Instructional Practice
I teach a two-year middle school Spanish course that is equivalent to high school Spanish 1 and that culminates with students receiving 2 high school credits for the course.
I have worked with my co-teacher to design the curriculum and lessons, which are all presented on my smartboard and involve listening, speaking, reading, and writing components. It is an immersion course, in which only Spanish is spoken in the classroom except for an opportunity to ask questions at the end of each class.
Every lesson follows the following format and slides include titles and icons that represent each step:
El Repaso: a review of previous content that also serves the purpose of a “ Do now” as students enter the classroom.
El Repaso de la Tarea: a review of the previous night’s homework.
La Tarea: Students copy down the homework which is designed nightly.
La Meta: the objective
Instrucción: direct instruction
Trabajo en Pareja: partner practice
Trabajo Independiente: Independent practice
¿Preguntas?: students may now speak English to ask questions as needed.
La Prueba: An exit ticket or final question serves for both student and teacher to see how much of the lesson’s objective was mastered and to inform the next day’s review activity.
These lessons illustrate how I am able to introduce content completely in Spanish from the very first day of class. Within the first month of instruction, the foundation for language acquisition is put in place by teaching students how to learn and process new information in the target language.
During my four years teaching at Marine Park I have been rated highly effective in my classroom observations. I use many techniques to maintain a positive and rigorous classroom environment. These include:
No Opt-Out: All students participate in every class if a student does not know the answer to the question some form of scaffolding is offered to allow the student to participate successfully.
Cold Call: I call on students randomly during every class, ensuring that every student speaks multiple times during every lesson.
At Bats: I give my students multiple choice opportunities to show mastery of a skill and to improve with learning goals.
Call and Response:
Do Now: Every class begins with a silent, individual task that reviews previous content, and often is designed to clarify difficulties students had with the previous lesson.
Right to Right: Students are expected to produce the correct answer. Scaffolding may be needed, but only the correct answer is accepted.
Circulate: I move throughout my classroom constantly, both to proactively manage behavior and to monitor students' work, pointing out mistakes in their notebooks as they work to clarify their understanding.
Exit Ticket: Classes end with a final question or task that allows both me and the student themselves to assess how well they understood the lesson, and these answers often inform the next day’s review activity and future instruction.
Every minute matters: Every minute in my classroom is dedicated to instruction, even when that means changing verbs, counting in Spanish by different numbers, or any other review activity to make every minute count.
The observation notes from my administrator constantly reference the rigor and pacing that I am to achieve while creating a classroom where learners are safe to take chances and everyone participates in every class.
I incorporate technology into my teaching in different ways. I attended workshops offered by ACTFL for foreign language teachers and use the website to supplement my teaching. I have a quizlet account with sets that I create for my students to study and use a teacher account to monitor their progress on that site as well. I have a website that gives students and parents unit outlines and study guides as well as links to videos that students can use as their study aids. All of my lessons are presented as smart board presentations. They include visual, audio and interactive elements to present content in multiple formats.
Instructional Practice
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Curriculum Unit 7A Outline
Unit 7D Lesson 3: Clothing- Noun/Adjective Agreement
Materials: Notebook Smartboard presentation (7D ROPA Day 3 2015-16), sentence strips in envelopes, exit slip, and homework handout
Slide 1- El Repaso (The Review): Students review colors in Spanish in preparation for using colors as adjectives to describe clothing.
Slide 2- La Tarea (Homework): Students copy down their homework assignment, which is to complete a sheet that involves drawing pictures of the clothing described on the sheet.
Slide 3- La Meta (The Objective): Yo uso adjetivos para describir la ropa. (I use adjectives to describe clothing.) Students learned noun/adjective agreement in the face/body unit, but students struggled with it on the unit 3 test, so we are revisiting the skill here with the new clothing vocabulary.
Slides 4- La Instrucción (Direct Instruction):
Six images of pairs of shoes in different colors are projected. I review how nouns and adjectives must agree in Spanish by both gender and number.
Slides 9-11, 13-14 Trabajo en Pareja (Partner Work):
-Students look at three images of colorful clothing with their partners and write sentences to describe them with adjectives in their notebooks together.
-Each partner takes a turn looking an image of a person that is projected and saying five sentences describing the clothing in the photo as if they were that person speaking. Their partner listens and makes corrections as needed.
-Students read a series of sentences with mistakes that students have made when using adjectives in sentences. Together they agree on and write the correct sentences. We then review this as a group.
-Students see images of three people projected and have a photocopy for each pair of the same images. I model how students are to read 30 sentence strips with their partners and decide if each one describes one of the three pictures or nadie (no one) and sort and paste the sentences on their sheets accordingly.
Slides 5-9, 12 - Trabajo Independiente (Independent Work)
-Images of four different articles of clothing are projected one at a time, and students write a sentence describing each image in their notebooks. After a brief pause, someone shares an answer that I write on the smartboard, underlining the letters that indicate noun/adjective agreement.
-Another image of a person is projected and each student silently writes five sentences describing that person’s clothing as if they were the person in the photo.
Slide 15 - Preguntas (Questions): Students are able to ask clarifying questions about the lesson in English at this point.
Slide 16- La Prueba (The Quiz/Exit Ticket) Students each write five sentences describing another image without their notes, which I collect to assess if students are able to use adjectives correctly in sentences in terms of word order, number, and gender.