I do have one class that allows me quite a bit of flexibility. This is a Junior High Class that I teach for a semester (Aug-Dec & Jan-June). For the first semester, I decided that I would carry out the same lessons that I did for Spanish 1. This did not go so well. My students were confused most of the time, I was confused why they were confused, and we got ahead of ourselves. So, this semester, I decided to implement new strategy.
Basically, I got to thinking: What was it that allowed me to develop proficiency when I studied abroad in Valencia? Was it the vocabulary classes that I took? Was it the translation class that allowed me to meticulously mull over every word of a text? Yes, of course those aspects of my study abroad experience helped, but they weren't the driving force of my proficiency. I know you're begging to know what it was. I bet you could guess. It was everyday conversation. It was in the hard questions that my host mother asked me about living in the United States. It was in the easy questions that my host dad asked me about my day. It was in the questions that I asked them about their everyday lives.
My proficiency developed when I asked and answered questions.
Hmm, Hmm, Hmm. Now how the heck do I mimic that with my wonderful, sometimes crazy Junior Highers??
I decided to make a list of questions. I created a list of 25 common questions (though a lot of these are duplicates - asking the same question in the tú and usted form) that someone might ask a Penpal or someone they were getting to know. Some of them include:
- ¿Cómo eres tú?
- ¿Cómo estás tú?
- ¿De dónde eres tú?
- ¿Qué te gusta hacer?
Although this was a tough decision, I decided to stick with just asking questions to a single person (tú or usted) and not to a group of people (vosotros or ustedes) about someone else (él, ella, ellos, ellas). Given the time and resources I had, I decided that would maybe be too much to teach in such a short amount of time.
For the first time in my teaching career (lol - 7 months), I was teaching students how to have a conversation in Spanish instead of teaching them how to analyze the grammatical structure of Spanish verbs and sentences. WHAT?!
And guess what? It's working. They are speaking Spanish.
My Junior High students are able to ask these questions and provide good, solid answers. Of course, they don't know how to say "I am the most wonderful person in the world; come to me to acquire all knowledge." But they can describe themselves, tell how they're doing, say where they're from, give the date, day, month, and season, etc. (AND IT'S ONLY MARCH... MWAHAHAHA).
Something fun that I did with this was create a document (Shown in the picture at the top of this blog post) that allows students to take notes as we discover the meanings and answers to the "Essential Questions," or "Las Preguntas Esenciales." This document also allows them to self-evaluate. At the time of learning the question, they can fill in the percentage of their understanding of the question. Then, after we've repeated it (which we have done A LOT), they can change their percentage! It's pretty fun, and they seem to enjoy it (as much as a Junior High student can enjoy a Spanish class).
You can find Las Preguntas Esenciales at my Teachers Pay Teachers store! (It's only $1!)
The KEY component to teaching this is that I spend 10 minutes MAX teaching the question and some possible answers, and then they spend 30-40 minutes practicing asking and answering the questions in some capacity. Usually I make a speaking activity that looks like this, but sometimes I also incorporate a memory game to encourage memorization of words or a fun Go Fish game.
Thanks, as always for reading. TEACH ON!