In 2022, I blogged about a formative assessment I was trying in my classroom called “Talking Walls.” In the original post, I explained how I used the evaluation with the Essential Questions in my Fast Fashion unit: Compra menos y haz que dure.

Instead of writing an essential question on each of my 5 posters, I wrote the name of a story we had studied in our “scary story unit.” In Spanish 3, I did “clip chats” of four shorts: Mamá, Monstruo del armario, Closet Space, and Alma. We also watched the film El orfanato.

On Monday, they are going to write from a choice board:

• Max score of B: Summarize any three of our stories in 4-6 sentences. (This is the B because they are not demonstrating the ability to give a large amount of detail or organize their writing like their L1 so it is very much a low intermediate type of task.)
• Max score of A-: Describe one of our stories in as much detail as possible. (While they are being pushed to write more connected, organized sentences, this is still lower level because they do not have to do any more than parrot back what we’ve said in class)
• Max score of A: Compare and contrast at least 2 of our stories. They can choose to highlight the storyline itself or recurring themes we saw like dolls and doors. (A level task because now they have to draw some comparisons and not rely just on the story we have created in the classroom.)
• Max score of A+: Compare and contrast at least 1 of our stories with a story we did not study in class. (This is the A+ level because we HAVE brainstormed similarities and differences in our stories… to bring in a new story means generating new comparisons of their own… a solid middle intermediate skill)

Knowing how I would be evaluating, I needed a formative peek at how well they’re able to produce language related to the topic. Talking Walls was the perfect solution. Because I was using it as a formative and ALSO as a quick review, I decided to shake up the evaluation a little. I broke the rotations into rounds.

Here’s how it worked:

1. I broke the class into 5 teams for the 5 posters. My teams were 4-6 students each depending on class size.
2. Each team began at a different poster. After they were in position, I gave them their first round of instructions.
3. Round 1: 7 minute timer – Write 10 sentences (must contain a detail – no “there was a woman”) about your film clip.
4. Student groups rotated to the next poster and in round 2: 1 minute timer – Read all sentences from the team before you. 4 minute timer – Add 5 new sentences.
5. Rotation and Round 3: Add one detail to each of the 15 sentences on your current poster.
6. Rotation and Round 4: Create a vocabulary list of 15 words that would be important to a student wishing to write about this clip/film. Give the Spanish (any L2) and English (any L1) of all words.
7. Final Round: Students grabbed their iPads and moved to the last poster. Here, they all took a picture of the poster and then began a “photo walk” collecting a picture of each poster they had already visited.
8. Students created a document with all 5 pictures and submitted to me for a formative (full credit) grade. Now they have this document to prepare for tomorrow!

Whether you stick with the traditional and just add new detail at each poster or try the varied rounds, I’d love to see how Talking Walls works in your room!

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