Wednesday, October 10, 2012

Spanish 4 Weekly Schedule

This year, more than ever, I am focusing my energies and lessons on activities that will help students acquire the language.  I have a host of activities that I used in the past that were "fun" but not necessarily the absolute best use of time.  Now I scrutinize each activity and if it isn't something that is proven to help students acquire the language - phutt - I toss it in favor of more worthy activities.

Today I worked on drafting a new weekly schedule for my Spanish 4 class.  Half of the class period is before lunch and the other half is after lunch.  Each 1/2 period of class is equal to one unit.  I wanted to have at least 2 units of reading a book together as a class; 2 units of SSR; 2 units of listening to native speakers through podcasts and other sources; along with songs, discussions, "Kindergarten Day" and "hidden" grammar activities such as this one on SER vs ESTAR

 So today during my planning period, I went through the Spanish 4 curriculum to see how I could match the current curriculum to a schedule that includes more listening, reading, and storytelling activities.  After reviewing the curriculum, I see that as long as I stay on the high end of the creativity scale, I'll be able to weave all of the existing curriculum into the newly drafted Weekly Schedule.  The biggest challenge will be including information about the geography of Spain, and the interesting customs and celebrations throughout the regions.  I'll need to be particular in selecting the podcasts and audio sources, in order to include information about the regions of Spain and the specific customs and festivities of those regions.  I'll add authentic reading materials to supplement the 3-4 books that we will read this semester.
 
 

I shared the weekly schedule with the students today and asked for their input.  We made some minor changes and are ready to give it a trial run next week to see how well it serves its purpose - helping the students move toward fluency in Spanish.

I look forward to next week to put the weekly schedule to the test and tweak it if necessary.

2 comments:

  1. Señora,

    How do you recommend adjusting the above scheduled for an 85-minute block? Thank you for considering my question.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I apologize for this tremendously late response. Somehow your comment became buried in the "comments awaiting publishing" section of my blog.

    As the curriculum of our school is adjusted through collaboration among my colleagues, it has impacted how things are taught at each level. I also learned that I am very resistant, in a very natura way, to a rigid schedule. Conversation and stories take priority and often completely any type of "routine" or lesson planned on estimates of time. That's basicaly a long way of saying that th schedule listed above is no longer in effect. It's hard to focus in students' interest and involvement in class when my eye is trained in the clock, trying to push through activities planned for the class period.

    ReplyDelete