Reflecting on Fall Semester 2023

This year I have been very lucky to have almost zero behavior/distraction problems. And class, for the most majority of the time, has felt productive. There are many things that I think went into this, but they are not things I necessarily want to elaborate on at this moment. Long story short, I started with some reasonable, but seemingly strict class expectations, started including things in class that made my class seem more like "school", and I've gotten better at simplifying what acquisition looks like to students so they can better understand why we do what we do in class.

Class expectations

My posted class expectations are:

1. I do not distract myself or others.
2. I ask for clarification when Señor is unclear.
3. I am respectful of classmates, teachers, and our physical space.

These are the expectations that I have had posted in my room for probably 5 years or so now, because I think they encompass everything that I believe students need to strive for in order to get the most out of class.

What I added

This year, however, I started off the year by breaking them down even more. I'm aware that the language I choose to use here might not work for everyone, and not everyone will agree with the language I choose to use. That said, these have helped me establish the boundaries that I felt I needed at the time.

1. If Señor is talking, you are not.
2. Unless instructed, technology is put away.
3. You are not doing work for other classes.
4. When one person talks, you listen to them.
5. You respond when you can.
6. You let Señor know when he is not 100% clear.
   

I keep my go-to expectations hung on my wall so we can refer to being respectful, and not distracting others.

Admittedly, I did overhear a few students at the beginning of the year talking about how I was too strict, and how they interpreted the first expectation as "students are not allowed to talk". I now make the clarifying statement that it's not about control it's about making sure they receive the input that I want to provide them.

Moving forward

Starting the semester, I still bring up the class expectations at the beginning of each class. What I have started doing, to ween off having the harsher phrased expectations, is showing students how they fit into the posted class expectations. How numbers 1,2,3 and 4 fit under "I do not distract myself or others", how numbers 5 and 6 fit into "I ask for clarification when Señor is unclear". How number 4, and really all of them, fits into "I am respectful of classmates, teachers, and our physical space".

Making it feel like school

In Comprehension-based classes there aren't often typical "tests", There are rarely correct and incorrect answers, and there is rarely "practice" as homework. In my experience, since students have been doing all of those things in other classes for the majority of their school experience, it's hard for them to take class seriously. You've probably heard things like "all we do is read and talk", "class isn't challenging", "I don't learn anything", "the teacher is too easy of a grader".

In my head my responses are "We're communicating in a new language", "Good, then I'm making myself understood", "You're using new words and phrases all the time to talk about topics you didn't know about, isn't that learning?", and "Am I an easy grader, or are my performance expectations reasonable?"

What I added

In Spanish 4, I knew I wanted to change how I approached class so that it would feel more like school. Because of the concerns students expressed, I felt they weren't taking my class as seriously as I'd like them to. I decided I would add content based tests at the end of each unit. In my mind, it would do two things: make students re-read and re-watch resources from class, providing more input, and give students something to "study" which would feel more like their other classes. For the most part, I think I achieved those goals. I was also hoping that with a "high stakes" test students would be more prone to asking me for clarification (that part didn't happen like I would have liked it to).

Creating the tests did take me a bit of additional time, but not time that I didn't think I had. I made the tests completely multiple choice, and self grading. But the tests were hard for some students (which I should have expected, we have all seen students who are good at tests, and those who aren't so good at tests).

Moving Forward

What I found most annoying with giving the tests is that I felt that I had to add extra classes where students weren't getting as much input and interaction as I'd like them to get. Though one of the days that I added was group discussion days, which I will definitely continue with, students seem to enjoy them, and they seem more willing to talk with classmates than they are with me during whole class discussions.

This past week I sat down with students and we talked about the tests. So many students had asked me why I didn't give tests last year but now they have to take them, and I would tell them that I felt that in the past students weren't paying as close attention to what we talked about as I would like them to. In that respect, I did feel students were paying more attention to what we talked about in class, but still could be doing better.

I told students that we could forgo the unit tests IF they were able to consistently meet my expectations, ESPECIALLY those of asking me for clarification and responding when they can. I told them that if they are trying to interact more, and if we can demonstrate really good comprehension with in class activities then we don't have to do a test at the end of the unit to verify that they were understanding. This does mean, however, that we would have to do some more individual comprehension activities so that I can do check-ins with individual students.

So far all students seem on board for this change. No tests? I'll do whatever it takes to not have tests! Next year, I think I will keep the tests in some fashion first semester as a way to show students the level of understanding I expect of them to be reaching for, but I may completely change my mind by then, who knows?

Explaining Acquisition to Students

Something that I've struggled with, though I understand it really well, is getting students (and other stakeholders, tbh) to understand why we do what we do in class, and what "learning" looks like and feels like in class. Honestly this could be its own post, so I'll try to keep this concise and come back to it at a later date.

What I added

Last semester I was big into Structured Input. Through reading and learning about SI, I started to understand more clearly what students need to be taking away from the input that we provide them in order to acquire language and improve grammatical accuracy.

I started explaining to students the importance of taking things slowly, and how just understanding the gist of (teacher created) texts wasn't enough. I did a lot more pop-up grammar, and got better at figuring out what to circle(thanks to really smart and talented colleagues). Yes, even in level 4 we need to circle to focus on connecting words and other 'complex' structures. Side note, check out this article by Gardner and Lichtman (2023) on the use of either/or questioning.

Something else I added, or rather replaced, was instead of giving students "I Can" statements for activities, giving them reasons why we are doing activities. I have an inkling of a suspicion that students don't care so much about short term outcomes as much as they care about WHY we are doing something. If we listen to a podcast, yes there are outcomes from it, but telling students "We're doing this to build vocabulary, and practice listening skills" gives them a reason to go into an activity rather than waiting til the end to see if they were able to do something or not.

Moving Forward

Though it was this semester, not last semester, something that I added the first day back from break, and will continue using moving forward, was explaining to students "mapping language"(I've got a big analogy on how language learning is like using a GPS but that's for another post) why we make 'errors' in language.

I gave them the following example: "If someone wants to say "I have a dog", but instead of saying "Yo tengo un perro" they say "yo tiene un perro*" what that shows me is that you have correctly mapped "yo" to the idea of expressing things about yourself, and you have mapped the idea of expressing having something with "tiene" but what has yet to happen is that you haven't mapped "tengo" to those two ideas. So I need to make sure that we use "tengo" I have to make sure you understand it, AND I have to use it enough times that the connection is REALLY strong. To complicate things, we have to do that with ALL types of structures, so you can imagine we have a lot of communication to do".

I think by explaining why we make 'errors', in a pretty simple way really helped students understand why we need to sometimes slow down. I also added (though not sure if I'll keep the wording) explaining to students what circling is and what it looks like. I told them "OK, now when you ask me for clarification on something I'm just going to park on it for a moment and ask a bunch of silly questions, questions that you know the answer to, and that use really simple vocabulary so the only thing your brain has to work on is mapping the new structure/vocab word". But I think now that I've given them a little insight I can be sneakier with my questioning.

New Semester, New Ideas

I'm really looking forward to this semester. By being clearer with expectations, and letting students know why we do things, and how our brains process language I think we'll have a productive semester.