Independent Study: Content and Skills (Week 9)

The next step in the five step process of completing this unit, is the section titled "Critical Content and Skills." This section is used to specifically define what students will know from each lesson, what they will be able to do after this lesson plan, and what they will be required to create as their summative assessment. The product for the summative assessment can be anything from a test to an iMovie. Basically the summative assessment is the student's opportunity to make their understanding of the content evident to the teacher. Assessing students can be extremely fun using different online sources that students will enjoy creating! 

For the first lesson plan, I decided to make the summative assessment simple because of this being their first time exemplifying their knowledge of the Spanish language. This product will end up being a resource for the students as well as a way for me to know that they are "getting" the material. Because llamar will most likely be the first verb in the Spanish language that students have ever been introduced to, the assessment that they will be required to complete is going to be a memorization tool for them to refer back to when learning other verbs. I would like them to make some sort of poster, visual, book of flash cards that they can use to master the -AR verb present tense conjugations. 

For the second lesson plan, they will be introduced to the verb "ser." For their summative assessment students will work together to create a Glogster that will provide a visual of their understanding of the verb ser. If you have never heard of a Glogster, it's basically an online poster board. You can use images from online and organize them in whatever fashion you'd like. Students will work in pairs to create a visual that will be presented in class. What they will have to explain to the class is why they used specific images on their Glogster. For example, students may put a picture of a student, because you would use ser to say "Yo soy estudiante," something permanent. They would then explain to the class that they put a picture of a student on their Gloster because of that reason. Similar to this lesson plan, for the third lesson plan, students will create another Glogster, but they will use it to show their understanding of the verb "estar," because it is often confused with "ser" because they both translate in English as "to be." 

For the fourth lesson, students will be focusing on differentiating between the two "to know" verbs conocer and saber. To distinguish the two, the students will first create a rough copy of a Venn-Diagram to show the similarities and differences between the two verbs. Their final project for this lesson will be creating a Venn-Diagram that is more visually appealing using the application Inspiration. Similar to the first lesson plan in this unit, this final Venn-Diagram can be used as a tool that they can keep and reuse to make sure they are using the two verbs properly. 

For the last two lessons students will be creating an iMovie and a Comic Life to create stories that exemplify their understanding of how to formally and informally introduce themselves using all of the verbs and vocabulary that they have learned in the first four lessons. 

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Independent Study: Understandings and Questions (Week 7)

As I was writing my understandings and questions for this unit, I looked it over and could not help but think that it appeared as extremely redundant and repetitive. It is very often that understandings and questions for any topic can appear as being extremely repetitive because they state "Students will understand that...." multiple times. For this unit specifically, I found that every understanding needed to basically sound the exact same, minus the verb being presented to the students. 

In my many years of Spanish classes, and throughout the five teachers that I have been educated by, each and every one of them have either re-taught or reviewed the five verbs presented in this unit I am completing. The teaching and reviewing of these verbs is a result of their importance and often use in the Spanish-speaking community. 

Each verb that I am going to introduce to students in this lesson plan has its own specific importance. The verb llamar allows one to tell another, or ask another person what their name is. Llamar literally translates in English as "to call oneself," as opposed to how many first think of this as "my name is." Therefore, when you ask someone "Como te llamas?" You are asking, "What do you call yourself?" I decided that this verb would be the first verb to learn for my future students because I want them to not only be able to begin an introduction with their name, but also to be able to begin the process of conjugating present tense verbs. 

The second verb that they will be learning is "Ser" which translates in English as "to be." This verb is used to educate someone on your personal appearance, personality traits/characteristics, and basically anything about one self that is permanent, or something long-term. For example, "Yo soy un estudiante," translates to "I am a student." This verb, coupled with estar, could be argued as the most important and useful verbs to have understanding of in the Spanish language. 

Following the verb ser, is the verb, "estar." Like ser, "estar" translates in English as "to be." Different from ser, estar is used to educate someone on something about yourself, someone else, etc., on something that is not permanent. Estar would be used to inform someone on the way in which you are feeling in that given moment. For example, "Yo estoy triste," translates to "I am sad." Being sad is most often not something that is permanent, therefore you use estar instead of ser. 

