the kids draw a picture of something they've had to return to a store before, their favorite store, etc and then have a whole group discussion on those. I hold up the card and walk around the room while I ask questions. Sometimes when I do card talk, I am able to spin wild stories based on the student drawings or responses. For example, I did card talk once on what my students want to be when they're older, and someone drew a dog... so it turned into a discussion that this person wants to become an animal and we discussed where they might live, what kind of dog they would be. Off topic? Sure. Compelling and a super long class discussion with rich input in Spanish? YOU BETCHA. Totally worth taking the time? 100%!
Write and Discuss: Using my document camera (you could use a smart board, projector & Word/docs, or just your whiteboard), I would write and summarize what was discussed during the picture or card talk that was interesting or memorable in class. We would write it out like the story of our class. At the end I would read it to them, they could chorally translate it, they could volleyball read it to each other, or we could do any number of extension activities. I would also use this time to ask the students if they noticed anything about the way Spanish is written and take this opportunity to discuss indirect object pronouns (oh yeah! that "le" means it was given to him/her") etc.
Stories: I love stories and so do my students... especially when they are ridiculous and entertaining. I would come up with a short script trying to include and repeat vocab/grammar that is needed. I would do story asking (allow students to choose details of the story). Then I would have them illustrate it, act it out, or do any number of extension activities.
After all of that was said and done, if I had to, I would take some time to do some language study with the kids and teach them the "rules" or have a vocabulary game day (play quizlet live, quizziz, around the world, fly swatter game etc).
The idea is to give them as much exposure and time to make connections with the content before doing study of the language.
Assessing this? That's a huge can of worms that totally depends on your situation... I would choose to assess reading, listening, writing, and speaking if I could. I would NOT give vocab/grammar quizzes like I used to. I'll save more thoughts on assessment for another day! Feel free to drop a question below and I'll try to help you out.
Great read, Kaitlin! Thank you for sharing your ideas. :)
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