Welcome Back Spanish 3 & 4

School is back in session. It's pretty easy to start levels 1 & 2 with greeting and basic warm-ups; but what to do with those advanced kids?! Here I will share my go-to "project" for Spanish 3 & 4. Not only this, but I will also share how I use this to build a super-easy end of semester project.

Challenge and Expect from Day 1

Setting the tone (90%+ TL) in-class the first few days is crucial to avoid push-back later on (at least for me, this is very true).

I give my Spanish 3 and 4 classes very little "warm-up" time. By day two I am requiring output in some form. I also have them working intentionally from day one on a medium-large group project (depending on my kids).

Diversify

As my previous post discusses, I teach in a block schedule which is challenging during the first week with my lower levels. My upper levels love it. We work from day 1 in the TL in varying formats so class feels more like centers from kindergarten than a full language/grammar-focused class.

The first day, we do introductions (in a very small school, where they know everyone). I can watch their relief of, "Oh, I can do this. Okay." This is graded (very low point value, maybe 5 points) so everyone earns 100%. This is so inspiring for them, and it doesn't really effect their grades in the long term.

Then I read them a story in the TL. They sit around me, I sit in a chair, and we look like an over-sized kindergarten class; they LOVE it. Then they make a deviation of the story with a partner. This structured out-put and they feel good about it.

Then we do a 5 minute recap of a "random" grammar point (eg. identifying errors in me gusta(n), adjective placement and agreement).

Then comes the assignment. Then they work.

Re-cap assignment

I have both Spanish 3 and 4 create a news station to report the school's going-on's. They review  summer camps and baseball, talk about the new student council members, the weather, and what homecoming will look like. Here is a link to this rubric and guide I give the students.

Once the project is assigned, they typically work for the last 20-25 minutes of each class for three weeks (7 classes). Then they have one full day to work on editing and creating their newscast.

Recycle with a Purpose

I recycle these newscasts. As students create various video projects (Spanish 1-4), I save them in order and create a TV channel. I play this the last class period before end of semester tests. This leaves me with time to catch kids with missing assessments and to 1:1 conference with each kid about his/her progress.