Well, my attempt at posting more this Fall was an epic fail thanks to…
1. My flights and layovers during my trip to Spain were not productive due to being extremely sleep deprived! We traveled for over 24 hours on our trip home and it took several days to readjust to the time zone back in the EST!
2. I made it roughly 2 weeks after my fall break before I tested positive for Influenza A which was really surprising because I got my flu shot and Covid booster at the same time in September. This flu strain was worse than any Covid that I have ever had and I still have a lingering cough over 2 weeks later.
The best thing that happened to me in October was that I finally got to go to Spain!!!! It had been 6 years since I had set foot in the country and it was way too long of a separation. I had a fantastic trip and there are so many things that I should be blogging about but have very minimal time. If you want to see some highlights, head on over to my Instagram to get daily overviews of what we did each day and some do’s and don’ts of Madrid.
October was a really fun time in class because we got to discuss DDLM which is my absolute favorite! My kids made shoebox Ofrendas and while we didn’t get to finish them due to an unplanned fog day before our school wide party, we still had a lot of fun working on them. I don’t think I will do these with my Freshman again, however. I found that my students didn’t have the right emotional understanding and connection to their projects this year and I think it might be because in the past, I taught many heritage speakers or learners who grew up making Ofrendas in their home and they were able to bring that into the classroom and help others who didn’t grow up with the tradition understand why it was so special to them. The population of students that I teach now does not have many, if any, heritage speakers besides our one exchange student who is actually from Spain and did not participate in DDLM. So, I think I may change our direction for next year so we are doing things for the right reason and holding a deeper respect for that cultural practice.
After I came back from being sick, my students did simultaneous presentations for the first time! This is something that I learned from Martina Bex and is written in many SOMOS units. However, I created my own spin off to be a bit more grammar focused because of the content I was teaching. My students were in the middle of an explicit grammar lesson (gasp….) about adjective agreement. This was because they were asking a ton of questions about why certain words (adjectives) changed spelling in different sentences and if those words meant the same thing when they were spelled differently. Thus, I dove into my Voces chapter 3 unit solely focusing on adjectives. My goal was for kids to learn how to answer the questions ¿Cómo eres? and ¿Cómo estás? about themselves and also answer the questions in the 3rd person about someone else.
In the simultaneous presentation, I scaffolded the activity into four sections. We did each section step by step and I never introduced more than one step at a time so as to not overwhelm them with instructions!
1. Answer the questions about yourself with 3 sentences per question to answer.
2. Create a Google slide for each sentence and ONLY add a picture to the slide to represent the sentence.
3. Present your slides to your group and record EXACTLY what they say. Give them feedback based on whether you heard them use correct adjective endings when they described themselves.
4. Do a horizontal conjugation (I didn’t call it that exactly because #bigwords) and put the sentences into the 3rd person. For this, I just asked the kids to use él está/él es or ella está/ella es when rewriting the sentences and to double check their adjective agreement.
The kids did a fantastic job with this!! I loved hearing them speak Spanish and also use their interpretive listening skills when recording their group member’s sentences. While it was grammar focused, I also believe that it was communicative in nature and moved us away from standard drill activities that were provided in Voces. The best part was that it was easy for me to assess each child and give them feedback along the way if they wanted it.
If you are interested in understanding more about what I did here and what materials I used, send me a DM or email!
I can’t forget to mention the biggest accomplishment of my life so far…….
I successfully purchased tickets to see Taylor Swift in Pittsburgh in June!!!!! If you are wondering how I managed teaching and buying tickets at the same time….well…..don’t ask LOL! Truly, the real MVP here is my bestie, Ashley, for being quick enough to snag our seats after being in the queue for 5 hours.
After Thanksgiving, we are moving into reading La Piñata de Renata by Craig Dexemple and I am really excited to dive into this book for the first time. The teacher’s guide is totally worth the money and it comes with a Canva presentation. I am going to share the Google doc of my lesson plans for the book next week but the links to the items that I purchased will not be available in the document, just how I decide to piece them all together and add in my own content. We are only reading a few chapters and I am saving the rest for later in the year when we talk about some of the cultural and thematic topics.
We are also starting SSR/FVR when we come back from break and my students will have 10 book options to choose from to do their sustained silent reading, plus some articles from El Mundo en tus manos and Revista Literal. Each day we so SSR, I will set a timer for 7 minutes and ask learners to start reading something. Once they finish, they will complete one of my FVR bookmarks to reflect on what they read. My hope is that they can have 1 bookmark a week for the rest of the school year and then reflect at the end of each quarter on what they read and if they were able to finish any of the books, and maybe what they will want to read next!
You can purchase my FVR bookmark in my TPT store HERE!
I hope to update you next week about our journey with La Piñata de Renata and what activities we do with that book. I hope everyone has a wonderful Thanksgiving and enjoys some well deserved rest!
