A very talented colleague and I have an ongoing friendly disagreement about the purpose of upper level Spanish classes. (I can say it's a friendly argument because I understand her goals, and don't disagree with her approach based on those. I'll explain how that's possible below).
School Background:
I teach in a school that is in a relatively Blue-collar area. As a result, college is not a priority for all of the students, nor should many go to college due to the shifts in our workforce. There are many great vocational jobs and technical jobs that don't require a college degree and lots of debt! And we are doing our kids a disservice by pushing college onto them when they don't necessarily need it to be a productive member of society.
My colleague's thought is that we can de-emphasize grammar in the lower levels (since it's a requirement for most kids). But for those that really want to excel in the language, they will learn Spanish grammar in levels 3 and 4.
The belief is that if our kids from Spanish 3 go to college Spanish, they won't have an understanding of the grammar to be able to succeed in the college Spanish classes. So we need to teach them explicit grammar.
I respectfully disagree with this viewpoint for a few reasons:
Showing posts with label grammar. Show all posts
Showing posts with label grammar. Show all posts
Tuesday, March 29, 2016
Friday, February 5, 2016
Responses to Comment - Complexity #2
I already posted a response to a question earlier here about complexity.
But in light of a conversation I have had with a few students I think this illustrates my point in questioning our understanding of complexity by traditional terms.
Example 1:
In my Spanish 1 classes, as recommended by Blaine Ray in his Look I can Talk books, we can teach the kids past and present in Spanish 1. The more we expose them to both, the less they will rely on just the present tense. So that's what I do. I tell oral stories in the past tense and do readings/movietalks/etc in the present tense. When we talk about their lives, we might switch between tenses and I'll occasionally do a pop-up point about "Why did I say: querías (you wanted) instead of quieres (you want)?"
But in light of a conversation I have had with a few students I think this illustrates my point in questioning our understanding of complexity by traditional terms.
Example 1:
In my Spanish 1 classes, as recommended by Blaine Ray in his Look I can Talk books, we can teach the kids past and present in Spanish 1. The more we expose them to both, the less they will rely on just the present tense. So that's what I do. I tell oral stories in the past tense and do readings/movietalks/etc in the present tense. When we talk about their lives, we might switch between tenses and I'll occasionally do a pop-up point about "Why did I say: querías (you wanted) instead of quieres (you want)?"
Wednesday, January 13, 2016
Pushing the Pop-Up grammar explanations
Something I have been experimenting with a lot this year is Pop-up grammar.
I first heard about Pop-up grammar via a Blaine Ray workshop and read about it (if I am not mistaken) in the Blaine Ray book, "Fluency Through TPR Storytelling".
The basic idea is that instead of giving a long grammar lecture and then practice the skill, you point out grammatical features as necessary to the students. I think of it as calling attention to something so that they can better monitor that feature of the language. A pop-up should not last longer than 5 seconds or so. Some people might go longer. I find the longer I go, the quicker I lose the students.
But something I have been experimenting with this year (since I have 90 minute classes) is the way to do a Pop-up. And maybe some of these aren't grammar pop-ups, but since I am focusing on the grammar a little bit to prepare them for other teachers, it's important for them to have a little bit of explicit knowledge if anything to be more successful in a less-input-driven classroom.
I first heard about Pop-up grammar via a Blaine Ray workshop and read about it (if I am not mistaken) in the Blaine Ray book, "Fluency Through TPR Storytelling".
The basic idea is that instead of giving a long grammar lecture and then practice the skill, you point out grammatical features as necessary to the students. I think of it as calling attention to something so that they can better monitor that feature of the language. A pop-up should not last longer than 5 seconds or so. Some people might go longer. I find the longer I go, the quicker I lose the students.
But something I have been experimenting with this year (since I have 90 minute classes) is the way to do a Pop-up. And maybe some of these aren't grammar pop-ups, but since I am focusing on the grammar a little bit to prepare them for other teachers, it's important for them to have a little bit of explicit knowledge if anything to be more successful in a less-input-driven classroom.
Monday, February 16, 2015
More music in videos
So I am experimenting with something for my youtube channel. While I have made many videos explaining grammar over the years, one of the most popular has incorporated music. It was a song that I had learned while I was taking high school Spanish.
And so I decided to experiment by adding more music to a few different topics and see how well they do over the next few months or until December.
It's kind of crazy that they all popped into my head within a week or so of me deciding I should try it.
Let me know what you think!
Present Tense -AR verbs song
And so I decided to experiment by adding more music to a few different topics and see how well they do over the next few months or until December.
It's kind of crazy that they all popped into my head within a week or so of me deciding I should try it.
Let me know what you think!
Present Tense -AR verbs song
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