So this week I was doing some planning ahead for my Spanish I class since today we finished a chapter. So I looked at the next chapter in out textbook and the topic is school which really made me yawn. Buen Viaje works with school related vocabulary for 3 whole chapters and this would be the third chapter. I am bored to death with talking about school. Now before I plunged ahead and started planning the next chapter I had a thought. I am a department of one. What I teach effects no other teachers or future levels because I am the one who teaches the future levels and being the only teacher I will not have kids switching classes (from/to another teacher) at semester time. And so there is absolutely no reason why I need to stick with the textbook. So this week I threw out the textbook. I will probably go back to it at least as a reference after break or maybe not until after the semester but for now it is sitting on a shelf.
So I took a few moments to sit down and think about what we could work on that would really give them more to work with and be able communicate more. I have settled on a unit on present tense verbs. How can we communicate without verbs?? So I put together a list of regular verbs, irregular verbs, stem-changing verbs, and spelling change verbs that are used very often and that could be used for students to talk about what they and people they know do. I added to the list some vocabulary that goes with those verbs to allow them to speak more completely.
By focusing on verbs together, I really feel that I can get kids communicating more and it will help them as we cover more topics so that they can speak more fully. I'm also hoping that it will allow me to spend more time on the past tense second semester.
In the future I want to get a hold of the textbook that introduces the present, past and future together. I hate being limited by the present tense in Spanish I.
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2 comments:
Old Eva has a textbook she likes that introduces them all at once.
I like to have the students brainstorm verbs themselves...they seem more invested in learning the ones the pick out on their own.
Happy thanksgiving!
YAY for throwing out the textbook!! Who says you're limited to present tense? Who speaks only in present tense anyway, right? Just one suggestion--try to pattern them a lot without calling them "stem-changing verbs" etc. The knowledge that something is a "stem-changing verb" is useless information for communication, but if you present the verbs in varied conjugations, preferably as part of a phrase, kids' brains pick up the pattern, often without them realizing it. It's slower than rote memorization and explaining all the grammatical details, but it results in kids who are a lot more communicative, and communicative=motivated!
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