My Final Project Idea and Some Resources

So, since the first meeting of this class, I've been thinking about what to do my final project on.  Considering we're only in this class for merely six weeks, I knew the final would sneak up on me sooner than I expected.  And here we are, already half way through the class and BOOM, it's time to really start thinking about what I want to do for my final.  Luckily, I have what I want to do it, I just don't know exactly what resources I want to use, or what technology I can infuse into my lesson plan.

But first, let me talk about what my idea is.  Since I'll be teaching Spanish 3, 4 and 5 this upcoming semester, as well as teaching lower and upper level Spanish courses in my future classroom, I thought I really should focus on some upper level Spanish material.  I especially took this into consideration because I've already got plenty of experience teaching Spanish 1 and 2 as my teacher assisting placement was in a Spanish 1 and 2 classroom.  I have little experience teaching upper level Spanish. In fact, all of that experience comes from long-term subbing in an upper-level Spanish classroom for 2 months.  Where I was responsibility for teaching the material, the lesson plans were made by the teacher I was subbing for.  So I literally have no experience preparing and planning for an upper-level Spanish course.  I have never designed a lesson plan for a class like that.  So, I thought, this final project would be a perfect place to start thinking about this.

The first question I asked myself when thinking about what to teach was "What do kids learn in Spanish 3 that's so new and so different that they'd probably freak out on me?"  The answer came to me almost immediately: the subjunctive tense.  The subjunctive tense does not entirely exist in the English language.  There are some traces of it still, but it has mostly weened itself out of the language.  For those of you reading who aren't up-to-date on your grammar concepts, the subjunctive tense is a tense that describes desires, wishes, hopes, etc.  So, for instance, the one place it still exists in the English language is in the sentence below:

I wish I were (was) a teacher.

In English, we can say either "I wish I was a teacher" or "I wish I were a teacher".  Some would argue which sounds better and prescriptivists would surely tell you that "I wish I was a teacher" is the only correct sentence, as I were cannot never be uttered together, but the I were is the subjunctive tense that still lingers on in the English language.  In Spanish, however, it is absolutely required.  The subjunctive tenses is one of the hardest things to learn as an English speaker since it's a concept they cannot relate to the English language.  It's completely new, unheard of, unimaginable.  And it's completely vital they learn it adequately in order to be able to completely speak and understand the Spanish language.

Now that you all understand what exactly I'll be teaching in my lesson plan, I will now show you some online resources that I found to help make this lesson plan more technology-enriched.  That is, I'll be forgoing the traditional "show the conjugations" on the board and drill, drill, drill.  Instead, I'll be looking for ways my students can use technology to better learn this foreign concept in a foreign language.  That, and it's vital as Grand Haven High School, where I'll be Student Teaching next fall, is a 1:1 school.

The Resources

Name/title of resource: Creating Travel Advice
URL: Annenberg Learner
How I found it: Through Dr. Siko's blog resources.
How I might use it in my final project: I was looking for a topic where students could use subjunctive frequently and effortlessly.  Talking about traveling and giving advice are both great resources for using the subjunctive tense.  A deeper investigation into the videos and resources will be required though, but could be the basis for a good introduction into the subjunctive tense.
What standards does the resource address: Standard 1.1: Interpersonal Communication, Standard 1.2: Interpretive Communication, Standard 3.1: Making Connections

Name/title of resource: Spanish Grammar and Humour
URL: Steven French Languages
How I found it: I found it by a good ol' search on Twitter.  I simply searched "Spanish subjunctive" and this particular paged stood out above the rest.
How I might use it in my final project: I feel this is something students could really identify with.  Memes and funny pictures are all the rage on the internet (is this still a saying they use today, "all the rage"?)  There's quite a few Spanish memes using the subjunctive that I have posted below that I think the students will not only understand, but be able to identify with it at a personal level.  I mean, who else doesn't demand that weekends be longer?  I could use these memes are a source of "examples of the subjunctive tense on the internet", which, in turn, is authentic language use!
What standards does the resource address: Standard 1.2: Interpretive Communication, Standard 3.2: Acquiring Information and Diverse Perspectives

*Please, don't eat me!

*I demand that the weekends be longer!

*May your dreams influence you more than your excuses.

**The verb here, pesar, means both to weigh and to influence.

*May the Force be with you

Name/title of resource: Introducing the Subjunctive with a Story #11: Unit Plan
URL: Bryce Hedstrom
How I found it: A plain google search.  After checking a few sites, this one stood out.
How I might use it in my final project: Before in my Spanish 1 and 2 classes, I have created my own stories when introducing a new grammar concept.  Instead of the same old song and dance where the teacher tells the students what the grammar concept is and how it works, by telling the students a story and highlighting the new grammar concepts, the students will then be able to tell me, the teacher, what the grammar concept is and how it works.  This has worked famously before and I know it will work great with the subjunctive.  After the students learn the concept at a base level, we'll then proceed from there on how to really learn the subjunctive.
What standards does the resource address: Standard 1.1: Interpersonal Communication, Standard 1.2: Interpretive Communication, Standard 1.3: Presentational Communication, Standard 4.1: Language Comparisons

Myths in the World of Education

Personally for me, the most surprising myth of the four articles was the one about keeping students engaged.  Even to this day in my education classes, there seems to be a focus, either explicitly or implicitly, on student engagement.  What David Price argues, though, does make a lot of sense and connects with me on a personally level.  As a grade school student, I was rarely engaged in my classes; however, I often got good grades and did well overall.  At times, it may have seemed like I was engaged in the classroom where in reality I was probably not.  As a teacher, I feel I always know what my students are up to, when they're paying attention and why they're not, but after reading his article, I will second guess myself the next time I set foot in the classroom.

