Towards the end of January, I attended a Tell Collab conference in Seattle and not only did I leave with some strategies to implement right away in my classroom but I was also able to build up my knowledge on language acquisition in the classroom. Thomas Sauer and Alyssa Villarreal facilitated a professional learning environment that was engaging, thought provoking and allowed us, the participants, to direct the flow of the conversation. The professional learning was so spot on that I wanted to share with you my main takeaways and encourage you to attend one if you are able. The cost was around $100 which included two full days and breakfast and lunch.
LEARNING TARGETS The idea of learning targets in education is not new and your school might be similar to mine, we are required to have one up daily per class level. It ensures the lesson has a focus and that the students are aware of what they are to be learning. I’ve always had mine up daily and whenever I’d introduce a new one, the students would write it down in their journal in a list of ones we have covered during the year. What I was not doing was making a specific learning target for each day. My learning target was really just my focus for the unit. I would introduce to the students something like “I can describe my family”, they’d write it in the list in their journals and then we’d spend a week or two covering the topic. We would learn about family terms, practice describing our families, asking each other questions to learn about each other’s families and compare our families with those of the Latino culture. Each day, the “learning target” never changed until I assessed them with a summative exam and it was time for a new one. At the TELL Collab training, I learned the value of having the kids inside my head more often so they could really be on the learning journey with me. This meant, I would introduce our unit, such as “I can describe my family” but I would have a different learning target per day based on the goal I had in mind for a specific lesson on a given day. There is no reason why I shouldn’t make a daily objective clear to them as I always pick one anyway. A daily learning target would look something like “I can list and identify different family terms” as the goal for that day was simply to practice family vocabulary and identifying family members of famous families.
Picking a learning target in a world language classroom requires two things, a language function and a context which go after I CAN. Following the image above, which I took from a presentation by Thomas Sauer, an example is: I CAN + ask and answer questions + about what I like to do after school. Now students are given a function of the language to use and a topic to be covered. The objective is clearly stating to them what they should be able to do with the language based on a topic.
During the training, we also watched a video of students in world language classrooms talking about the learning target for the day. Upon watching it, I realized that I not only need to have a daily learning target but also need to make sure the students interact with it somehow. What I am doing now is, my students write down the learning target daily in their journal before answering a few questions on the board and when class begins, I have a student read the learning target out loud to the class. This way students are clear on the objective for the day. Robert Marzano states, “students who can identify what they are learning significantly outscore those who cannot”.
PATHWAY TO PROFICIENCY
While at the training, I realized how much more my students need to be engaged with and understanding the proficiency levels. We talk about them in class and even spend several days in English going over them and setting proficiency goals for the year. They write down their goal and I take a picture of them with the goal which is then displayed in the classroom as a daily reminder. The proficiency goals are on every rubric and we use the same rubric the whole school year. But I needed to take it a step further. While at the conference, I learned that some teachers have students say daily what the proficiency level is after they have said the learning target. Here is an example:
Student A: I can describe what I like to do in my free time.
Class: How?
Student A: With discrete sentences.
This way the students are not only aware of what they will be learning that day but how they should produce it in the target language.
If you are a world language teacher, you have probably seen the “pathway to proficiency” posters and have often heard the phrase. I know I have but I never once thought to make it part of my classroom through a large visual aid. This way, my students would have something visually representing each proficiency level and a reminder of what comes next. I got the idea from a picture I saw on a blog post by Lynn Johnson. So, I took the back wall of my classroom and made a “el camino a la competencia” poster with the different proficiency levels, images of places from around our city, and of course, our mascot Abe Lincoln driving along the pathway. On top of the poster, I included pictures of my students and their goals as having their pictures really personalizes the learning experience.
LEVEL UP
Along the idea of making sure my students engage with and are aware of the proficiency levels, I needed to make sure they practiced “leveling up”. That is, speaking at the next proficiency level and it needed to be part of all aspects of learning. So I came up with “subete” as the Spanish translation. Now, when a student is holding back on their language, such as not using a discrete sentence and only a fragment, I can just say “subete” to remind them to repeat what they said, but at the next proficiency level. During the training, Alyssa Villareal shared with us all the ways her school district, Shelby Country Schools, supports students in reaching the level proficiency level through the concept “level up”. For instance, they have students transcribe their audio recordings of them speaking the target language, evaluate their level of proficiency and then write down how they can “level up”. She also showed us posters that started with a basic sentence, such as I like pizza followed by a series of questions that would add details onto the phrase to make it longer. For example, “Where?” and “With whom?” and now the phrase would read I like to eat pizza from Dominoes with my friends.
90% TARGET LANGUAGE Using Spanish 90% of the time wasn’t something new to me as I use the target language constantly in the classroom. However, it is so important to ensure we as teachers are, that I wanted to include it as one of my takeaways. Student output in the target language only happens when they receive a large amount of input and as much as we give to them, they will still only produce a small amount. We cannot be discouraged because it takes time for a student to be able to begin to put words together to create meaning, especially if their brain isn’t used to having to switch between two languages. During, TELL Collab, I liked how Alyssa Villareal mentioned the need for teachers to use the target language to share all the (appropriate) thoughts in their head such as “Where did I put the remote?” or “oh no, we only have 5 minutes left”. It is important for students to be exposed to all types of phrases in the target language, not just ones related to the learning target.
I highly encourage you to attend a TELL Collab conference if you are able to. In the meantime, check out their website, Tell Framework, as they have great resources that are based on best practices for the world language classroom.