Hola, hola 🙂
I am crushing this whole “1-2” posts a month thing right now and I have been itching to get this one out because I get to talk about and share my favorite project idea I have ever had…..ever!
This project was designed for a Spanish 2+ classroom and contains MANY scaffolds. I have ideas to rework it into something similar on a different topic for my Spanish 1 students to do in May, so stay tuned 🙂
My Spanish 2 classes were working through the Somos 1 Unit 24 plans that were recently released about ecotourism in Costa Rica. While the plans were packed with great readings and high-quality activities, I wanted to go more in-depth into ecotourism and sustainability. I wanted to use more authentic resources and videos to immerse my students in Costa Rica. The readings in the unit were interesting, but my students wanted to learn more about the ecotourism activities that were most intriguing to them like ziplining, exploring waterfalls and volcanos, and fun places to stay. Ultimately, we just needed something different that worked better for us.
As I was brainstorming what I could do, I got the weekly S’more update from our literacy coach, Amy, and she shared a great way to structure a writing assignment for students. I asked her if she would help me assemble something for my students. That next day, Amy was in my room and we got to work. What started as a simple Instagram post assignment, ended up being a robust writing project where students become bloggers and craft an ecotourism itinerary that was centered around sustainable activities.
A HUGE thank you to Amy for helping me navigate this project and for helping me think it all through.
Day 1 (half a class period)
To introduce the project, I told students that their class was now a blogging company centered around creating travel itineraries for different countries. I went over the assignment description and then I told students that tomorrow was their first official company meeting. We assigned roles for the discussion the next day. Students also looked at my exemplary writings to help them guide their projects.
Day 2 (full period)
Students had their first company meeting where they had to decide on different aspects of their project. They needed to form groups of 2 and the total number of groups = the total days of their itinerary.
Then, they had to decide where they were going and how many days to spend in each area. In hindsight, I should have provided some sentence stems and sample questions to the discussion director to have this conversation occur in the TL as much as possible.
Final Project
I wrongly assumed that my students had experience creating a Google Site before. I figured that since they were COVID-19 kids and had been 1-1 for a bit, surely a Google Site project had happened at one point. WRONG! I had to give a brief tutorial on how to use a Google Site for them to put their final project there. Students appeared to enjoy exploring how to create their itinerary page and I enjoyed watching their creativity.
I provided a comprehensive list of general feedback to learners, thanks to my friend Betsy who shared this tool with me! According to Hattie, effective feedback has a large effect size of .7. I tailored feedback specific to each group on their Google Docs and addressed common feedback in whole-group instruction. Their final drafts reflected edits, what they learned, as well as common mistakes that I would expect at their proficiency level.
Here are some fantastic examples of my learner’s work!
***Due to privacy concerns, I cannot share the Google Site link, so images will have to do 🙂
I have about 10000 thoughts about this project, but I think it is best that I put those in a separate post. Ironically, the same week I was drafting my blog post, was also when the WL social media community embarked on a discussion about doing projects in class. You all know I love to shake up conversations and offer honest opinions, so I’ll do that soon 😉
Ultimately, I loved this project and watching my students craft their writing. Projects like this can ultimately make learners want to reach for a translator because it doesn’t feel manageable. A fault of mine in the past would have been to only show authentic itineraries that weren’t comprehensible and they would assume that they didn’t have the skills to do it.
Another fault I have made in the past would be that I didn’t scaffold projects properly. Working with my literacy coach and with the template she gave allowed me to really think about what I needed to give them in order for them to be successful. They need these scaffolds in their ELA classes and they most definitely need them in Spanish.
I gave them a sample itinerary that I created about the Galapagos. I used core vocabulary and structures that I knew they could reproduce. I also provided samples of their pre-write and rough drafts. I didn’t leave room in the equation for confusion on the expectations and I also modeled how to craft each one on their own.
I strongly believe this project was successful because they received feedback and mini-lesson corrections about their writing. Here is what my feedback form looked like that everyone received.
