HERE’S HOW WE DO IT...

LOS PROYECTOS: There are nine “Etapas” or sections in each of the 7th and 8th grade Spanish books. At the beginning of each one, students “walk through” the Etapa and get an overview of what they will be learning. At the same time, they are presented with an Assessment Project handout that consists of two “Proyecto” choices and a grading rubric. Each choice is a brief description of a real-world scenario that easily encompasses the vocabulary and grammar for the given Etapa with a list of Final Product options to demonstrate their skills. Students are encouraged to expand or elaborate on the scenarios and product options. With my guidance and the help of the textbook, students spend several days taking notes and participating in a variety of oral and written activities. Throughout this time, I constantly refer back to the assessment options and generate ideas for how students might incorporate their newly acquired knowledge into their Proyectos. From the beginning of the Etapa, students are expected to work on their Proyectos a little each day as part of their daily homework. They start by choosing their Proyecto, deciding if they will work alone or collaborate with one or two other students, developing ideas about the plot, planning for any use of technology, and writing a rough draft. The Assessment Project handout clearly outlines due dates for Last Work Day, Peer Edit, Rough Draft, Teacher Review, & Final Draft / Project Presentation. The duration of each Etapa is approximately 3 and 1/2 weeks.

The results of using Authentic Assessments such as these have been phenomenal! Students and parents alike comment regularly about how often the students actually use their new language at home and in the community. The final Proyectos are fun and entertaining and we all look forward to presentation day -- Las Presentaciones -- with great anticipation. Above all, it is evident that the students have internalized much of the new information presented in the Etapa and can demonstrate proper use with growing accuracy, fluency, and, most importantly, confidence.

HERE’S WHY...

The goal of any beginning foreign language class is to become comfortable with and gain confidence in communicating in the new language. However, for years and years most language classes have followed very traditional teaching methods involving endless rote memorization of vocabulary, verb conjugations, and meaningless dialogues with knowledge demonstrated through passive test-taking.

I know all too well how unproductive the traditional approach is as this was my experience all through middle and high school. For six years, I enrolled in every Spanish course available to me and passed them all with top grades. I was very good at memorizing and I diligently wrote out every conjugation of every tense of every irregular Spanish verb repeatedly until I had completely committed them to memory!! Unfortunately, no one ever encouraged, cajoled, or forced me to SPEAK Spanish. All I had to do to get those stellar grades was complete numerous workbook pages and take tests with multiple choice, true-false, and fill-in the blank questions. Once in a while, I actually had to write an original sentence or two.

Then it was time for college and, naturally, I decided to major in Spanish. Now, being the goal-oriented person I am, I had to decide right away what exactly I was going to do with this talent once I honed it to perfection after four years. I had a lot of lofty ideas like becoming a flight attendant for an international airline and working as an interpreter at the United Nations. In the end, I decided to be more practical and become a teacher. However, I could not imagine myself teaching Spanish. That seemed SO boring! After all, I would merely be spending my time forcing students to do all that memorizing I had just spent years doing myself. Fortunately, there was a new educational concept on the horizon -- bilingual education. There was a growing need for teachers to teach young children in their primary language -- Spanish in particular. The University of California, Riverside was at the forefront of this movement so I applied and was accepted to college there. Additional motivation to attend UCR came from the fact that I could choose to live on the Spanish language hall -- the Casa Hispánica -- where I would be expected to speak Spanish daily with all the other residents. I embarked on this endeavor with all the confidence in the world. I mean I had all those “A’s” on my transcripts; surely this would pose no challenge.

From the moment I arrived at the “Casa”, I was in a state of shock. To my dismay, I quickly discovered that I could not understand any of the other students (many of whom were native speakers) much less communicate with them. When I got to class, it was the same story. Due to my fantastic grades, I was placed in an upper division course. I had no difficulty reading and writing, but I could not participate in any discussions or classroom conversations.

I had been an introvert all of my educational life so it was difficult for me to muster the courage to speak in front of others and make mistakes at this point -- an opportunity I should have been given early on in my study of Spanish. Eventually, over time I conquered this problem, but it took many years before I built my confidence and became the fluent speaker I should have been when I got to college. At UCR, I had the benefit of excellent professors who always taught their classes entirely in Spanish and with whom I was able to socialize as well. I made many friends who spoke Spanish and married a native-speaker whose parents did not speak English. Later, in my career as a bilingual teacher, I worked with teachers from Mexico and Spain and dozens upon dozens of wonderful young children who appreciated the fact that their teacher could understand them and communicate with them clearly. It was these real-life experiences that taught me to become a true speaker of the language and develop an understanding of the culture.

In 2005, when I was looking for another new and challenging direction to pursue in education, I was presented with the possibility of teaching Spanish for the first time. I thought, “What the heck? It can’t be that bad. I could make this fun!” So it was with great enthusiasm that I accepted a job teaching Spanish at Hillview Middle School in Menlo Park. Here I encountered amazingly motivated students and whose love of learning allowed me to develop a very different kind of language instruction program than the one I experienced. Contrary to the traditional model, my program is student-centered. Students are engaged in active learning and demonstrate their skills and knowledge via authentic assessments.

As defined by Jon Mueller, Professor of Psychology at North Central College in Illinois, Authentic Assessments are: “A form of assessment in which students are asked to perform real-world tasks that demonstrate meaningful application of essential knowledge and skills.” TeacherVision elaborates on this definition by saying, “Authentic assessment aims to evaluate students' abilities in 'real-world' contexts. In other words, students learn how to apply their skills to authentic tasks and projects. Authentic assessment does not encourage rote learning and passive test-taking. Instead, it focuses on students' analytical skills; ability to integrate what they learn; creativity; ability to work collaboratively; and written and oral expression skills. It values the learning process as much as the finished product.” All of these descriptors exemplify the approach I use in my classroom.