Make the most of your school's Open House in your language classroom!

Ah yes, the first few weeks of the school year when we get to welcome our student's caregivers into our
classrooms for Open House! While it may seem nerve-racking to think about at first, it is a wonderful opportunity to meet your student's caregivers, make connections, and provide a glimpse into the magic of your classroom. But what exactly should you include in your Open House meet and greet?

A smiling face!

It should go without saying that caregivers want to see the same friendly smile that greets their children every day! They want to know that their child feels safe and welcome in your classroom. In addition to a smiling face, present a hook to your class curriculum - get caregivers excited about your class too! If they are on board with your class, they can easily provide more enthusiastic support to their student at home. 

Provide a brief overview of the topics covered throughout the year - caregivers love having an idea about what their child will be learning about through the course of the year. Mention any classic assignments or engaging projects that students will complete. Have a fun idea for a field trip? Float it by the caregivers and see what they think! You should want the caregivers to leave your room with as much enthusiasm for your class as their child.

Key class expectations

As mentioned above, caregivers want to know that their child is going to feel safe within the walls of your classroom. What expectations are in place so that every child feels comfortable and supported to succeed in your room? What types of activities are students expected to complete? Are there a lot of partner or group activities? 

Think about the class policies that are most important to you, specifically the ones where you need caregiver support for their child to be successful. For example, I no longer grade homework, but I do provide students optional practice activities for each grammar and vocabulary concept. At the start of the year, I explain to students that they should reflect on whether or not they need this optional practice to succeed in class the next day and to do well on upcoming assessments. I reiterate that if students do not do well in class assignments and I see that they haven't been completing the optional practices, then I will speak to them and their caregivers about this. This expectation is definitely one I should share with caregivers! It presents a great conversation starter between caregivers and their child about the class material. I want caregivers to know that I will be reaching out to them if I notice a pattern with their child not completing the optional practices and struggling with a class assessment as a result. Together, I know that we will have productive conversations with the student about reflection and taking charge of their own learning.

Another important policy in my classroom (and now entire school!) is the use of no cell phones. Each classroom has a hanging cell phone holder set of pouches, and students must put all devices in the pouches upon entering the room. After seeing the success of the cell phone pouches in the first few weeks, I will reiterate this expectation with caregivers and explain how much even informal conversation has flourished in the classroom when students do not have their cell phones glued to their fingertips. I know caregivers will be relieved to hear that this new policy has been received so positively by their children and that it's creating a positive learning environment!

Grading policies

How do you grade assignments? My department recently moved toward standards based grading using the categories Presentational, Interpretive, and Interpersonal. This has been a huge shift from the traditional categories of tests, quizzes, homework, and participation. I will outline this new system for caregivers and provide examples of what each category looks like within my classroom. I will highlight the benefits of this new system and how now we will be able to understand what exactly their child can do in the language and what they can improve moving forward!

Do students have opportunities to revise work in your classroom? Outline any steps and deadlines students need to meet in order to turn in revised work for a new grade. Once again, the more caregivers know about your class policies, the more they can support their child from the other end!

Other curricular opportunities

My world language department offers a world language honor society for students. Each year we induct eligible students into the various honor societies for each language. The induction process and ceremony take place in the spring, and caregivers are always interested in what the eligibility requirements are so they can support their child in meeting the requirements. 

Does your world language department have any trips abroad planned? Open House is the perfect time to showcase any amazing trips that will be happening in your department. Advertising these trips early in the process is especially important if students need to save up money to attend! Some trips are even planned two years in advance to give caregivers the notice needed to begin planning.

End on a positive note!

The Open House at my school flies by - we meet with caregivers of each class period for only 10 minutes. No matter how much information I pack into that precious time, I always end on a positive note. My favorite thing to mention is how incredible their children are and how they make my job so enjoyable!

What do you highlight at your school's Open House? Post your thoughts below!

Happy teaching!

Dana, Señorita's Spanish Class

TPT Back to School Sale! Save 25%

What's better than a TeacherPayTeachers Back to School sale?! Save 25% off of everything in my store from 8/27 to 8/28. Every product, including bundles, will be 25% off! I have also been spending time creating new products and revising old ones to make them better AND change them to an editable Google Doc. Be sure to check back frequently to see new and improved products and redownload revised versions of previously purchased products once they're updated!

Don't miss out! Visit my TeachersPayTeacher store here: Señorita's Spanish Class

Happy Teaching (and shopping!)

- Dana, Señorita's Spanish Class

Why it's essential to assess your students the first (or second!) week of school

I can't emphasize enough the importance of assessing your students in the first few weeks of school! Determining a baseline for each of your students is essential to providing appropriate instruction to all students in the room. Perhaps most importantly, it helps to ensure that students are accurately placed in the correct level class. This is not only best practice as a teacher, but also creates a more equitable educational experience by making sure that students are placed in the class where they will succeed and learn most. 

