I’m finishing the year
with my Spanish 2 students (they are 8th graders and have had
beginning Spanish in 6th and level 1 Spanish in 7th
grade) by reading “La Hija del Sastre”. My classes, like everyone’s, consist of a very diverse group of students with
some able to read at a mid-advanced level and others who struggle at a
mid-novice level with their reading comprehension skills. Going into the
novel, I knew I was going to have to provide a lot of support in order to make
it comprehensible and valuable experience for my students.
I wanted to share my experiences in teaching this novel in the spirit of giving back (teacher bloggers have been my number one go-to resource for generating ideas) and also as a reflection exercise for next year.
Chapter 1
Day 1
I started the novel by
giving my students some information from Chapter 1, namely that the main
character learns about a secret her parents have, and asking them to draw a
personal connection to this bit of information. My warm up activity for the
first day was:
1. En capítulo uno de la hija del sastre, Emilia, el protagonista,
aprende que sus padres tienen un secreto. En tu familia, ¿tú tienes secretos
que no dices a tus padres o a tus hermanos? ¿Piensas que tus padres tienen
secretos? ¿Piensas que hay ocasiones cuando no es buena idea decir la verdad?
After sharing out from the
warm up activity- I sometimes do this simply by using equity cards or sometimes
I have students turn and talk to each other and then ask students what their
neighbors said- I introduced three new vocabulary structures for the chapter.
• Se convirtió: S/he
became
• Creció: S/he grew
• Sobrevivir: To survive
3. Again following Bex’s
formula for many of her units, I gave my students some translation sentences to
practice and followed up with personal questions.
4. Once we had our vocabulary
down I had my students complete a short writing activity. I had them think
about the warm-up activity and the vocabulary we had learned and to write a
short prediction of what they thought would happen in Chapter 1 of La hija del
sastre. This served as our exit slip and wrapped up our first class nicely.
Day 2
1. Warm-Up: Students did a
short translation using the vocabulary structures from the day before:
Jason creció en Washington DC durante las 60s. En DC habían
mucha gente que protestaban la guerra de Vietnam durante esta época (time).
Después de la secundaria, Jason se convirtió en soldado y fue a Vietnam.
Afortunadamente, Jason sobrevivió la guerra y regresó a DC.
2. Introduction of new
vocabulary: I wanted to pre-teach three more structures that I thought would be really
helpful not only in understanding Chapter 1 but also work in terms of facilitating
more in-depth discussion about the Chapter and it’s themes. I gave students the
following three structures:
• Ayudaba en
el taller: S/he helped in the workshop
• Pasaba mucho
tiempo: S/he spent a lot of time
• Habían
luchado: They/You all had fought / struggled
3. Practice: Like the day
before, we followed up the new vocabulary with some short translations and
practice questions. This go round, each time we arrived at a question I had
students turn and talk with their neighbors before calling on students to share
their answers.
Translations:
- La maestra ayudaba a los estudiantes en el taller de gramática.
- A.J. ayudaba a los jóvenes en el taller de guitarra clásica.
- Olivia y Alejandra eran mejores amigas y pasaban mucho tiempo juntas.
- Antes de convertirse en doctor, Enrique pasaba mucho tiempo estudiando.
- Los republicanos habían luchado contra General Franco en la guerra.
- Las mujeres habían luchado por el derecho de votar en este país.
Turn and Talk:
¿Has tomado un taller de arte, escritura, música? ¿Cómo te pareció? ¿Piensas que los talleres nos ayudan a aprender más o prefieres trabajar sólo?
¿Pasabas más tiempo estudiando en el grado sexto o el grado séptimo? ¿Has pasado mucho tiempo estudiando este año? ¿Piensas que pasarás mucho tiempo estudiando en la secundaria?
¿Piensas que a veces es necesario luchar por las causas? ¿Tus padres o familiares han luchado por una causa?
4. Reading: Finally, after
six new vocabulary structures, I thought my classes were ready to begin
reading. I put students in strategic pairs with students needing a lot of extra
support partnered with higher-level readers who were able and willing to
assist. I gave students the reading guide I had created (below) and had them
work together to read through Chapter one and complete the first page of the
guide.
Day 3
1. Warm Up: I had students
describe a picture using the six vocabulary structures from the past
two days. Students shared out from their writing as I checked off the
vocabulary structures, as they used them, on the board.
2. Review: I wanted to
begin the instruction with a review of what they had read from the day before.
So, I asked all students to take out their reading comprehension guides and we
began to review the characters by playing ¿Quién
es? (I wrote up a short description of each character
and the students had to tell me who each person is in the story).
