Pensamientos

The other day, a student in my Twosies class asked me the following question:

"Miss Profe, do you find it hard to plan different activities for our class?"

To which I answered, "No. Not the activities in and of themselves, but identifying and planning enough activities."

I thought that this was an insightful question, upon which I have reflected several times a day since it was originally posed to me. This is my answer:

As a language teacher, my main objective for students is communicating, and getting students to activate the four skills - listening, speaking, reading and writing. Sometimes we use the skills in isolation, but most of the time, we use the skills in combination: reading and writing, listening and speaking, reading and speaking, and, on occasion, all four in the same activity.

The activities I like to use the most are: student-created dialogues, pair/shares, dictations, student searches (also known as mixers), readings in the target language with comprehension questions in the target language, and translations - mostly English to Spanish, but also Spanish to English. I also like to use mini dry erase boards. I have begun to use a strategy where I pose a question in the target language, to which the student responds in kind.

I did the following with a crossword puzzle. Several years ago, I purchased authoring software, called Crossword Forge. With Crossword Forge, I can create puzzles and write the word clues in Spanish or English, depending on the objective. Today, the students reviewed reflexive verbs. Using clues in English, they had to identify the correct reflexive verb, then put the verb into the correct form. When they had completely filled in the crossword puzzle, they translated the sentence clues into Spanish.

What is this activity effective? The crossword puzzle aspect forces students to focus on form and spelling. The translation aspect gets them to activate prior learning.

So, planning and creating? The facets I enjoy the most. Filling an 85 minute block? Even after 15 years, this is what I find to be the most challenging.