This day was my day one of the beginning of a unit (see weekly check-in to see plan for day 1). I had set up the room for a chalk talk and three cultural stations. The chalk talk was quite successful; in my first group, I saw that not all of the students were taking the chalk talk 100% seriously. As I saw different groups, I reminded the student that they are highly capable to finish the task in a mature manner; this made a difference in these groups. I saw that in the chalk talk there was a great deal of misconceptions, especially on the side for “Mexico”. Many of my students wrote: Taco Bell, sombreros, mariachi, ponchos, and so on. I thought that this is a huge opportunity to address misconceptions and really teach some truths about Mexican culture, reminding my students that much of what they had written were stereotypes. I was happy to see that many students wrote questions on the “los Aztecas” side, showing that they wanted to learn more about what the Aztecs did, who they were, what they looked like and so on. It seemed that there was a need to know more about the ancient civilization. I was also happy to see that on the “los Aztecas” side many students had referred back to a pervious activity (a brief paragraph in Spanish which talked about the Aztecs). I was shocked to see how many students remembered some valuable content from this text.
After the chalk talk and mini discussion on the content of the chalk talk, students were assigned to stations where they would be able to listen to instruments and sounds that pertain to the Aztec culture, eat the typical foods of the Aztecs and discover the art of the Aztecs. The students really enjoyed this activity because they were able to discover independently and create their own learning and build their own background knowledge. I was very excited to see how well the student responded to this activity. While working in stations, students were asked to fill out a graphic organizer (below in blue)
¿Cuáles instrumentos oíste?
What instruments did you hear?
¿Qué sonidos oíste?
What sounds did you hear?
Nombra los cuatro elementos de la comida de los Aztecas.
Name four main foods of the Aztecs.
¿Por qué esa comida fue tradicional para los Aztecas?
Why was this food traditional for the Aztecs?
¿Qué tipo de arte tenían los Aztecas?
What type of art did the Aztecs have?
¿Que viste que crees que es interesante en el arte de los Aztecas?
What did you see that you thought was interesting about the art of the Aztecs?
This organizer would help students gain some general knowledge about the Aztec culture. The entire day gave me a pathway which I would plan the remainder of my unit. In the chalk talk, I saw that the student wanted to learn more about the Aztecs, their religion, human sacrifices, the food, where they settled and so on. I was excited to get this information and I absolutely used my students as a resource in the planning a development of my unit.
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Dear Hannah,
I've noticed that you frequently use translation in your sheets. Just so that you know, this is called concurrent translation and it is a bilingual teaching approach in which the teacher uses two languages interchangeably during instruction. When not carefully planned though, this approach could lead to pedagogically random code-switching which could not meet instructional objectives. Additionally, students often learn to tune out the language they do not understand and wait for the information in the language they do understand. Some experts advocate for a better method called Preview, View, Review, which uses the native tongue for preview and review but sticks to the target language only (in this case Spanish) in the view phase (which is also the most substantial part of the lesson).
In the context of a Unit, you could also have a preview, view, review structure in which the first lessons are very conducted mainly in the native language (i.e., to build needed background as you did through the video and chalk talk), then the following lessons are almost exclusively conducted in the target language, and final lessons in the native language again.
This is especially effective in the cases in which you are trying to introduce content that may be new to students.
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