3. Partner Review: Our objective for the class today was to write a summary of the Chapter one (both in order to demonstrate comprehension and also to practice writing) and I
wanted to give my students as much writing help as possible. I
asked students to form the same pairs as they did the day before when they were
reading Chapter one and I gave them Martina Bex’s “Los cinco elementos de un cuento” (an invaluable resource for writing summaries and demonstrating comprehension). Students were given about ten minutes to work
together to identify the elements. We reviewed them as a class before moving along to the writing activity.
4. Writing: The last
fifteen minutes of class students spent individually writing a summary of
Chapter one on their reading comprehension guides.
Day 4
One of the things I
struggle the most with in my classes is how to give effective, meaningful
feedback that improves learning. Grading is one of my least favorite activities
as a teacher but I know both from my own experience as a student and from
research, how valuable feedback can be and how essential it is to the learning
process. I have, however, run into several logistical hurdles when trying to
evaluate and comment on student work. First among these problems is: How can I
grade 120 writing prompts and do anything else including plan for lessons, eat, sleep, etc.? Also,
how can I get students to think about the feedback they’ve received and use it to
improve future work? I mean we’re talking middle school here. My students are
accustomed to seeing a check on work and shoving the work in the binder or
trash bin where it is never to be seen again.
This was what I was up against while planning today’s activity. How can
I use the summaries that the students wrote yesterday to not only review the
chapter’s events but also improve students’ writing ability?
I decided first of all not to
grade all of the student summaries. There was no way I could get it done in one night and I also believed that if I could involve my students somehow in the
evaluation process (instead of doing it all myself) they would be much more likely to internalize any feedback
they were given. I started by reading through the summaries to get a general idea of the
writing abilities in each class. I chose one summary per class that I thought
was accurate in terms of content but that embodied the types of errors that
were commonplace in that particular class. I then typed the summary up and
created both student handouts and PPT slide.
1. Warm Up: I had several
reading comprehension questions from the Hija del sastre Teacher’s Guide up on
the PPT and had students write their answers in complete sentences. As students
were working, I walked around the classroom reading students answers and giving
feedback to individual feedback to students.
2. I gave all students a
copy of the summary I had chosen for that particular class and projected the
summary on the whiteboard. I gave students about three minutes to read over the
summary. Then, I asked students to turn to their neighbors and
discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the summary (turn and talk). After about two minutes, I started to call on students to
share out from their discussions and as I wrote their commentary on the board next
to the projected summary.
3. I then asked students
to take out their Correction Guide for Written Work. I asked students to spend
two minutes identifying any mistakes they found in the first sentence and
assigning each mistake a number from the grid. (This activity could be done
individually or in pairs. Originally, we did it individually but I think in the
future I’ll do it in pairs just to make the lesson a bit more interactive.)
Then, as a class, we reviewed and re-wrote the first sentence correcting all
the identified errors. We repeated this process for the next two sentences.
4. Next, I gave students
about five minutes to read through and identify errors in the rest of the
summary. At this point there were about four more sentences. I walked around
the class looking at student work and helping to direct the process where I
could. Then, I handed out my version of the corrected summary and had students
compare their work with mine.
5. Finally, I had students
re-write the summary making the corrections to the errors we had indicated.
Things I’ll do differently next time:
In step 2, I ‘d give
students questions to help structure the commentary on the student summary. For
example:
·
¿El autor falta información importante en el resumen?
·
¿Ha incluido todos los elementos de un cuento (los
personajes, conflicto, escenario, etc.?
·
¿Los errores lo hacen el resumen difícil de leer?
·
¿Cuáles tipos de errores son lo más frecuentes?
After students have
re-written the summary correcting the indicated errors, I’d like to have
students exchange papers and correct each other’s writing.
Day 5
I wanted to give my
students some background on the Spanish Civil War and, since we’d had a lot of
direct instruction this week, I wanted to provide an opportunity for some
cooperative learning, so I created a Jigsaw Reading activity from the Spanish
Civil War Reading in the Teacher’s Guide.
1. Warm Up: Not feeling
particularly creative this week, I did a repeat of Wednesday’s Warm Up using
some additional vocabulary structures. Students described another image (from the internet, of course) using the following words:
Trajo
Habían peleado
Sobrevivir
Pasaban mucho tiempo
2. I split students into five different groups and gave
each group a different section of the reading as well as comprehension
questions for all sections of the reading. I gave student groups five minutes
to read their section (out loud) and answer the questions that corresponded to
their section. As they were completing this activity, I gave one person from
each group a laminated gold star.
3.
After five minutes, the person with the star rotated to the nearest group in a
clockwise direction. That person was responsible for explaining what their
section was about and helping their new group to answer the corresponding comp
questions. The group, in turn, then had to explain to their new member their
own section and questions. Todo en español, ¡obviamente!
4. We repeated this process
until the students with gold stars were back at their original groups.
5. I followed up the
Jigsaw activity with a brief PPT on the Spanish Civil War during which we
reviewed the comprehension questions.