Of the other three, I was already familiar with them as "myths" or even "half truths".  In education, there is no one easy answer.  It's not as simple as assigning a student an intellectual identity or saying that if they read, hear, see and do this one activity, they're more likely to learn it.  I admit, I'm guilty of trying multiple different strategies on one lesson so that my students might better be able to grasp what I'm trying to teach them, and this strategy may be founded on these false premises.  In fact, I really do see my students "checking out" when I try to reteach the same material but through another mean.  Where I'm familiar with these myths, I really need to rethink my teaching strategies when planning a lesson.

How to Use a Blog in a Foreign Language Classroom

In all honesty, if my future classes have access to the internet and computers, a blog would be a great opportunity for my students to use in order to practice writing and communicating in their second language with one another.  By giving them a prompt and a rubric, they could each write a blog post in Spanish and then reply to one another as well.  The main issue is making sure that the writing prompts do in fact create worthwhile conversational material and not just an assignment to be done.  If it's a poor prompt, students will just be writing to get the points instead of actually replying to one another on a real communication basis.

Obviously, not all students will involve them 100% in the writing prompt no matter how good it is.  But it is my responsibility to create prompts that highly influence communication as a mean of study as per the Communicative Language Pedagogy in that interaction is the ultimate goal for more meaningful and authentic language use in the classroom. There are many different methods of language teaching and no class follows just one language teaching method; however, in my classrooms, I will put an emphasis on communicative language teaching.  I could go more into why I favor this teaching method, but for now, I'll stick to the topic of this blog post.  As such, blogs are a great tool for communicative language teaching outside of the classroom but in the classroom setting.  Again, this falls back to me making sure the prompts are in fact interactive and communicative.

In addition, another thing I would always love to do is get my classrooms linked with a classroom somewhere in the Spanish-speaking world so that every student has a penpal.  While my students practice their Spanish, this other school would practice their English with my students in an exchange of emails.  However, if I do use a blog in my class, I could take it a step further and these students from another country could visit my students' blogs and see their work and possibly even comment on them, furthering the conversation and interactive pieces there.  I think this could be another great use of a blog, linking it with other coursework inside the class.  It possibly could get conversations really flowing, or at least, that'd be something great to see!

My Student: Malcolm from Malcolm in the Middle

So, my student that I choose was Malcolm from Malcolm in the Middle.  This show ran all throughout my high school years and I grew up watching it.  It was one of the first shows I thought of before beginning this blog post.

Malcolm is a great student in that he's very smart, even "gifted" if you will, especially in math.  He is even placed in a gifted classroom at his school. However, considering it's a sitcom and his family is constantly filled with drama, he often times is distracted.  This is often seen by the "asides" he does, breaking the fourth wall, when communicating with the audience.  If this were real, it's almost as if he were daydreaming and wouldn't be paying much attention in class.  Malcolm, for the most part, does well in school even though he's sometimes distracted.  In addition, he is often left out and doesn't quite fit in with his other classmates.  In addition, the wiki page even goes as far to say that Malcolm's large ego causes him numerous problems throughout his upbringing.  Because of this ego, he is also known to have a short-temper.

He comes from your typical middle class family (I would even possibly argue upper-middle), although the family members themselves aren't very typical.  Although his grades are fine, as already stated, he does distract himself but at times he does distract others, especially when he is with his brothers Dewey and especially Reese.

Malcolm has a wide variety of interests.  Considering he's a growing teen, he often times has interest in the romantic side of life, at least on the show.  His other interests include hanging out with his friends and sometimes going above and beyond in school.

If Malcolm were in my class, given my class was a mainstream classroom and not a class for gifted students, I would have to alter my lesson plans in order to challenge him more.  I would let him use technology, like a computer with access to the internet, and give him a topic to research in Spanish and let him learn that topic, or even revue vocabulary words in order to strengthen his vocabulary.  For his qualities that could use some help, like his anger, if I ever saw him getting angry while working together with the class as a whole, I would suggest that he take a few moments and work online again by himself to calm himself all-the-while staying on task with learning, even though it might not exactly be the task at hand.  In a foreign language classroom, I will create flashcards and other vocabulary exercises that will be readily available at any time for my students' convenience, and in this case, for Malcolm's "calming down".

Malcolm is extremely college ready, at least in the academic sense.  His personality and people skills would need a little work, though, especially with some of the more intense group projects that he could face at the college level.  Malcolm's genius and readiness for college is quite evident in the scene below during the school fair, where he shows off his photogenic memory for numbers.