Spanish 4 has been studying Narcoviolence with a Unit designed heavily around Kara Jacobs unit! They were really engaged in the discussions we had throughout but today just blew me away!
Our final project was to make an infographic!
We spent 2 days in the library researching and a day assembling the posters. Today, history fair day, they presented in 2 groups. Group 1 stood by their poster awaiting guests from group 2. As each person approached, student A summarized the main points of his/her research!
As students moved from poster to poster, I walked among them listening to both the presentations and the follow up questions they were expected to ask! I hid behind the tray of meat and cheese and sparkling grape juice to keep them from being nervous!
The snacks and grape juice idea came from Sharon Birch @sraslb! It’s always a hit and I love doing it!
The infographics were a great alternative to a research paper and the kids were having so much fun going poster to poster that they were sad when they had to switch roles!
The best part is that all of the speaking grades are already done and the projects are fun because they cover so many topics!
I totally stole this idea from you and LOVED it every time my students did this type of task just for the fact that they end up speaking TL for a VERY extended period of time.
I do have a question about speaking evaluations. I find that even though I take notes as I walk around (need to get that snack tray idea going next time) I don’t feel confident in putting final call on speaking performance proficiency here. How do you evaluate? What factors do you consider? How much time do you spend per group? Any advice will be appreciated.
I asked my students to complete self-evaluation/reflection in which they needed to bid for a grade and provide evidence. I will be reading them this weekend. Curious to see what they thought and compare to own notes.
As early to mid intermediates I’m more concerned that they are developing the ability to carry on longer conversations than with their accuracy! Sometimes I have them call my Google Voice and record their presentation before they do the gallery but other times I get the info I need just knowing they were consistently using Spanish to share ideas!
I appreciate your response. But I’m curious about the latter scenario about “just knowing they were consistency using Spanish”. How does this translate into what you put into the grade book? This is what confuses me the most about this kind of assessment. I’m having a lot of trouble getting my mind around this approach.
Well, I started by looking carefully at the ACTFL performance descriptors and the levels of proficiency that are nationally expected after a certain amount of time in the language classroom. For example, advanced Low is generally achieved by a college language major graduating AFTER a study abroad. And do you know what the performance descriptor says?? Can use past, present, and future times appropriately (although there may still be errors). I was expecting this in Spanish 3!? I have completely changed (over 10 yrs) my classroom to better address these realistic expectations. I grade by listening to see if they are using language to communicate rather than if they’re using the past tense 10 times in the presentation. This means I have less small point deductions and more overall 5-10 point speaking tasks… I grade with a rubric adapted from the jcps skydrive documents. Google them if you aren’t familiar! Good stuff!
The gradebook on this had a presentational writing grade of 25 possible for their written portion, 10 points for presenting to classmates (everyone did and earned 10 points) and 10 for q and a period. Everyone asked and answered and although some clearly answered with more detail or asked with less errors, they all effectively asked and answered and were able to navigate the conversation!