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Novel Groups – Robo en la noche & Bianca Nieves

Published by SraSpanglish on

 

I ordered 50 books from Fluency Matters in anticipation of my Spanish 2 animals unit. The thinking was that these would build students’, well, fluency, as well as their contextual vocabulary and grammar as they prepared to make a plan to help their amigos animales.

I have been kind of wary going in whole hog on novels, but I think I’ve finally got a plan of attack for my students to get a personalized experience that fits their needs.

 

Group Setup

On the one hand, I want everyone to be able to read the novel that catches their interest, that they consider relevant to their goals and find engaging. On the other, I want them to feel like the reading is easy, like they don’t have to look up every fourth word in the glossary. I want them to build from where they are, not drop them in the middle of an ocean with just that little lexical life preserver.

And on yet another hand, I only have 25 copies each of Robo en la noche and Bianca Nieves y los 7 toritos to split among 47 kids. Someone was not getting their first choice.

So I made some executive decisions based on our mock reading AAPPLs and the incidence of irregular preterite. I figured it they were getting intermediate, they were likely better equipped to swim to shore than those still stuck in novice according to our assessments.

I had also had students submit a note on Seesaw where they summarized the main idea and some supporting details then recorded themselves reading the chapter onto the note. Frankly, though, not enough of them actually followed through and submitted it, and those who did, there was no telling how long they spent on it.

Enter Plan B: the Twitterverse. And Carrie Toth’s FREE One Novel Reading Club packet fell like manna from Heaven!

Seriously! Check out Carrie’s survey and more on TPT!

I made the survey a Google Form–in baby-ish Spanish. I had to be out for PD the day they were doing it, so I okayed WordReference for interpretation “just this once.”

Grouping was still tough for a few reasons. There were so many possible combinations of how to read and how to respond! Some people who liked to read alone wanted to do the creative responses. Some people who wanted to read together also wanted to do the comprehension responses. Sometimes only one person reading a book wanted to get help talking through it.

And you KNOW they’d change their minds after they’re in groups anyway.

So I did what I could with what I had and squished everyone in groups of 2-5 based on their preferences. Not everyone was thrilled, but everyone appeared to at least be functional.

 

Chapter Routines

It was a little tricky getting books with 10 and 15 chapters to match up schedule-wise, but I made myself a calendar that I had students copy into their cuaderno calendars and refer to occasionally, and I think it’s pretty fair. And the plan is to give them 20-30 minutes a day to read/respond/etc, so more than fair, right?

And here again, I borrowed from the great Sra. Toth’s packet to try and get myself into a rhythm (in part so I could do small group speaking assessments). It goes something like this:

    1. Groups read the chapter: together or independently, depending on what they decide as a group. If I’m available, I can walk one “Alfa” group through pausing for questions. (I tried it today, and I was really pleased with how that went.
    2. Groups respond to the chapter: either creativa or de comprensión. For comprehension, I just have them create fact-based questions related to the chapter. Creative, I shake up a little, again, of course, taking a cue from Sra. Toth. We started off with a comic strip review (www.wittycomics.com was blocked on BYOD but not school devices–go fig), and we’ll have other options from Sra. Toth like character tattoo suggestions/descriptions as well as maybe some diagrams, texts, diary entries, Adobe Spark summaries, extra scenes, character interviews, musical responses, and whatever else I can think of along the way.
    3. Class notes: mostly to learn past tense forms. I revived the PACE method that I tried several
      years ago. I’ve decided to focus on exactly one form at a time rather than all 5, and it seems to be extremely fruitful so far. Here’s today’s for singular third person preterite (regular):
    4. Make a repaso quiz for the next day. I use their best questions, turn them into a quick Google Form quiz with 3 multiple choice questions for each book–maybe pick out my favorite creative responses to show off, and then I’m ready to start again the next day!

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.

2 Comments

Chris Cashman · April 11, 2018 at 8:35 pm

Thanks for describing what you do! I do a Lit Circle type thing at the end of the year for Spanish 3, so it was helpful to see what types of ways to respond to the reading you listed. Thanks! -@senordineroman

Chris Cashman · April 12, 2018 at 2:38 pm

Thanks for describing what you do! I do a Lit Circle type thing at the end of the year for Spanish 3, so it was helpful to see what types of ways to respond to the reading you listed. Thanks! -@senordineroman

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