Workshops have a place in the World Language classroom!
I have had this post drafted for quite some time to share about my successes and learning curves in the workshop model, but life has been in the way…but in the best way. My husband and I adopted a beautiful fluffy orange cat named Ralphie in November and we are slightly obsessed (or a lot). I also celebrated my one year anniversary with Calico Spanish as the Communications Director. Lastly, we have traveled to see family and family has come to visit us which has filled my cup and plate to the top. And, now that I have this draft open in January…I contracted Covid and Christmas break was all about not touching computers and unplugging so maybe it wasn’t busy in the best way LOL! Here I am in 2022 with a hopeful wish that I will find the energy to be more consistent in writing and reignite my creativity.
Over the last two months, I have worked on establishing more of a workshop model in my classroom with the help of my school’s literacy coach. I first met with Amy, our coach, to discuss ways that our school could track data better in our social studies and world language classes. I also wanted to learn more about the workshop models that the English classes were implementing because I am an advocate for literacy lessons in ALL classes. I am a firm believer that EVERYONE teaches reading and writing, even if you teach math. I was a avid user of the workshop models in college and even presented on Writer’s Workshop with a professor at CSCTFL and OFLA in 2018. However, some time has passed since I first implemented these and I knew that there were new ideas out there that I wanted to learn about. I was THRILLED to work with a literacy coach at my school on this unit. Amy had great ideas and resources for me to look through to modify for Spanish. She also came and observed me and provided feedback as I needed it.
Not sure what a Reader’s workshop model is? The workshop model consists of mini-lessons, independent work, small groups, and sharing. A blog series is coming with more info on how I adapted these to work for my Spanish classes.
One of the first things that I loved about working with Amy is that everything was led by my goals for my students and she really pushed for me to look at my student’s strengths and build upon them as we moved through our curriculum. I don’t have a set curriculum for Spanish 2 and I am piecing things together, piece by piece. My goal was for my kids to read a novel in Spanish and I settled on the book Tumba by Mira Canion. It fell right around Day of the Dead and it was a perfect level for my kids.
Amy pulled together some resources for me to mull through and I settled on using the following mini-lessons in our workshop for Tumba:
Text Connections
Story Mapping
Decoding the text
During their independent reading time students worked on annotating the text and an independent activity to help them comprehend the text, as well as make the connections to the mini-lessons we did throughout the book. For text connections, I simply created a brief powerpoint to review this concept in Spanish and gave them a graphic organizer to help collect their thoughts and connections from the book. For story mapping, I used a pre-made story map graphic organizer from The Comprehensible Classroom’s Textivities bundle. Lastly, students practiced decoding the text by creating shrinking summaries to review the chapter groups that were assigned to them. I put all of these, plus some other options in a This or That style choice board to personalize their learning a bit. I was a little surprised that they all chose the same assignments regardless of the choice board.
You may be wondering what I did during independent reading and working time. Well, I was working right along with them by joining their groups and pulling small groups. I put my students into their groups based on their recent proficiency assessment that was given the week or so prior. I believe that working in a small group is really powerful because it allows you to make deeper connections with students and will allow you to really focus on their individual strengths. While it may be easier to focus on the gaps that need to be filled, I tried hard to see what each student could REALLY do with their full effort given. This also allowed me to track data with them.
Let’s actually dive into the data part. I think this is why I was motivated to meeting with Amy in the first place because my team needed to get a plan for collecting data in place. I asked Amy if she knew of the best way and it boiled down to the fact that there isn’t one right way to collect it, there are multiple ways. After deliberation, I settled on using a method that she saw in one of our middle school classrooms. Using a half sheets of paper, binder rings, and a hole punch, I created a sheet for each of my Spanish 2 students where I could keep notes and track some of their goals and milestones throughout the book. It was simple and one of the easiest ways that I could get the data down. Originally I wanted to use something on the computer but I found that it wasn’t working because it made my interactions with students feel disingenuous because I wasn’t completely focused on them.
As we worked through the book, I was becoming more and more impressed with my students’ annotations and their work in general. I think they learned a lot by reading this book and doing it in a workshop model. They were able to work at their own pace because I had prepped several chapters ahead of time. Doing a workshop creates a lot of prep work in the beginning but while it is actually happening, you find that you have the time to immerse yourself in the experience with your students and give them a more individualized experience.
The very last thing that we did was a final book project that I have written about before called the Netflix Book Project. I was really happy with the results on this and when I gave my semester feedback survey, a lot of students said that they were really proud of themselves for reading the book and completing this presentation which was a huge win in my book. Overall, I was really happy with how my first workshop of the year went and am really inspired to keep using it. Next up is a writer’s workshop in both Spanish 1 and Spanish 2! Tell me what you want to know more about Workshopping the Language Classroom.
