On day 2, my Spanish 3’s reading La hija del sastre did activities directly from the Teacher’s Guide. The independent group, the comprehension questions, and the cooperative group did a variation on the charades activity… Instead of acting out the variations of the words in new contexts, they drew a picture of what they read.
Spanish 4, who are reading different novels, did this Twitter activity Túiter in which they created conversations between characters in the novel that reflected what had happened in the first two chapters.
Day 3 we focused on protagonists in Spanish 4. They drew their protagonist in the center of 9 thought bubbles and then wrote 9 descriptions of the person.
Spanish 3’s independent group did comprehension questions from the teacher’s guide while the cooperative learning group used the word cloud that accompanied Reader’s Theater in Chapter 3 to write a short dialogue that two characters in the novel might have had with one another after the events of the chapter unfolded.
I was excited, and nervous, to get to today…. Our first discussion Thursday. I have never relinquished so much control to my students before! I wondered how it would look to assess them as a large group after they had been reading in small groups.
It was AMAZING! From Spanish 2 (who are reading Robo en la noche as a class) to Spanish 4, everyone had discussion Thursday today. I gave them this tally sheet and rubric so that they could self assess as the discussion unfolded: Grading Rubric Class Discussion
There were no long, drawn out “fact-offs” in which students just listed events of the novel because facts were only worth 2 points… There were GREAT questions… and questions are so important as students learn to communicate! They listened to each other, elaborated on other students’ statements, and asked questions that came to them as they heard their classmates speaking. Unbelievable. I wish you could have been there! Or that I could’ve bottled the flow we were in for a rainy day. LOL
So far I have nothing but happy thoughts about reading club. If you’re following along with us, I hope you’re feeling the same! It is NOT something I would do in the lower levels because as novices they need a diet of input…. in order to produce output, it has to go in! 🙂 But as Intermediates in level 3 and 4, it has been a lot of fun!
Next week we are looking forward to a letter exchange with @profe105 Linda Kelchner’s classes who are reading La hija del sastre as well! Real letters! Like SNAIL mail! I think this should be fun!
Have a great weekend!