Assessment assessment

Spanish I: Clothing

• Notes on clipart of different outfits
• Magazine collage of at least 20 words from list
• Voicethread commenting on famous músicos latinos’ outfits
• Random outfit interviews with flip cameras
• Scavenger hunt on Zara’s website
• Journal on outfits by weather
• Event invitations with clothing suggestions
• Interview/voicethread reflection
• Quiz (left) asking questions about outfit from Zara’s lookbook.

The *pop* quiz indicated to me that anyone who failed to complete EITHER the magazine collage OR the scavenger hunt failed: nearly everyone who completed both passed.

The quiz (when factoring in confusion over the part indicating NOT to list what people were already wearing in the part where I asked them to say what people needed when going to Alaska, a party, etc.) seemed to be a solid indicator of what students did and did not get.

I could feel at the time that I needed more structure to the interview, voicethread, journal, and invitation assignments. For the interview, maybe I should have it be more of a scavenger hunt with the flip, or maybe just photos, and with possible compliments students could give to the people they record. For the voicethread, I might require students to name a certain number of different items over the course of the slideshow (kind of like the collage), and for the journals, I will require a photograph or drawing to accompany each picture. I might make more destinations and have students just make lists of appropriate clothing and then exchange those to have classmates guess the destination.

As for the quiz, the make-up will be aural: I will have pictures (probably of latino celebrities again), and have students talk about everything they’re wearing.

Spanish II: Reading authentic afrocubano texts

• Englishless visual vocab intro powerpoint pre-reading for Cartas a Mi Mamá
• P.A.C.E. breakdown of object pronouns (supposedly review)
• P.A.C.E. breakdown of reflexive pronouns (new, building on OP’s)
• Reading out loud + breakdown (English was involved–couldn’t resist)
• Response journal from mother’s point of view
• Scan-venger hunt through text of Me Llamo Celia: English to Spanish words & verb tenses
• During-reading multiple choice questions

I think the vocabulary powerpoint was helpful, even in the class that only saw it once, because the visual connections were reference points as we read. The pronoun breakdown used lines from the text, so it wasn’t entirely unfamiliar: it helped linguistically inclined people, at least. In the future, I will have to do less text at a time so even I can stand explanations in Spanish–teaching in the TL is VASTLY time-consuming. I haven’t seen the journals yet, but what I saw/heard while they were working indicates engagement with the text.

I’m not sure the scanning/scavenger hunt was so useful. It made one kid FLIP OUT at the “impossibility” of the task, but some of the usual suspects were really enjoying figuring out which words corresponded with the English words, and some former naysayers were even impressing themselves. The grammar part was probably just a holdout for me from my old ways. Sigh. As for the quiz, 1) do NOT use proprofs.com–only 10 free responses logged! and no way around it but $20/month!, and 2) I really should not have used a “what does this phrase mean” question first. In fact, that should have been a separate thing for post-reading, I’d say. Still, most people got at LEAST a passing score (the flipped party got 100%, possibly because I said he could go ahead and make a list of every word he didn’t know the night before…)

I helped them work through “Mulata” by Nicolas Guillén when they finished Me Llamo Celia, too, and tomorrow we’ll look a little more at Celia Cruz, plus Pérez Prado, Benny Moré, Machito, and Enrique Jorrín. I’m hoping that they’ll be able to put these together to wrap up the Cuba portion of our unit and contrast the public image of afrocubanos with the private preference for white features.