When I first entered my fifth grade classroom many years ago, I knew I had the best teacher. She was kind, encouraged us to do our best, and made learning so much fun. I genuinely looked forward to school every day. My favorite teacher communicated such passion for her subjects that it was contagious. The day I became a teacher, I knew that I had to share my love of my subject with students. I wanted to make the Spanish language exciting as students discovered cultures different from their own. Most importantly, I wanted every student to be comfortable and confident speaking in Spanish with others.
Each school year, our department chooses a language teaching practice as our focus. We are currently developing students’ literacy skills through interpretive reading and listening activities. I usually do 4-6 reading activities per week, so at this point in the school year, I am quite tired of these interpretive activities. Furthermore, it has been challenging to stay up to date with the latest educational trends and constantly adjust my curriculum. As I was reading A More Beautiful Question by Warren Berger (2014), I wholeheartedly related to his comments about feeling swamped. He writes that there are people trying to do everything just to keep up, and they need to slow down before they burn out (Berger, 2014). Reflecting on my current practice, I realized that I lost sight of what I wanted to accomplish as a teacher. I wondered what small thing I could to reignite the passion within me.
In my Spanish 3 class on Tuesday, I introduced our unit on Global Challenges. Throughout the class period, I was the one posing questions, explaining information, and guiding discussions. My students just responded to me. In fact, only three students voluntarily participated, and I randomly called on others to hear more opinions. When I had students speak in their groups of four, they maintained a conversation for only one minute before reverting back to English. I left the class period frustrated and disappointed in myself. My focus has been so much on listening/reading that I was not growing my students’ speaking abilities. I began to ask myself: How can my students become confident speakers of Spanish? What can I do to help them?
I began my creative problem solving by generating ideas to help me develop a solution (Berger, 2014). First, I conversed with our AP Spanish teacher on how she encourages her students to participate in Spanish. She bluntly told me, “If they ask or answer questions, I give them a point. If they don’t say anything, they get no points. Eventually, they learn to speak because it hurts their grade not to participate.” Although this works well in her AP courses where students have stronger speaking abilities, I could not see my students responding to a strict participation system. Yesterday, I discussed the topic of communication with my Spanish 3 students. I explained that my goal is for them to leave my class with the confidence to converse with a native Spanish-speaker. Also, in Spanish 4 Honors, students are expected to maintain conversations for the entire class period. I wanted to know what was causing their hesitation now, and what I could do to help them become more confident communicators. Most of the students responded that they did not like participating because they did not know how to express such complicated thoughts in a different language. Some even said they were embarrassed to talk in front of the whole class where everyone could “judge their abilities.”
I was curious to delve into the two issues surrounding lack of communication – lack of Spanish conversation vocabulary and embarrassment. For the last ten minutes of class, I had my students collaborate on a Google Doc. They brainstormed sentence starters for participating in a discussion in English. Then, we wrote those phrases in Spanish. Here is the list we created:
If my students could have this document open during our class discussions, it would help them articulate complex thoughts in a manageable way. They will be more confident adding commentary to our conversations because they have a way to begin their thoughts.
Next, I investigated how to reduce students’ nervousness while speaking for everyone to hear. I wondered if there was a way I could still get students responding to each other but not in a whole-class setting. I took to #langchat on Twitter to see if other World Language educators had any recommendations. Reading through my personal learning network’s tweets led me to #FlipGridFever.
Check out my screencast to learn more about FlipGrid and how I plan to use it to promote communication in a “non-embarrassing” way.
I am so excited to try my FlipGrid activity next week! I truly hope using sentence starters and FlipGrid will build the confidence necessary for students to be successful, independent Spanish speakers. Although I am proud of my discoveries this week, I know I cannot stop with these two communicative activities. I am one step closer in solving my questions of How can I my students become confident speakers of Spanish? What can I do to help them? I hope to continue building a solid document of sentence starters with my students. FlipGrid is a great way for students to interact over video, but better tools may exist. I will continue to investigate and experiment.
CEP 812 has helped me become a lifelong questioner. When teaching becomes overwhelming, it is easy to fall back on activities we are required to do. Reading A More Beautiful Question reminded me that I have to keep questioning my practice. I must pushing myself to produce work that I am passionate about and keep my curiosity (Friedman, 2013). Creating my FlipGrid activity brought a fresh feeling of excitement rather than writing more listening questions. I am not an expert on improving student speaking confidence, but I will never stop learning how to do so. I have awesome colleagues who offer excellent advice. My PLN challenges me with new ideas for best teaching practices. In addition, I will be attending the Central States Conference on the Teaching of Foreign Languages, where I will learn from educators all over the Midwest. Someday, I hope one of my students will leave my classroom saying, “She is kind, encourages us to do our best, makes learning fun, and helps us develop our Spanish-speaking skills.”
References
Berger, W. (2014). A More Beautiful Question: The Power of Inquiry to Spark Breakthrough Ideas. New York: Bloomsbury.
Friedman, T. L. (2013, January 29). It’s P.Q. and C.Q. as Much as I.Q. The New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/30/opinion/friedman-its-pq-and-cq-as-much-as-iq.htm
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