I Need to Know
I have to hook students from the start, and I have to do it without letting any English intrude if possible. I can phrase my driving questions in simple enough Spanish, with generous servings of cognates and such. I can even find authentic texts for maximum thematic contextual experiences. But what I’m struggling with is how to dig in and get students to really structure their own learning, especially if I’m trying not to exceed my allotted 10% of non-target-language-time.
So what’s a project-based world language teacher to do? The same thing I want the students to do: ask more questions.This has a few implications, of course:
- Forming questions needs to be one of the very first things I introduce in class.This is not a unique epiphany, of course, but it is critical.I have to hit questions and hit them hard, in all their iterations–yes/no, who/what/when/where/why/how/how much…In fact, they might become a text unto themselves.
- And I have to go deeper than I thought possible. Me, I. I have to do everything in my power to predict the questions students will want answered. But the questions that will be answered within the project are but a starting point. I have to go further, into the questions that will kick-start the need for the project and then go further still, to the simplest possible questions–so simple they seem obvious.
- Then I have to figure out how to find the answers. It is not so simple to build in a treasure hunt for information in a world language classroom, oh no. And it’s not quite as simple as making a Diigo list of places to look because one must find the quintessential balance between comprehensibility and actually answering the questions.
- Who would benefit from coming to our school?
- What opportunities are available at our school?
- When do they need to apply?
- Where is our campus?
- Why should students choose our school?
- How are we different from other schools?
- Who will appear in your video?
- What do students want to see?
- When/where will you record footage?
Why??- How will you present the important points about our school?
- How long should the video be?
- How much time to you need?
- What do students think about our school?
- What do parents think about our school?
- What do teachers and other adults think about our school?
- Where do they get their information?
- What else do they need to know about us?
- Do we need to change their minds?
- How CAN we?
- Parse out the most important words (especially interrogatives) and make image slides to teach what they mean without English before they get the questions.Try and keep it around 10-15,
- Pair students up and give each pair a question. They must break down what they think the question means and figure a way to convey it to the class with miming, drawing, or basically anything but English.
- As each question is cracked, use little whiteboards to communicate the answers they’d want to give, then have them share so you can give them the Spanish word. Maybe have one of the artistes be in charge of making the official image to go with the new vocabulary. Maybe take photos of students acting them out.
- Post the new vocabulary with the images in the room, online (edmodo, schoology, what have you).
- After students are comfortable with those questions (we’re talking days), have students cannibalize the old questions to come up with more questions. The key, I think, is GIVING questions first for those of us trapped in the TL.