Everything Came Together Today!

So throwing a bunch of ideas into Common Curriculum and then sorting them out as I went, it worked super well today! I managed to connect grammar, music, and project goals as if I weren’t kind of mentally checked out before Spring Break Part 2 already.

I could have been a little more conscious of hitting all three communication modes, but I still really like how everything came together like I had some sort of master plan today, from well-timed audio repairs to Sr. Wooly trial subscriptions kicking in to even a canceled festival that we had been building up to literally all semester.

It all worked. But not only by coincidence.

Laying the groundwork

Lesson planning can be super fun. That feeling you get when a plan comes together? But it can also be an uphill hike in oppressive heat when you forgot your map. Sometimes I just can’t make myself plan. Just thinking about the level of detail I need to achieve anything approximating “success,” it just hurts and makes me want to wear pajamas all day.

So I just have to start with what I know, lay it all out.

I knew 1) I had to wrap up past activities and 2) I had to set up the next unit so we’d have enough time–and motivation–to really get into it. So I started by laying out the calendar of all of the days remaining (26!!!) to give myself perspective (something I’ve kind of been avoiding, truth be told).

I forgot my computer Friday and had to use PAPER, like an ANIMAL!

Then I googled around for a bit, seeing if I could find some kind of article or infograph to connect the number of weeks we had left with the magical number of weeks I had in my head to change a habit (I found something perhaps even better.)

Then I just had to write out exactly what I expected kiddos to do (Hay que hacer progreso todos los días) and how I expected them to show it. I jotted a few notes about what I wanted to see in daily progress blogs, what they would submit each day to establish a weekly routine, and how I might totally and completely exploit the wonders of Google Keep that I just discovered.

Then I started listing functional chunks students would need to accomplish the tasks above. And then I chunked the chunks. Basically it boiled down to expressions with “que”, object pronouns (e.g. te ayuda, ¿Cómo te fue?), and present perfect.

And then? Then I just made a bunch of entries in the Monday column on the week’s Common Curriculum, including things like

• reflection activities for previous blog posts (vocabulary and personal practice)
• Sr. Wooly songs that made me giggle uncontrollably (and had que idioms)
• titles for grammar note pages kiddos would need (see functional chunk chunks above)

The leadup

How it came together

So the hay que in the Lasso song Monday was pure luck;  the tienes que in the blog assignment was by design. Guess what was in the Wooly songs? Pienso que and creen que. Oh yeah. SO on a roll for the structures we’ll need to discuss self improvement!! So I cut up some little yellow paper pieceds (almost forgot 4th period), and we made a little web map in their notes for “que” expressions and added sabes que, for when we need to share some strategies or other facts to inform progress on the self-improvement.

At the end, I let them decide who they thought they should work with and explain their reasons–in Spanish–in a conversation with each group while everyone else wrapped up the blog review from yesterday.

So what’s it mean?

Dave Burgess got “unbelievably fired up” when a colleague told him,  “It’s easy for you. You’re creative.“

Lest there were any colleagues out there who thought any of this was ever easy for me? Well, let this be a lesson to you. Because this wasn’t easy, and it wasn’t really just a few days of work coming together. It’s been a mere fourteen years for me.

It wasn’t just the last several days that came together. And everything is not going to stay together.

But for today it was. Or at least felt like it for a few hours.