Minute by Minute Spanish

It took ten hours of research to create a lesson that goes beyond the typical Spanish Class reading lesson of “I have a Dream” translation.

If you are like me, I teach in a community where Dr. King visited and preached.  One of our community members  was part of the bodyguard contingency when Dr. King visited the Philadelphia area and many others have links to him.  While I personally consider his “I have a Dream” speech to be in the top five best speeches in history, my junior high students have heard it every year.

Last year I shared a timeline with a few interesting facts written in Spanish prompting the discussion about how much Dr. King accomplished in such a short life span.  Students were surprised to learn that Dr. King had visited some Spanish-speaking countries and that they honored him in different ways.  We talked about what it would take for the United States to put a non-US citizen on its stamp.  We wondered about how much effort it would take to name a street or park after someone not born in our own country.  We watched the PowerPoint and then students wrote their own future legacy.

Many students thanked me for giving them a new twist to this beloved  holiday.  One very quiet student lingered behind to tell me that his church was very active in doing community service on Dr. King’s birthday.  We have had several discussions that his father is raising him to be a leader in his community.  He shared that he didn’t think I could teach him anything about Dr. King that he didn’t already know, but I did and he thanked me. I have to admit that I treasured that moment and that my ten hours of research and asking our Venezuelans to help me illustrate this made a difference.  This is why I love teaching and find it to be so rewarding.  I hope you do, too.

Click here for more about the lesson.

All net proceeds help three Venezuelan families – meet them in this video as they open three boxes I sent to them.

If you want to read more about class structure and transition videos, read my blog here.

If your school won’t provide you with these tools, you may consider this:

The talented Devon Gunning invited me to write my first guest blog (below) for her Target Language Expert Interview Series.   

She interviewed me and a video of that interview is at the end of this blog.

Have you ever had a class that made you feel like a first-year teacher all over again?

The behavior is so challenging that even your disciplinarian agrees that the roster is a combination of characters that should never be scheduled together.

Your colleagues offer you chocolate and coffee gift cards as tokens of sympathy and to make sure you don’t send any students to their classes.

The last time I had such a stomach-clenching low-ability Spanish One class, my newly hired, inexperienced supervisor * interpreted  “the 90% Target Language for all levels goal” to mean that during observations, teachers earned ‘needs improvement’ scores for every student’s English utterance!

I earned five times more ‘needs improvements’ in one observation than I had cumulatively in the past twenty-five years in the classroom.

*This supervisor is no longer in the educational field.  My current supervisor is a dream – hold on if you are in a similar situation – I would never have predicted how quickly things could change for the better, but they can and do!

HOW TO ACCELERATE TARGET LANGUAGE USE IN YOUR CLASSROOM

Until then, I believed the Comprehensible Input theorists when they said to not force output.  However, I needed to accelerate target language output to avoid being put on an improvement plan.   These students were talkers! During the post-observation I asked the supervisor how to stop this challenging class from blurting out in English, and was told that was my problem to solve.

At that point, I had a daily PowerPoint presentation with my daily routines, a slide for each transition, and a few slides for each activity.  I called it my “daily tech guide” or “DTG” for short. I did a different song of the week and a daily headline from BBC Mundo. I used my remote presentation device so that I could move around the room and stand behind the students who created the most problems.

CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT TIP: WORK WITH YOUR CLASS PERSONALITY

I knew enough to not try to get these students to be quiet but to be engaged.  Rather than telling them “silencio” I would always have the next activity on hand and say “listos” and they would answer ‘listos’ and quickly move to the next activity.

Once I started to analyze when they would act out and blurt out, I realized that transitions were an invitation to go off task.

CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT TIP: THE POWER OF TRANSITIONS

I also realized that while I taught the usual classroom phrases of commands and requests, I wasn’t teaching them the phrases they need to talk to one another, nor was I teaching them the important self-talk phrases.   So I created The 50 Classroom Survival Expressions

TARGET LANGUAGE USE TIP: PUT IT TO MUSIC!

I also observed that anything set to music seemed to drop out of their mouths with very little effort, faster than the CI experts would have you believe. The 50 Classroom Survival Expressions were put to music.

Around this time, my friends in Venezuela were suffering financially.  I started to send songs for transitions and class routines to the unemployed music teacher to record, transition videos to the videographer, and multi-cultural clipart requests to the graphic designer.  I started to sell their creations on TpT and send them all net proceeds.

GETTING STUDENTS TO USE MORE TARGET LANGUAGE WITH VIDEO

As I started to add musical class routines and transition videos to my DTG, I added more slides with options for students’ responses.  The videos are so engaging that after hearing the “Saquen la tarea” video just once, students are able to tell me “la tengo” or “no la tengo” – after two weeks it just flows out of their mouth more easily than the English.