Through these first three verbs that students will be presented with, they will be educated on how to conjugate verbs that end with -AR and verbs that end with -ER. The next two lesson plans will hopefully become even easier for students to comprehend because they will have already been introduced to the conjugations of -AR and -ER verbs. The last two lessons in the unit will be used to focus on sentence structure, and specifically structuring questions. The verbs that were introduced to them in the first four lesson plans will be the verbs required to use in the questions and sentences structured by the students. 

The reasoning behind using an enduring understanding and question for each lesson plan is mainly so you as an educator can assure that students are learning the correct material, avoiding any confusion. At the end of each lesson, students should be able to provide an explanation in response to the guided question. This does not necessarily mean that they need to be asked the question directly, but through formative and summative assessments, they will exemplify understanding of the content discussed.

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Independent Study: Unit Overview/ Unit Planner (Week 4)

The unit overview provided on my Wiki is the beginning of an outline that explains the general information that will be included in the unit, and the importance of the information that I will be covering over the course of six to eight weeks. This could be presented to administration to explain the reasoning behind covering this specific content in your class time. 

Similar to the Unit Overview, the Unit Planner (Step #1) begins to specify the details of the Unit in "student" language. This is along the lines of what I would present to them in the beginning of the unit to get their attention and attract them to the material being presented in class. No matter what the subject is that I am teaching, or anyone is teaching, there will always be that one student that asks "What is the point of me learning this?" When I first began my college education course, being able to answer that question was sometimes difficult because my years in high school had just ended, and i was recently considered one of those students asking my math teacher what the point of me learning trigonometry was.  The unit overview is a resource that an educator can refer back to, or think back to when that student decides to ask what the point of learning how to introduce his or her self in the Spanish language is.

Included in the Unit Planner is the "Unit Understanding" and the "Unit Essential Question." These terms are exactly what they appear to be. The "Unit Understanding" is often worded in a broad sense. This statement shares exactly what students are going to understand once this unit is completed. The "Unit Essential Question" asks the major question of the unit. Once students have comprehended and understood the material provided to them, they would be able to exemplify their answer to this general question in some way or another. 

Once both the Unit Overview and Unit Planner are completed, it becomes easier to get in to the specific understandings and questions of each lesson plan. The explanation of this will be provided in my next post!

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Independent Study: The Beginning (Week 2)

When I first began this semester, I thought for sure I knew exactly what I was going to complete for my independent study. I planned to complete two unit portfolios that would visually display my understanding of educating students at the middle and high school levels of the Spanish language. As I got outlining my lesson plans, I thought to myself, this would be way more useful for others, and myself (in the future) if I just completed my entire independent study using a Wiki Space. In my first semester here at the University of Maine at Farmington I was introduced to the wonderful world of wiki's. When first presented with them I thought they were extremely confusing and useless because I had no experience using them, and no background knowledge on how to utilize them!

At this point in my educational path, I have become very fond of using a wiki space. Through multiple education courses, I have been kind of forced in to using them. Because technology is becoming more integrated in to the classroom, many teachers of mine have posted all material for their courses through a wiki site. When I say all material, this includes the entire syllabus, including work that we are required to complete for class, what we are going to be completing in class time, and even all of our work we completed is uploaded on to the wiki to share with class mates and our professor. Not only can they be created in an extremely organized fashion, but more importantly, my work can be shared with other educators that are interested in teaching Spanish to their best ability. All of my work is saved in one area, and by using proper tools on the Wiki I have designed my site in a step-by-step order making it easy to navigate through all of the information I have provided.

For my first unit on the wiki, I am specifically targeting the middle level grades (6-8), focusing on informal and formal introductions. Through the Spanish classes completed in high school, and the Spanish courses taken here at the University of Maine at Farmington I am able to confidently state that having the ability to introduce yourself, and begin a conversation is the first step in mastering the Spanish language. By using "introductions" as the underlying topic, there are many opportunities to introduce the most commonly used verbs and present-tense conjugations. Comprehending present-tense conjugations is the first step in successfully introducing yourself, or beginning any conversation in general.

I will utilize this blog to explain why I chose to include each lesson plan. On my Wiki Space I have provided two units that target Spanish education in general, one for middle level, and one for high school level. Once explanations have been provided for the middle level lesson plans incorporated in to that unit, I will begin to reflect and explain the information that will be provided in the second unit for the high school level.

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