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My classmates don’t know me at all!

Published by SraSpanglish on

The truth is that only one student was terribly misjudged by his classmates.  In fact, most were so accurately labeled that all they could do was say yes (hooray for repetition!)

It went down like this:

Last week, we selected activities (verb) vocabulary first through brainstorming, then categorizing, then a little polleverywere action (though I confess it worked better with good old-fashioned “check-mark-next-to-your-favorites” in the smaller class).

Today, we reviewed with Sra. Cottrell’s regular vocab review (I like to call it the 5-minute mumble), then, after some gustar notes, a whip-around the room of something each kid likes and doesn’t like to do.  From there to a journal linking activities back to the just-completed weather mini-unit (“When it’s…I like to…”).

And then on to the indiscriminate labeling.

I divvied up the 25 (mostly) democratically elected words into 5 groups of 5, then passed them out for cutting and taping.  Then we talked semantic grouping, and how it helps to associate vocabulary in groups to make connections.

Are we going to tape them on the board?  In our notebooks?

No, on each other.  Tape your words on the backs of whoever in the room you think would like to do those things.  Then, when the melee winds down, pair off, and you’ll take turns asking each other about the activities affixed to your back–in front of the class (yay! repetition!)

A couple of things I really liked in this:

  1. Struggling students started to grasp rephrasing to help with comprehension (esp. “ver la tele” to “television” for cues) when their partners didn’t get what they were asking about.
  2. By the end, students would really react to what their classmates guess about them (poor SM–not one was right, but his twin brother’s was dead on!)  They would show disgust when it wasn’t true, kind of giggle and admit when they were “accused” of liking to talk.
  3. They learned something about each other–albeit late in the year.  Who knew SL played guitar and piano?  Apparently someone who stuck the activities on her back, but not I!
In the future, I might laminate cards so they can be re-used.  I might do some hula hoop venn diagrams to do more classmantic grouping.  I’ll probably have students reflect on things different classmates liked (practice using le and les, after all).  I’ll probably do the whip-around again (maybe what they like when it snows instead).
And for Heaven’s sake, I’ve got to find a way that SM’s classmates can understand him!

SraSpanglish

Laura Sexton is a passion-driven, project-based language educator in Gastonia, North Carolina. She loves sharing Ideas for integrating Project-Based Learning in the world language classroom, including example projects, lessons, assessment tips, driving questions, and reflection.