I’m struggling for real, you guys. I sincerely,  sincerely believe that authentic opportunities for engaging with other speakers of the language for an authentic purpose is the most effective and important way to motivate language learners.

But man, oh man, if I could just get a word in edgewise to make that POSSIBLE some days? I might cry actual tears of happiness. Or, you know, actually breathe at some point.

The good news is I’ve found a purpose that seems like it will actually motivate students. I’m not even mad that the purpose is to do less Spanish. Of course I have a plot to trick them into still doing some outside of class, but I will gladly concede if they can explain to me–in Spanish of course–why they should not have to, then I will still straight up CELEBRATE. 

GROUPING

I would dearly love to make a personal plan perfectly suited to every single student, as I once attempted when I had literally HALF the students currently on my rosters at my new school. I just can’t hack it though. So I decided to form groups four-corners style like I did back when my classes were a humane size. Their choices were:

• Cero tarea
• Menos tarea
• Tarea igual
• Tarea diferente (from Señor Wooly)

I formed groups based on these choices, but A) the class atmosphere was still…unsatisfactory…with these groups and B) it didn’t seem like they had enough of a common goal. So next we previewed 5 different activities that could potentially replace my beloved Wooly nuggets. I wasn’t going to let them just not do homework without at least trying something else, right? So I collected exit slips where the students chose 3 of the following:

• Duolingo
• LyricsTraining
• Article summary
• Video subtitles summary
• Grammar practice

These were choices whittled down and refined from my self-selected homework plan modeled on @profepj3’s. I’ve had to relearn how opinionated yet indecisive ninth graders are compared even to tenth graders, so I basically just picked out the easiest/most popular from years past.

Forming groups after that involved a lot of “sort range by column _” in Google spreadsheets. (Also had to keep track of who I wanted separate…and how far separate.)

SAMPLE PHASE

We’ve spent the last week or two (depending on how you count A day/B day calendars) previewing resources then sampling the designated tasks in groups. I set up the whole thing as a playlist on Canvas (love me some modules) like this:

The idea is for them to work through the samples at their own pace/their group’s pace (the other post I started this week is on how the groups work, so stay tuned). Once they have personally sampled their group’s 3 selected tareas, AND reflected on each–in English–they are to reflect on what they like/don’t like and want/don’t want  in a discussion post in Spanish. Here are the sentence starters I provided:

• Me gusta ___ porque…
• No me gusta ___ porque…
• Yo necesito actividades para ….
• ___ ayuda con ___ cuando….

And for responding:

•  Me gusta la parte cuando dices …
• Quiero usar ___ porque…
• No quiero usar ___ porque…

I am contemplating turning this into a scaffold for a real live group discussion, but I’m not sure how optimistic I feel about that. There will at least be an exit slip after groups finalize what tasks they will and won’t use in their plans.

EVIDENCE PHASE

The next step is to figure out how they will prove their case: they need this type of homework/no homework. They will first brainstorm the types of evidence they can/should collect in each of these categories:

• Statistics
• Expert opinions
• Personal experience

For statistics, I will be doing some class activities to break down and interpret some articles I collected on Pinterest but also taking a look at their scores on reading, listening, and writing assessments (we haven’t really done speaking yet). I’m hoping it will get them to think about what will actually help them as well as whether homework really is what would help them.

We’ve already talked about how I have more years of experience as a teacher AND student than they have of being ALIVE, so they don’t get to count as experts. I’m still interested in their perspectives and their reasons as to why homework is hard/valuable/necessary/pointless. I just want them to have someone–whether it’s Harrison Cooper, a parent, another teacher, or another student (at least a junior, I think)–with more experience to offer further perspective.

THE PLAN

The end goal does not involve a public audience per se, but I still feel like it’s authentic to talk to your teacher about what goes into your grade. So each group will be meeting with me, small-group speaking assessment style and presenting not only their collective evidence, but also a calendar of assignments and a presentation wherein each presents one of the evidence pieces and their conclusion.

And then? Then I ask questions to make sure their evidence supports their conclusion and accept their plan, in whole or in part.

And if they want to work a little Señor Wooly in, I probably won’t say no.