Word Walls / Vocabulary Instruction

Word Wall in my classroom for Los Baker van a Perú

When I first started teaching at my school six years ago each classroom was required to display a series of bulletin boards. Because we were an IB school we were required to have an IB Board, because it was meant to boost achievement, we were required to post a Data Wall and there was the requisite that each teacher should have a Word Wall in their room. I didn't object; it seemed logical that a language teacher should have target language vocabulary posted in the classroom. Yet, one thing that has long bothered me is how to incorporate that word wall into daily instruction so that it is not just a classroom decoration but is instead is a tool that students can use to practice and acquire vocabulary. I should say that I use the word wall, it reminds me to incorporate vocabulary structures into my speech and I often find myself referencing it when I'm talking. The problem is that I'm not sure to what extent my students are using it. So, I've begun brainstorming some ideas. As I continue to make word walls for my units I hope to add to this post and, as always, if anyone else has any good ideas please share!

Word Walls for Story Re-tells: Throughout a unit I introduce students to new vocabulary structures and, after the kids have them in their "student dictionaries," I tack them up on the word wall. This is to say that I don't put vocabulary on the wall that the students aren't familiar with. As a review activity, I'm thinking of having students in pairs, use the words on the wall either to re-tell the story that we have been reading and/or creating in class. While one student talks the other student can keep track of the number of vocabulary structures used. I'm thinking it would be good to give students a goal of maybe using ten or fifteen structures in a story re-tell within a specific period of time say, for example, four minutes. Of course, prizes for students who can do it!

Gesture Competition: In my class each time I teach a new vocabulary structure I teach it with a gesture. I do it to help them remember the structure and also for the little bit of physical activity it provides. I was thinking of doing a variation on the vocabulary game where the class forms two lines and the two students at the front of each line compete to give the definition of a structure. In this version, students would compete to give the correct gesture. Could be done as a quick end of the class wrap up activity or as prep before a vocabulary quiz.

Word Review (need a catchier title): Place students in groups of four to five and give each group the word wall words written on index cards. Students take turns selecting an index card and using the structure either to describe an action or character from the novel or using the structure correctly in a sentence. If the group agrees that the student correctly used the structure then that person gets to keep the card, if not the card gets passed to the next student in the group and that person has two opportunities

IB Unit Planning / Los Baker van a Perú

Image taken from: http://teacherknowledge.net/cohort2/?p=128

Warning: This turned into a much larger post than I had intended and maybe serves as a better reflection on unit planning than a sharing of resources and/or ideas.

My school is IB which, in part, means that our curricular units have to be centered around a "Statement of Inquiry" that we explore and connect back to throughout the unit. Because most of my units are centered around a novel (TPRS readers) and are taught for the sole purpose of facilitating language acquisition among low to mid novice learners, the IB aspects of unit planning have, prior to now, largely taken backseat in my curriculum planning. Previously, the following two questions: "Is this useful vocabulary for my students to know?" and "Is this the most effective way to teach and assess acquisition?" were my guiding questions for everything I did in the classroom. However, I've found that with the increasing emphasis on IB throughout our school and the recent mandate that Spanish 2 align it's curriculum with French 2 (still not convinced about the benefit of this but that's another blog post...) that I better jump on the bandwagon in a major way. Luckily for me, there is nothing incompatible with how I've been curriculum planning and the IB framework for developing units. And, while it does create more work for the teacher, I believe it also makes the units more rich and interesting for students. Below is a quick outline of how I develop IB units using the TPRS novels in the classroom:

1. Read the novel! Obvious but indispensable first step.

2. Pull out the major themes/topics of each chapter and the novel as a whole.

3. Develop a "Statement of Inquiry" based on the topics of the text.

4. Decide the assessment criteria (in non-IB speak this just means determining which skills- reading, writing, speaking, listening- you will be focusing on throughout the unit. IB recommends focusing on no more than two at a time and this, along with the emphasis on summative assessments, has long been problematic for me. Again, another blog post.) and develop a unit assessment. I am currently using ACTFL's Integrated Performance Assessments as a model for summative assessment tasks.

5. Stockpile as many authentic resources as possible (Pinterest is a great place to do this) related to the topics (Statement of Inquiry) and aligned to the assessment criteria.

