Wooly in Heritage Classes

*Please, forgive the lack of correct accentuation. It keeps removing all the punctuation and I can't figure it out.*

From the Spanish Teacher Success Academy, I have had an influx of questions about planning for mixed level classes (both within a heritage class and heritage with L2). All the different preps can be not only challenging, it can be exhausting. I recently had a discussion with another teacher who claimed it was so difficult because she can’t use her L2 stuff in her heritage classes, and she loves her L2 “stuff”. I started talking to her about what she loves about her “stuff”. Her big love was CI and Sr. Wooly resources for L2. We didn’t have enough time that day to unpack why she felt she can’t use her L2 CI with her heritage students; I took that conversation to heart.

Here is how Senor Wooly was a huge asset to my heritage classroom. *All opinions are my own and were not solicited by anyone and there are no affiliate links in this posting.

Premise

Teaching my 6th and 7th grade heritage classes, I find myself working to build student confidence, trying to fill seemingly irregular holes in literacy skills, and more confidence building. If I can give them work that appears to be "below their level" then I can work on the processing portion of language.

Using Senor Wooly embeded readings, audio bits, and printed screen shots, I can focus on building student confidence in interacting with Spanish and help them process in problem solving (academic language) in Spanish. Honestly, the intermediate embeded readings are too advanced for some of my heritage students and below the literacy level of others.

How to Wooly in Heritage Classes

With heritage classes, and with groups of heritage learners in other classes, these students interact with Wooly differently; they solve a mystery.

This time I used the video "El Banco" and the supporting materials available on the Pro account. These materials included: short audio clips of the "movie", specific printed stills of the "movie", and the intermediate level of some of the embeded readings.

Dia 1

I printed about 18 scenes from the El banco "movie". I taped them around the room, I did number them in order. All I said, "Clase, ayer alguien hizo algo malo. Necesitan tabajar para encontrar mas informacion. Necesito entrar las notas en Infinite Campus."

Students had to work to figure out 1) what was happening, 2) who are the people in the pictures, 3) what was the crime, 4) who was the victim, and 5) who was guilty.

I printed select scenes so it was really hard to tell what was going on. I did, however, leave the title slide that says "EL BANCO".

I also did not enter grades. I most definitely spent time answering questions (by saying, I don't know, go figure it out) and taking notes of student interactions and grading writing samples and oral convos on the spot.

Dia 2

Students get their "case files" when they walk back into the class. I took their writing samples of observations and inferences and put them in folders. 

The slide on the board read something to the effect of: "El detective se fue en una tormenta de emocion. Solo tenemos esta caja llena de sus cosas del escritorio. Por favor, usen las observaciones y conclusiones con cualquier informacion pueden sacar de esta. Tenemos que resolver el crimen hoy."

Students could re-examine the scenes from around the room and the information they previously found. Students were naturally talking to each other to fill-in holes and ask more questions.

This box has a bunch of random papers from the recycling- happened to include information about the US government from the Civics class; great distracter. I also wrote some important and some non-crucial information on sticky notes, provided the intermediate readings that were "censurados" and missing key information. Some papers were even ripped in the detective's fit of furry. 

The key to this success was the reading. I had short notes, I had long, redacted readings, I had quotes from the movie. Every student in these classes could be an expert somewhere. I have several students are are majorly struggling in reading in any language and there was something accessible to everyone. Students naturally started to regroup themselves into heterogeneous (mixed-ability) groups. Strong readers spent time decoding while struggling readers took notes, tried to match-up the small information to the bigger information. 

Dia 3

Today is where the case became interesting. "Anoche descubri unos flash con unas grabaciones de las entrevistas entre el detective y ambas personas del caso. Hoy, entregen sus conclusiones finales. Hoy, alguien es culpable."

Students listened, non-stop, to several short audio recordings from the movie. Each of the three flash drives only had one clip that was a little different and could sway their final accusations. They had the box of desk stuff, the printed scenes, and audio recordings to connect their observations and inferences. This leads to a logical deduction of what happened. All academic skills which also use a lot of cognates for my native speakers.

(Hint: cognates of academic language do nothing for students who don't have an existing understanding of that concept in the L1. A heritage student might recognize that paralelismo is clearly the Spanish word for parallelism, but still have no concept that these words represent correspondence.)

Day 4

I could have done a lot more with this but we hit spring break and it was a great shut-off point. We did a very quick presentational speaking of making a formal accusation and why. I showed them the movie at the end of class.

Summary

While this was not an engagement in a Spanish Language Arts course, this was definitely time well-spent bridging academic English and Spanish skills. My middle schoolers seems to need a lot more of the "You can do this in Spanish too!" direct reminders than my high schoolers needed.

Practicing deep-level thinking while practicing making an observation and supporting a conclusion are crucial steps to good writing.

We will be using this as a stepping stone to deductive reasoning and opinion poetry. 

Using your L2 classroom materials to minimize the separate and distinct planning, often required in heritage classes, will be a sanity savior. It is not a disservice to our students and it can really help with balancing the cognitive load when working on academic skills in the L1.