As my students were drenched in Spanish from minute to minute of class time, they grew to handle spontaneous speech activities after a month of instruction.  My DTG also grew and sometimes has as many as 100 slides.

I have a template for my daily lessons and label them from  “day 1 – greetings” to “day 180 – closure activities” and everything in between.

At the end of each day, I take a few minutes and discard what I didn’t use and change anything that didn’t work.  I save it as ‘rd’ for real deal – the version that will be my starting point next year.

This week was my second week of classes.  I pulled up my DTG from last year and with fifteen minutes of tweaking the date, adding school messages about Picture Day and new bus routes, and checking handouts, I was ready to teach a class worthy of a walk through or even an observation.

While many teachers are seeking unscripted, no-prep classes to better interact with their students, I have found that by having my scripted class, I am able to be more emotionally available to students.

CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT TIP: WHY REINVENT THE WHEEL?

I don’t have to remember whether I taught something to period three but not period seven.  It is all in the daily tech guide, freeing me up to be more present for my students. I teach in a large building with three other level one teachers and I know that I have taught all that was required so that next year my students are prepared for new teachers.  Since using the DTG, no one has ever come back to complain I didn’t teach something.

All of us teachers need to craft our own ‘teaching voices.’  They may be pure TPRS, ci, owl, traditional or our own eclectic blend.  But, if you are struggling with classroom management, make a slideshow with an outline of your class and start inserting musical transition videos to help keep your students on task.  Watch my template video for inspiration.

By creating a classroom management tool for a very difficult class, I inadvertently created a system for keeping any level one class in the target language.   While I still use English to discuss matters of the heart and to clarify something new, the students are accustomed to most of the class being conducted in the target language.

Click here for a preview of frequently used videos.

Click here for a collection of videos explaining the day’s daily tech guide.

Click here for the daily tech guide template – it will help you to start to create your own daily tech guide.”

This is a vintage power struggle that you will lose if you respond to the comment rather than openly acknowledging the tactic  the student is doing.

From my book “Teacher Dialogues” I post two signs up  and discuss them during a neutral time.

Now, let’s apply the four kinds of responses by students to the situation that a student is once again late to class.  The bell has rung, you are giving directions to the rest of the class, a student slips into her chair, and you neutrally tell her to see you at the end of class about being late.

DENY:              “No, I’m not!”

                        “That’s not true, just a little late . . .”

RESPONSE:

“OK, the little child part of you is reacting by denying [as I walk over to the posters].  I need you to take a step towards being a mature teenager and apologize.  Can you do that for me today?  No, well, perhaps tomorrow will be better—I believe in you.”  [Then I would continue on with the lesson and let the other students tell her to hush and not be a baby.]

DIVERT:              “Junior is texting!”

                           “But yesterday she was late.”

                           “Everyone is doing their homework before you check it.”

RESPONSE:

“OK, the little child part of you is reacting by diverting [as I walk over to the posters].  I need you to take a step towards being a mature teenager and apologize.  Can you do that for me today?  No, well, perhaps tomorrow will be better—I know you will get there.”  Then I would continue on with the lesson and let the other students tell her to hush and not be a baby.

CHALLENGE:      “Why do you always act like the first few minutes are important—you don’t do anything during them.”

                           “No other teacher cares if someone is 20 seconds late.”

” You are picking on me.”

RESPONSE:

“OK, the little child part of you is reacting by challenging me [as I walk over to the posters].  I need you to take a step towards being a mature teenager and apologize.  Can you do that for me today?  No, well, perhaps tomorrow will be better—I have seen many glimpses of you being very mature for your age, and I know I will see them again.”  [Then I would continue on with the lesson and let the other students tell her to hush and not be a baby.]

THREATEN:        “My mother says if you pick on me again she is calling the principal.”

                           “I’m gonna sue you for making fun of my being fat and walking so slow.”

                           “I’m telling my uncle the lawyer that you only single me out because I am . . .”

RESPONSE:

“OK, the little child part of you is reacting by threatening me, and it sounds like today just isn’t working well for you  [as I walk over to the posters] but I need you to take a step towards being a mature teenager and apologize.  Can you do that for me today?  No, well, perhaps tomorrow will be better. I believe you will be able to do this and have a bright future.  [Then I would continue on with the lesson and let the other students tell her to hush and not be a baby.]

After all of this repetition, you probably have the solution part memorized.  Great!  Now memorize these words: deny, divert, challenge, and threaten.  Begin to closely observe others; practice labeling reactions in your mind and soon the correct response will fall out of your mouth naturally!