6. Write & Incorporate individual lessons within the curricular unit that allow students to explore these themes.

For our current unit, we are reading "Los Baker van a Perú." From the novel, I've pulled out the following topics of interest:

• Do opposites get along better? 
• Do people behave differently at school than they do at home? 
• Watching television in a different country. 
• Is it important to speak the language of a country you are visiting? 
• Eating in a different country. 
• Is history important?
• Do adults and teenagers have different interests when traveling? 
• Is visiting museums while traveling important? 
• The importance of the potato to Peruvian society. 
• Las líneas Nasca. 
• Cuzco & Incan Civilization. 
• Altitude Sickness. 
• Bad Luck. 

From the above topics, I developed this Statement of Inquiry:

When we travel we can increase our cultural understanding by observing and respecting the social patterns and traditions of the country we are visiting.

The next step was to determine the assessment criteria. For this unit I decided to focus on three. (This goes against the IB recommendation of focusing on only two criteria but for longer units I feel confident that I can incorporate all three effectively.) For the Interpretive Task, Criterion A: Comprehending Spoken & Visual Text.  For the Interpersonal Task, Criterion C: Communicating in Response to Spoken, Written & Visual Text. And finally, for the Presentational Task, Criterion D: Using Language in Spoken & Written Form.

Once the Statement of Inquiry and Assessment Tasks were taken care of, I began to stockpile authentic resources. I really wanted to be careful that these resources were aligned to the assessment criteria and provided and opportunity for incorporating the Statement of Inquiry into the day to day lesson plans. Below is an example of a video (aligned to Criterion A) that I used both to practice listening comprehension and to incorporate the Statement of Inquiry.  The first part of the video is very fast but the second part is slower and more comprehensible. (I uploaded it from a downloaded video but you can find the original here).

Now, how to turn this into a lesson plan? I wanted the lesson to model the assessment criteria I had chosen. That is to say, I wanted the lesson to have an interpretive, interpersonal and presentational component.

I started with a simple warm up: ¿Cómo se define «un viajero»? ¿Cómo se define «un turista»?

Then I developed a comprehension guide for the video. I tried to use vocabulary structures from the unit but without repeating the exact vocab used in the video. The idea being that students would have to comprehend what they heard not just listen for key words within the video. Still a work in progress.

Turista o Viajero Comp Guide

Next, in pairs of two, students completed the questionnaire in order to determine if they were "más turista" or "más viajero." (Questionnaire adapted from original  by Federico Escudero Álverez on Todoele.)Students shared out from this activity, explaining both their own results and those of their partners.

Turista o Viajero Questionnaire

Finally, before leaving, I asked students to complete a "Think, Pair, Share" activity with the following questions:

¿A dónde llevarías un turista en nuestra ciudad? ¿A dónde llevarías un viajero?

Then I used equity cards to call on three or four students and have them respond to the question. Done and on to the next authentic resource!

AirPano

Just came across this awesome resource from AirPano. It's a collection of 3-D panoramic photos taken from around the world. Since we're studying Perú right now I can't wait to use this panoramic shot of the Nasca Lines:

Ten Word Summary

Image found at: http://www.skypeenglishclasses.com

The ten-word summary is another strategy from Reading Rockets. Here's how I used it in my classes:

1. I put students into pairs and handed each student one of the ten-word summary sheets below.

2. Students number each paragraph.

3. Student A reads the first paragraph. Student B summarizes what Student A read. Students alternate roles until the selection is over.

4. Review the passage by using equity cards/sticks to ask questions to check for understanding.

5. Combine pairs of students to form groups of four. Have groups compare their summary sentences and then decide on who wrote the best summaries and why.

6. Pass out poster paper and have students write up their group summaries.

7. Use the posters to do a gallery walk and have students compare summaries and decide on the main events or crucial details of the selection.

Love to do this activity to ensure comprehension of a chapter before moving forward in a novel.