When to assess your students

No one likes to return from summer break and take an assessment on the first day of school. I would argue it's not ideal for the second day either! As mentioned in my previous post about an interpersonal speaking activity on day 1, I like to spend the first two days getting to know my students and beginning to make connections and build a sense of community within my classroom. Within those first two days, I am sprinkling in some grammar review to make sure my non-Spanish speaking students are beginning to recall prior knowledge in the target language. Depending on how these few days go, I usually assess on day 3 or 4 of the school year. The reason I don't want to wait much longer than that is twofold - 1) I want to see how much Spanish my students remember walking into my classroom after summer break, and 2) if any schedule changes are recommended, there is usually a short time frame when I can try to make that happen.

How to assess students

My curriculum is aligned with the ACTFL Proficiency Guidelines, and I want to know that my students are placed in the correct level class. To do so, I develop a presentational writing task that builds in proficiency level across three separate prompts. When thinking about my Spanish 4 honors class, the goal is for students to obtain an intermediate mid level of language proficiency by the end of the school year. Therefore, I want my writing task to reflect a few things. First, I want to ease into the task (I don't want to scare anyone away within the first week of class!) with a novice task asking students to describe their lives. Theoretically, this should be a relatively easy task for my students if they completed Spanish 3 honors the year prior, and it immediately raises a red flag if a student struggles with this initial prompt. 

The second prompt for my students is aimed at a more novice high to intermediate mid level as they reflect on a past event. Students, if placed in the correct level, tend to do well on this one as well. 

Finally, the third prompt triggers more an intermediate mid to high response depending on text type and vocabulary. Remember, the goal for the end of my school year is for my students to obtain an intermediate mid level of proficiency, so if a student easily writes at an intermediate high (or higher!) level with this most challenging task, a different red flag is raise.

So what do I do with this information?

This presentational writing task provides a variety of useful information for me. First, it helps me get to know my students and their interests through what they write about, and of course it provides me a glimpse into their language proficiency. Next, it helps me determine if the student is placed in the correct level. The first two prompts reflect grammatical structures and vocabulary taught in previous years, so if a student is struggling with those two prompts, I start exploring the situation a bit more right away. I usually begin by reaching out to a school counselor to see if a switch to a different level class is even possible, and then I speak directly with the student. I ask them how they feel about class so far, how their general experiences have been in Spanish class, and whether they think this is the right class for them. This conversation can go many ways, so it's paramount that I speak directly with the student to get more information. Sometimes, it can simply be a case of extreme test anxiety, so then I assess them in other ways to see how they do. Depending on our conversation, I take next steps, speak to caregivers and other administrators, and potentially initiate a change to a different level.

However, what tends to happen more frequently in my classroom is the exact opposite - I find a few students every year who are typically native or heritage speakers who write extremely well, use the present subjunctive required in the third prompt very well, and add other advanced structures that I didn't even elicit in the prompts. What typically happens is these students take a placement exam if they just moved into the district or haven't taken a language class before, and may have been placed in an incorrect level. Usually it takes something like a presentational task the first week of school to determine this, thus the importance of assessing students early on in the year! With this group of students, I follow the same procedure as above by speaking to the student in Spanish and figuring out next steps. If we are all lucky, the schedules (and stars) align where they can jump into a more advanced class right away. If not, I know that I have to challenge these students and collaborate with them throughout the years in creative ways where they can grow as language learners and perhaps help their peers succeed as well. 

Every once in a while a student is incorrectly placed in my class but is unable to move levels. By determining all of this within the first week of school, I immediately know that I need to provide additional support for this student to ensure that they are successful this school year. Your school or class numbers may not even allow for students to change levels - in which case assessing students that first week is still essential so you can meet the group of students in front of you and adjust your instruction accordingly. 

Regardless of whether any schedule changes are made, this presentational writing task provides me valuable information. It helps me plan my instruction moving forward and helps me provide a more equitable teaching environment that meets students where they are and propels them to where I want them to be by the end of the school year. The task I outlined above focuses solely on presentational writing, but interpretive and interpersonal tasks should follow shortly after so you can get to know all "modes" of your students toward the very start of the year. 

Where to begin?

If you previously haven't assessed your students in the first week of school or want to change the ways in which you assess them, reflect on the proficiency levels students should have achieved in previous years and where you hope they arrive by the end of the year in your class. Think about prompts that are relatively easy to answer with vocabulary students should be able to recall at this point in their language learning experiences. The last thing you want is for a student to leave a prompt totally blank simply because they don't know what to write! (Note: If that does happen, investigate a little bit more to see why they did that.) Most importantly, make sure you provide prompts in progression that elicit the language proficiency levels that will help you determine if the student is in the right class. Don't forget to read the assessments shortly after students complete them as they don't provide much value sitting in a stack on your counter unread!

Do you have other ways to get to know the proficiency levels of your students toward the start of the school year? Share your thoughts below!

