In continuing with my reflections of 2018, I felt it was important to share my most effective change to my teaching as well as my least effective activity.
I had a lot of positives this semester!
- I have had the same students for three and four years in a row, something that won’t likely happen in the future, and they have reached levels of understanding and use of Spanish that I never dreamed possible in this amount of time.
- We have gotten completely “off track” in multiple classes but stayed in Spanish… (who really won this one? The students who controlled the conversation or me for keeping them 100% in Spanish????)
- I met and was mentored by my intellectual idol, Dr. Stephen Krashen!!!!! A dream come true!
- I successfully presented at CI Midwest and at Indiana’s annual conference, IFLTA. And I strengthened bonds with friends Leslie Phillips and Christy Lade in the process.
- Did I mention that I met Dr. Krashen????
[I also had a few failures that you can read about here. Definitely not my best moments, but, hey! I am proud I survived and ready to move forward. :)]
Most Positive Change
MY single most important success came from a simple suggestion at iFLT from Kristy Placido. (If you are thinking of attending this summer, in sunny FLORIDA no less!!!, I highly suggest it.)
That success was: anchoring my curriculum with novels.
It seems so simple, really, to give your curriculum a solid foundation in reading – but I just hadn’t considered doing it before last summer. I added FVR several times each week and we are tackling three class novels. This gives my lessons a focus that was previously missing. I am not particularly strong at creating my own materials to use in class so we went from Movie Talk to Movie Talk to Embedded Reading to music… all without a solid connection. As such, we learned a LOT of targeted vocabulary but not a lot of content. I was committed to using high frequency words, so the vocab has carried very nicely throughout their years with me. This year, though, we are rocking the content! What I lack in original material creation skills I make up for by seeing connections and synthesizing the amazing materials of others.
In Spanish 3, we have studied global issues of poverty and pollution in the oceans with amazing materials from Martina Bex, Carrie Toth, Kara Kane Jacobs, and Kristy Placido. You can read more about how I set up my semester here.
I have noticed some unexpected benefits from all this reading:
- Student writing is more focused and complex.
- Students spell better.
- Students have more to say!
- Student vocabularies are expanding (just like Dr. Krashen says they will!!).
Least Effective Activity
While I had amazing success with my level 3’s, somewhere along the way, I got lost with my level 4’s. For some reason, we actually started practicing for the STAMP proficiency test they will take in the Spring. For some strange reason, and I can’t even imagine why I thought this because I KNOW BETTER… but at the end of the semester, we read some really difficult texts in the name of preparation for “the test.”
Complete waste of time.
PLEASE DON’T EVER DO THIS!
The frustration level was up and engagement was down. Hmmm… I wonder why? (She says sarcastically). Up to this point in their Spanish lives, they had only experienced leveled readers that they were very well prepped for. What was I thinking? I can only claim momentary insanity (that, sadly, lasted several weeks).
There you have it. My most effective and important change as well as my most “facepalm” moment. What did you implement this semester that was really effective for you? Is there a class activity that you wish you hadn’t completed?