Ten Word Summary

Storyasking

Image found at: http://www.brandstories.net/2013/07/27/what-makes-for-an-exceptional-brand-storyteller/

Since I began teaching using Comprehensible Input teacher a few years ago, by far, my biggest struggle has been “story-asking.” I’ve identified a few things that I think have made this activity particularly challenging:

 1) Large classes
 2) Off task students
 3) Maintaining student attention throughout a ten or fifteen minute story-asking session
 4) Keeping it simple and not deviating from the target structures

As a result I’ve been especially eager to find activities designed to keep students engaged and participating in story-asking sessions. Years ago, at the iFTL conference in San Diego, I attended a workshop by Ben Slavic and he had a variety of jobs that he assigned to students during Story-asking activities. (Some especially popular jobs with my students are the “human dictionary,” “artist,” and the “English police.” You can read more about them here.) Unfortunately, I’ve found that with classes of 25+ students of varying degrees of ability, there are simply not enough jobs to go around! In a recent search, I came across Cynthia Hitz’s post on Guided Story-asking and I think I may have found a solution (absolutely one of my favorite blogs and I had the great pleasure of meeting her and attending one of her awesome sessions at ACTFL 2014)!

Yesterday in class, I started out the story-asking session by reminding students what the purpose of the activity was. I explained that we were working towards “acquiring” new vocabulary and that in order to be successful we needed to hear these new structures at least 250 (a completely made up number but it gave the students a goal!) times in a meaningful context. I asked all students to be mindful of the number of times we used each structure (another one of Ben Slavic’s strategies). I then began by handing out the guided story-asking grid and asking for “sugerencias.”

I pulled out a huge roll of raffle tickets as an incentive for active participation. I proceeded by taking three suggestions from the class and then voting on the best answer. My target structures were "Debe avisar," "se le acercó," and "le dolía." The grid I used is below:

Guided Storytelling Grid

Unfortunately, I think my story was a little long and taking three suggestions and voting on each one took way too much time. I teach 50 minute periods and getting through two rows of the grid took two class periods. I ended by having the students finish the third row as homework. (We will vote on who has the best story next week in class.) I think the trick for next time will be to simplify (maybe even shorten) the grid and take fewer student suggestions.

Four Corners

I love Four Corners for a variety of reasons. It's great for reviewing, to get a reaction, to help students process information. I like to give students a somewhat controversial statement that I know are going to generate varying opinions and have students defend their opinions to one another. They're also just great for getting students up and moving or mixing it up. I have the ones below are those that I have up in my classroom and I use them all the time.

4 Corners En español

Reciprocal Reading / Reading Rockets

Image from: http://www.clipartpanda.com/clipart_images/guided-reading-clip-art-32431625

Since we are reading a number a number of novels this year, I’ve been trying to build up my repertoire of reading activities. These activities need to fulfill the following criteria:

1) Won’t bore students;
2) Activities will engage students in active reading;
3) And, will facilitate language acquisition (aligned to a specific learning objective)

So, when I learned about Reciprocal Reading Groups from Reading Rockets, I was pretty pleased to find a strategy that was student-centered and that fulfilled all three of the above criteria. Reciprocal reading groups are an activity designed to allow students to guide and instruct the reading in small groups. Each student is assigned one of four roles:

Predictor: makes predictions before and after the selection
Clarifier: keeps track of and helps to clarify any unknown vocabulary
Question Generator: responsible for coming up with comprehension questions (great idea here from Martina Bex in getting students to write comp questions—In French and Spanish)
Summarizer: responsible for summarizing the selected passage

The trick in these groups is to have students use their roles to interact with and teach their classmates. In order to do this, I started by explicitly explaining that the idea behind this activity was to get students to help one another to understand the passage. I then assigned each role an order. I had the students read the passage out loud to one another (paragraph by paragraph) while everyone followed along, indicating any difficult vocabulary. After every second paragraph, the group worked together to perform each of their tasks. I stressed that while each student had a specific role the entire group could and should help with each task. So far we’ve used this strategy twice in my classes and I’ve found the biggest challenge so far has been getting the Questioner to really use the questions to discuss the selection. Modeling this for the students helps and I also believe the more familiar the kids get with the activity the more effective it will be. Modeling the templates found on Reading Rockets, I created the bookmark and graphic organizer below: Bookmark

Reciprocal Reading Bookmarks Español

Graphic Organizer

Reciprocal Reading Group Graphic Organizer / Grupo de Lectura