Happy Teaching!

- Dana, Señorita's Spanish Class

Back to School! An interpersonal speaking activity for the first day of Spanish class

The first week of school is quickly approaching, or there's a chance that you and your students have

already begun! If your first day hasn't happened yet, this blog post is for you! Even if it has and your classroom is already flowing with great conversation in Spanish, this post may give you some more ideas for an engaging speaking activity that reiterates the importance of listening when engaging in interpersonal communication. 

Day 1

You may have read my previous blog post about my favorite icebreakers (if not, read it here)! We usually jump into the airplane icebreaker on days 2 and 3 once we have spent a few minutes reviewing Spanish grammar. However, my students and I spend day 1 reviewing just a few housekeeping items before launching into speaking in Spanish. (My housekeeping tasks are what I deem to be most important like joining my Google Classroom.) I briefly explain a handful of fun things about my life with the hopes of connecting with some students (shout out to any Teacher Swifties in the crowd)! After that, I want to get my students speaking Spanish as soon as possible!

A quick note about my classroom set-up

My classroom is organized in two groups of desk that face each other so that students can look one direction toward the whiteboard and the other direction toward the SmartBoard projector. One side has 12 desks and the other side has 16 or so (this tends to change a little every year, but we are fortunate that our school's cap is 30 students). Students are always paired up with the classmate next to them, and I strategically create a new seating chart every two weeks so students have the opportunity to work with someone new.

A multipurpose interpersonal activity

On day 1, we jump into introducing ourselves and answering some basic questions with partners. Students speak in Spanish with their partners to discuss a few sets of basic questions like, "¿Cómo te llamas" and "¿Cuál es tu serie favorita en Netflix/Disney+/Amazon Prime Video?" These questions, and whether or not you provide any scaffolding like sentence starters (see below), should differ based on the level of students sitting in front of you! An example slide for my classroom can be seen below. 

The next step tends to throw my students through a loop. After I post the first set of 3 questions on the board and let students talk to each other for 2-3 minutes (or longer if connections are being made and the conversation is flowing!), I bring the class back together and tell them that they must introduce their partner and their partner's answer to one of the remaining questions on the board. For example, a student may say, "Mi compañero se llama Jimmy, y su serie favorita es Stranger Things en Netflix." The thing is, especially given the anxiety of the first day of school and the task of speaking Spanish after a long summer where the reality is many students haven't thought about Spanish class, most students didn't actually listen to their partner. After I explain this next step, it's not uncommon for a look of panic to come across their faces...which I quickly follow up by reminding students that Spanish is a language, and the purpose of language is communication. Communication is two-sided, and one could argue that listening is more important than speaking. I then immediately give them another 1-2 minutes to regroup with their partners and actually listen so they are prepared to introduce their partners to the class. 

This activity is a great way to reiterate the role of listening in communication and interpersonal speaking, but also it turns on their Spanish brains by having them hear and interpret their partner's response in the "yo" form, and then be tasked with rephrasing it in the "él/ella" form. Plus, in the best case scenario, students are making connections with classmates right away as they realize that they share the same interests, favorite movies, favorite ice cream shops, and more. Depending on timing, I post a few more sets of questions similar to those above and we review them as a class.

A Google Form questionnaire

If time remains after students introduce their partners, I have my students complete a Google Form questionnaire that outlines some basic information about their lives like any nicknames and their preferred pronouns, if they speak Spanish at home (over 20% of my school's population speak Spanish at home!), what activities they enjoy most in Spanish class, what their hopes and fears are for this school year, if there is anything confidential they want me to know, etc. Regardless of the time that remains, I always leave the last two minutes for the ultimate magic trick - I close my eyes (if I'm feeling extra ambitious, I also turn around backwards), and then point to each student and say their name. Students cannot believe their Spanish teacher not only memorized everyone's names but also where they are sitting! I do have to say though, this magic trick is becoming a bit more challenging the older I get, eek!

I hope this post has provided a new way to engage students in interpersonal communication on day 1 while also beginning to build connections and community in the classroom, and if you're lucky...learn the names of all of your students! Drop any questions or ideas for your day 1 down below! In a future post, I will talk about one of my favorite interpersonal communication routines that has become a staple of my classroom, ¡Conversemos! Check it out here.

Happy Teaching!

- Dana, of Señorita's Spanish Class

Welcome back to my blog!

Wow, it has been quite a while from my last post! A lot has happened since then including my husband and I having two children! Now that my son is a little over 3 and my daughter is an adorably funny, semi-independent 18 month old, I am finding time to share my observations, insights, and inspiration from my classroom again. Since my last post, I have added teaching an upper level Spanish 5/6 course to my resume where we have completely redesigned the curriculum based on the UN 17 Sustainable Development Goals ... but more on that later!

Welcome back to my blog, and I hope the upcoming school year is impactful and fun! Happy Teaching!

- Dana, of Señorita's Spanish Class