Class story and use of popular music

As you read in my last post, Spanish I is writing their own story using the imperfect and preterit.

They were given a one page handout which was a summary of the present, preterit, imperfect, and future tenses. For each tense, it listed regular verb conjugation, a list of common irregulars, and a general description of when the tense is used. We spent two days going over how verbs were conjugated in each tense and the general difference between the preterit and imperfect and they had one homework assignment on conjugating verbs. I told them that in Spanish I, I would not require them to memorize endings or individual verbs for the preterit, imperfect, and future tenses but I did expect that they would learn to use the summary sheet I gave them to start applying them. I am not expecting any mastery this year. I just want them to start getting comfortable using the different tenses. And I want them to be able to talk and write in more than just the present tense.

From there my goal was for them to gain a clearer understanding of when to use each tense through the creation of the story. And I am amazed at how well this is working. They are discussing which verb tense to use and asking excellent questions. And 9 times out of 10 they are coming up with the right verb ON THEIR OWN!!! And they are completely OK with the general distinction between the two.

I really think that I have been doing it all wrong before by introducing the preterit and imperfect by giving them a list of rules of when to use the preterit and when to use the imperfect.

Anyway, you can see their story by clicking on the title of this post. It is a published Google Doc and so automatically updates within seconds of it being altered or added to. And yes, this is a Spanish I class. And I have done very little to direct them in terms of vocabulary and grammar or even correct them. On occasion I will point things out but for the most part is all them.

We started with a general description of each character (split up into 3 groups to do that). Then I mixed them up and they edited one of the general descriptions. Now they are in 3 different groups (I'm trying to mix them up each time so they work with different people) writing the beginning for each character who they plan to all have meet in mid air. There are 11 students in the class.

Now, the second thing I wanted to share with you is how you can use popular music in class.

I have many times done cloze activities with music by having students listen for certain words for example they have to fill in all the verbs of a certain verb tense. And for they typically really enjoy that. So I thought I would take it one step further and get them to focus on an entire song.

My Spanish I students are listening to "Después de ti ¿qué?" by Nicho Hinojosa. It is a nice clear fairly simple song. Each day we focus on 2 lines. They transcribe the words while I play the section as many times as necessary (I write on the board while they share what they heard and we add to it bit by bit). Then we translate the lines literally and talk about what the artist might mean by the lines. The song has allowed me to point out how object pronouns working in Spanish (although I didn´t call them object pronouns), as well as double negatives, the use of infinitives after prepositions, etc.

So students are picking up new vocabulary and being exposed to different grammar structures all while enjoying a popular song. Some of my students say that this is their favorite part of the whole day. One girl was so crushed yesterday when I told her that we wouldn't have time to work on our song. It's clear that I'm going to have to find another song when we are done with this one.

My Spanish I classes don't look like your traditional classroom between the song and the story. And honestly I'm not sure that kids realize that they are even learning (shhh, don't tell them) because they are having so much fun!

Making Spanish relevant

Two things that I have really strived for this year is to incorporate more comprehensible input in every class as well as personalizing what we are learning to make it more relevant. As a result my Spanish I students are more excited about Spanish than I have ever seen before in a group and they can produce so much more language. It has been absolutely amazing. Here are some specifics of what I have done:

PQA - almost daily as a class we sit down and I just ask them questions in Spanish about their life (I have a class of only 11 making this very doable). This gets them hearing things over and over again as well as gives them opportunity to talk about themself. As a result, students have picked up on how I answer follow up questions or ask similar questions to other students and have started asking each questions as well. It's amazing how I am no longer the sole person keeping the conversation going.

Used stuff they bring in - One kid had a song in Spanish he just wanted to share so I asked him to write down the name and artist and then I looked it up on my own time to make sure it was school appropriate and it definitely was - so we listened to a little heavy metal in Spanish. Another kid told me about a SNL skit "La Poicia Mexicana" which I previewed and then will show tomorrow.

Used students names and lives in assingments and assessments - they love seeing their name in something.

During lectures when we got off topic (but still VERY relevant to learning Spanish) I followed their interests. So what if we learn things in a different order.

Create a class story - Just today we started this but the idea has been tossing around in my head for a while. My kids have the present tense down well so I have showed them the preterit and imperfect with a basic difference between the two. Now to reinforce that our next unit is going to be a class story all in Spanish using the two. They have picked a few characters and scene for their story to take place in as well as the basic concept for their story. Tomorrow we will do some character development. They were a little apprehensive as I first introduced the idea but by the end of the hour they couldn't stop throwing ideas back and forth. The basically covered my board with ideas. I will post more as we progress but I'm really excited about the progress we made today.