TIME TO CELEBRATE!

The end of the school year is finally here! Students were ready to go, and I wanted to have one more opportunity to help them realize how much they had learned.  This is only my second year teaching through Comprehensible Input, and I tend to be very hard to judge what I do... but funny enough, as I hear students converse with each other about their writings, or their speaking performances, I realize that they do the same.  We just have a very short memory! As I look back and reflect on the results that I used to get two years ago, comparing that with the results that I get now should make me feel pretty darn good!  It was my attempt to have my students do the same and appreciate their achievements before they left for the summer.  We had two different activities to wrap up the year: one speaking presentation and one final writing.  For the speaking, they had to create a story and illustrate it in a power point.  They were not to memorize, but rather tell their story to the rest of the group during our end of the year party. The intention was exactly that: to have it be a celebration of their achievement.  Since all of them were original stories, we had absolutely no behavior issues, and since all vocabulary was "in bounds" everybody enjoyed a myriad of tales, some funny, some sad, and some plain creepy!  The following example is from Spanish 1, and this student gave me his permission to post it:

 

 

After each presentation, we  -as a class- discussed more about the stories, and that way provided more repetitions.  All students were engaged in conversation! 
The next activity for our "celebration" was writing.  I had them create a story based on just a picture.  I made corrections and the following day I returned it to them.  I asked them to take their portfolios and get the very first writing that they wrote two years ago, the first of last year, then also the first one that they wrote this year.  They  read it to a partner or small group, and then compared those with the new one.  They enjoyed this activity as I did! They were laughing, and I heard many: "OMG! What did I mean here?" They were able to correct many of their old mistakes, and the fact that they saw all that progress was of a great value.  The following pictures tell more about the true celebration environment during this activity:

The goal was met! Realize that what we now consider to be "not a big deal" was something that we -students and teachers- doubted when we began our journey through CI.  What I forgot to comment, is that the very first writing in their portfolio was that of their freshmen year, when I was not yet teaching with CI.  I had them write "diary entries" every week.  It was painful! with the help of dictionaries, teacher and peers, it took about 30 minutes to write five lines of almost unintelligible messages that I returned with tons of corrections in red, many of those similar to:  "watch your verb conjugation", or "remember: ir+a+infinitive" ARGH! What was I thinking! This activity was equally eye-opening for me as it was for my students.  It was amazing to see them compare their "diary entries" to the writings that now they do in five minutes, without any help.  Pure fluency... and that is very much worthy of celebration!  Have a great summer!

 

Add Some Summer Fun to Your Reading!

As the school year comes to an end I struggle more and more to keep kids on task... it seems that these last days I have to convince them to work every day, and that we are not done yet!  We are reading Brandon Brown quiere un perro  with one group, and Piratas del Caribe y el mapa secreto with another. 
One of the activities I have students do after a class story, or after reading, is to draw sketches on paper and then retell.  This time, I got some chalk and took them outside to do the same, but on the sidewalk!  This winter was a very long one so students (and also teachers!) are ready to get out and enjoy the nice weather.  Students were very motivated and we all had a lot of fun.  It is also really nice to see other people passing by after school, trying to figure out what our Spanish students did!

 "Brandon está en la cama y el perrito está en el closet."

"Brandon encuentra la pipï y el popó en su dormitorio."

"Antonio tira la pistola en el piso porque no funciona.  Antonio es muy frustrado."