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Students will ultimately remember only those things that are relevant to them. When teaching a world language, there is a lot of choice in terms of vocabulary as it pertains to individuals. For years, I have given longer lists of vocabulary to students to honor the diversity in my classroom - diversity in being and diversity of interests.
This year I decided to expand the options for students for our entertainment unit because I felt that the choices I was giving students were not broad enough. What I find entertaining as a student from the 1980s is not the same as students of today. The goal was to describe entertainment and give opinions about entertainment. My usual unit focused primarily on movies and videos. I still did some of that but I also expanded what constituted entertainment and narrowed the vocabulary students were required to learn to match their interests. They didn’t have to learn about forms of entertainment that did not apply to them.
While I will not do the project as it stands again, I believe that it is a step in the right direction.
Proficiency Goals
Proficiency Goals
In this project, the targeted proficiency level is Novice High. The benchmarks section breaks down this proficiency target into student-friendly language.
Specific student can-dos are in the "How will I be able to talk about entertainment?" box. These tell students what they will be able to do after the unit.
The Inter-culturality targets are in the circles.
Specific activities for the unit are on the second page of the document.
Vocabulary
Vocabulary
All students were given a common lists of vocabulary related to giving opinions about entertainment and very basic words related to entertainment.
They were divided into groups based upon an interest inventory done using a Google Form. Each group created a vocabulary list specific to their topic - music, movies, Netflix, YouTube, video games, sports, specific sports, etc.
Some groups created a Quizlet so that they could practice with their vocabulary. An example of one is on the right.
You can click on the settings bar at the top to choose how you look at the flashcards that are showing. You can also "Choose a Study Mode" to see all of the options for this Quizlet study set.
STAMPS
STAMPS
Stamps are a type of choice board that is used by world language teachers to break very broad learning targets into small manageable chunks for students. They are called stamps because the teacher stamps a student’s paper when he or she says the stamp in the target language.
For this task, I gave my students a copy of the standard stamps for the unit that my colleagues and l have used for several years (see left) and they wrote 15 of their own to show they can talk about and give their opinions on entertainment, some based upon the stamps and others they created.
You will see on the student-generated examples that I gave them a set of guidelines to follow.
A couple of student examples are below:
Other Tasks
Other Tasks
My students also completed a series of tasks designed to have them use Spanish related to their specific topics, two of which were to read and to watch a video. If I do this unit, or one like it again, I will create a video and readings bank for students to choose from since the open-ended nature made it hard for many of my students to complete these tasks. They spent more time looking for the things they read and listened to than they spent reading and listening.
Mastery Project
Mastery Project
Students were tasked with creating a project that would showcase what they learned - a video, web site, presentation, etc. This did not happen the way I envisioned. My students struggled with the intentional vagueness of the instructions.
Developing a mastery project was difficult for my students. As “traditional” students they are accustomed to being told exactly what they are supposed to do.
I need to find a way to support students to be creative and work collaboratively so they can create their own project ideas.
In the end, I provided an option for an individual project and most students chose to do that rather than create something of their own in a group. A few examples are below.
I had envisioned students doing presentations, videos, or web sites and ended up with primarily a digital poster. These projects demonstrated learning but were not the collaborative pieces I was hoping for.
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