Festival Day IPA (Bonus novice IPA)
On the one hand, I want students to enjoy the festival experience and to be able to focus on giving a successful performance.
On the other, there are SO many opportunities for meaningful target language interaction when we go to the festival! Why not do some really AUTHENTIC authentic assessment? It felt like such a squandered opportunity last year.
So I’ve planned an IPA students can complete while we’re at the festival, revolving around the whole festival experience. I’ll give them a little time to put it all together and finalize the writing portion the next day, too.
IPA Instructions
Interpretive Listening
Record another school’s performance*: just for re-listening purposes–NOT to be displayed publicly without permission.
Choose EITHER a song you hadn’t heard before or another school’s skit to interpret. List phrases and sentences you understand in both English in Spanish and then describe the main idea of the skit or song in English. Give details explaining how you know that’s the main idea.
*I will record some examples of each just in case, and we can review the next day.
Interpersonal Communication
Make a friend, discuss the competition. Get to know a little bit about who you’re talking to. Then ask them about their festival experience and tell them a little bit about your own.
I compiled a list of suggested topics to bring up that I will hand out for taking notes on the big day, though students will still want to record a 1-3 minute conversation.
Presentational Writing
Write a letter to next year’s Spanish class with tips and tricks: what to do and what not to do if you want to win. You can focus on your own category of competition, someone else’s, or all of them. Use your own experience, your conversation with your new amigos, and your observations from the performances.
IPA Quick Fixes – After the Fact
Interpretive Listening
I had been a little worried about students getting the context of the skits, what with Julia de Burgos and El Chavo being completely, well, foreign to them last year. I had considered offering an alternative the next day wherein students find a written resource–ie Wikipedia article–to explain what it is they watched and allow an Interpretive Reading alternative, but the contexts for the skits we saw this year were a little confusing, even for me. I mean, I think they could have handled the Chilean Olympic team, but the one about singing and dancing while waiting for the bus threw me a little too.
As for the songs, the audio didn’t work all that great in all of them, so I decided to go back to the originals. Because of coros and ruletas, my kids do feel a little more comfortable with native speakers in song, I think, so I made a playlist of the original versions of the new (to them) songs we heard today, and they can choose any song to interpret! (Choice worked really well before.) I will also add the two skits we watched to the options in Classroom, just in case that is their preference.
Since I usually do reading for the first IPA of the grading period, I added still more choice with a catch: you can look up the song’s lyrics and do reading for interpretive BUT it will take an I2 on the AAPPL rubrics to get an A rather than I1 (which means the Sie7e song in Spanglish is out).
Interpersonal Communication
Several students were concerned that their videos would not demonstrate the extent of their skills, either because of audio quality or uneven partner matching (we’ve got plans to team up with our amigos a county or two over before the competition next year!) There’s not really a reason to talk about themselves like a novice is supposed to with a bunch of kids they’ve been stuck side-by-side with for years, but they can talk about their preparations and performance.
As for Presentational Writing, all will proceed as planned, but in light of all of the trophies they brought home, I’ll add a Presentational Speaking freebie for all participants!
