Cross Curricular Connection

In the fall, my seventh grade students read a book called "A Long Walk to Water" by Linda Sue Park.  It follows two storylines, one about a young girl who has to walk a long way for water for her family daily, and the other about a young man named Salva Dut.  Salva was a lost boy in Sudan and had to walk many many miles in order to find salvation from a war torn country.
Here is a blurb from Linda Sue Park's website-

The students really enjoyed the book, and were able to skype with the author.  They did some fundraising as well, to support Salva Dut's efforts to bring clean water to South Sudan.  The students connected with the story, and Salva Dut.  They were excited to watch a live streaming video where the author, Linda Sue Park, and Salva Dut answered questions that children across the country had sent in.

Now here is where Spanish class comes in.  Remember, this is their first year of Spanish, and we meet every other day.  So in reality, the students had only had about fifty days of Spanish class at the point where the following story was written.  I shared the following with the English teachers to explain:

The students in my White A block wrote this together. We sat in a circle, and each person had a paper, they wrote for a minute, then passed the paper.  They had to read, and then continue the story started by the previous student.  We did this for about 10-12 rounds, so the following story is a combination of many student writers.  I’ve included the English translation for you to see, and I cleaned up the spelling a little in the Spanish version. I was so impressed by the students retelling Salva’s story in Spanish!  After reading this to them, I shared some irony with them- in Spanish, the word “salva” means “he saves”.  The kids love that, since Salva is now saving lives with his iron giraffes.

Hay un muchacho.  Muchacho se llama Salva.  Salva está furioso.  Salva no agua.  Salva está muy triste porque no tiene agua.  Salva quiere agua.  Salva vive en Africa.  Salva está triste, Salva quiere un taco.  Salva no tiene un taco.  Salva no come.  Salva quiere agua, no quiere taco.  Salva muy triste.  Entonces, Salva no vive.  Un ratón come Salva.  Ahora, un ratón está feliz, y Salva no vive.  Un ratón corre muy rápido, está feliz.

There is a boy.  The boy is called Salva.  Salva is furious.  Salva no water.  Salva is very sad because he has no water.  Salva wants water.  Salva lives in Africa.  Salva is sad, Salva wants a taco.  Salva doesn’t have a taco.  Salva doesn’t eat.  Salva wants water, he doesn’t want a taco.  Salva very sad.  Then, Salva doesn’t live.  A mouse eats Salva.  Now, a mouse is happy, and Salva doesn’t live.  A mouse runs very fast, he is happy.

Yes, it takes an odd turn at the end, but overall I was so impressed with their ability to make a connection to what they have been studying in other classes, and bring it into our classroom. You can even see that a student tried to bring it back to Salva's story by saying, "..quiere agua, no quiere un taco." You can see the original writing here:

I truly believe that teaching through Comprehensible Input, and Teaching Proficiency through Reading and Storytelling gave my students the ability and confidence to write that story. In the past, when I strictly followed a textbook, focusing on grammar and verb charts, my students never would have been able to write such complete thoughts and formulate them into sentences this early in their Spanish learning process..

I'm so excited to continue on my journey of improving my teaching through TCI and TPRS.

It works!! Success of TCI/TPRS

I just finished my second semester of a purely (attempted) Comprehensible Input and TPRS class! It's been a struggle, especially being the only teacher in my district to embrace this method fully.  But as I was grading final exams on Tuesday, I jumped for joy and ran around to share a student's work with other teachers.  I had my "a-ha!" moment, my "maybe there's something to this" moment, my "it works!" moment.  I couldn't be more proud of one particular young man's journey into learning Spanish.

I had this young man in the fall of 2014 in my new course "Spanish Language and Culture" which was designed as a 2 year course, taught through TCI/TPRS so that students who would not be successful in a "traditional textbook driven class" would have a chance to be successful learning a language.  My class was filled with students who had learning disabilities- mainly language based- as well as behaviorally challenged students, who had failed the textbook driven class.  This particular student, we'll call him by his chosen Spanish name- Miguel, came to my class with no prior experience.  He had recently suffered from a brain tumor and it left him with short term memory loss.  He wanted to take Spanish, even though he would have a terrible time trying to memorize vocabulary, verb endings, etc.  His special education contact recommended my new course and he signed up.

Miguel did very well in that course, retaining words/phrases throughout the semester, even though he daily had to ask me where he sat, who is partner was, and what class he had after mine.  Miguel ended the course with an 85 average.  That course ended in January 2015.  Miguel did not have Spanish class in the Spring of 2015, and then obviously not over the summer.  He showed up in my Spanish 2 class this past fall (2015).  (Unfortunately, my Spanish Language and Culture 2 year course was not continued, but my admin worked to get all of my students into a Spanish 2 class with me as their teacher).

Now Miguel was in a Spanish 2 class with 20 other students from textbook driven classrooms.  He was actually the only one with a TCI/TPRS background.  Within the first week I could see that he had retained most of our target structures from the previous fall.  I was impressed.  But the real "A-Ha!" moment came at the end of the semester-- Miguel's final exam.  I've posted a picture below, and a link to a PDF here.

This short story may not be super complex and the sentences are short.  But, he has only 2 errors, used complete sentences, used vocabulary from September 2014 (as well as new structures from this semester), and told a very creative story! I would actually say that this was the best story I read while grading final exams, even better than the girl who used complex compound sentences.

It brought tears to my eyes to see what this young man accomplished, even when he wasn't supposed to be able to.  I truly believe this story shows the effectiveness of the TCI/TPRS method.

Embedded Reading: La Lista by Aldrey

After creating this embedded reading for La historia de Juan by Juanes for my high school Spanish 2 students, I decided to try to do something similar for my 7th grade students.  This is their first year of Spanish.  I only see them every other day, so even though it was November when I used this with them, they had only had about 25 days of class time.  This was a perfect activity to do leading up to Thanksgiving, since it was a short week (2.5 days).  I probably spent a total of 3 class days (80 minute blocks) on this song.

I did have to give the students a lot of vocabulary up front, and it may not have all been comprehensible.  But it gave them the resources to make each reading comprehensible.  I shared the document with students through Google Classroom, so they could do it online.  Some still prefer paper.  The online version gave them the active links to read a little about Aldrey and watch the videos.  You can find the packet here.

We went slowly, allowing them plenty of time to read each version, do the associated assignment, and then review as a class.  After doing all of the versions, we finally listened to the song, while they tried to fill in the blanks. I didn't show the video at this point, only listened.  This assured that their focus would be on listening.  We listened to the whole song through once.  Second time, I paused every once in a while to make sure all were still following along in the right spots.  The third time we listened, I paused after each blank (or maybe a couple depending on flow of song), and together we reviewed the missing words.

I really felt that students had a good understanding of the lyrics by the time we actually watched the video.  I had them sing along as we watched.  We watched this video, with the lyrics in it the first few times.

The next day we watched this video, which is more story-like and matches the lyrics.  Then I asked "¿Cuál video prefieres?  ¿Por qué?" While they could understand these Spanish questions, most did have to answer in English because their Spanish isn't very far along yet.

As an extension activity, students wrote their own "listas".  They wrote goals for Spanish class, the school year, and life in general.  Then, they took 1 from each list and created a poster.  Students illustrated their goals so that other students could understand what they were.  I asked them to write them in Spanish, but let them figure it out on their own, so some were very hard to comprehend!  I didn't grade these, just let them write and draw.  They presented the poster to their partner, and partner had to guess the English based on the picture.

Overall I enjoyed doing this with them, and I think the students enjoyed it too - I still hear them singing it occasionally in class!