Teaching Immigration Vocabulary in a “Discourse”

Photo by Jonathan Weiss on Unsplash

I am very lucky with my Department at my current high school and have to thank the wonderful Bobby Sullivan for providing a book study for our group. We are reading Enacting the Work of Language Instruction: High-Leverage Teaching Practices by Eileen Glissan and Richard Donato. For the most part, this book is meant for a newer teacher who does not necessarily use the TL in class all the time, but there is still plenty to be learned for the somewhat seasoned Proficiency-based teacher.

The first chapter set me to a new-to-me challenge: Teaching Vocabulary in Discourse. At first I was a bit skeptical, because the book suggests creating a thematic discourse, rather than treating words with isolated definitions, and the example is a house and house vocabulary. My initial thought was that it was easy to create a discourse around an object. But when I sat to create a discourse for my current unit on immigration, it felt more natural than I expected.

After reading the chapter, my takeaway is that a discourse is different from how I currently teach vocab in one subtle, yet important way: there is a central theme that connects the words beyond just being from the same thematic unit or text.

In my case, I had used an article and images from Bruno Catalano’s sculpture series, Travelers as a hook for the unit. An image from the sculpture series serves as the cohesive idea throughout the discourse and provides a meaningful context. Someone, I cannot find who or where had posted an article about the sculptures on one of the many Facebook groups I am in. The visuals worked well to open up the conversation. They are quite striking as you can see in this video that I started with.  I showed the video and started and stopped it with various questions. The article that had been posted was also good, though I should have cut it more. The author’s writing is very comprehensible. The translation in the article of the a critic explaining the artwork was less so and my students struggled with it. Next time, I will cut the article and pre-teach some vocab so the article is less dense.

The article yielded a lot of good vocab and helped us to do some vocab generation. I decided to use this lesson as a practice for creating discourse. Below you can see my example. I am very happy with the idea of using discourses and though I do not think I have time to do that for every word that comes up, I love the idea of incorporating them into my regular vocabulary teaching. The characteristics and steps indicated with letters are on pages 33-34 of the book.

Proficiency target: Intermediate High by the end of the year

Topic: Immigration

6 thematic vocabulary words.

Factor

Motivos

Agridulce

Lanzarse

Exilio

Obra

Script (includes steps 4-8):

[projected image of one statue in Bruno Catalano’s Travelers]

J: OK, amigos, vamos a hablar de las estatuas, la obra, de Bruno Catalano y cómo él representa a muchos elementos de la inmigración y el inmigrante en su obra. En esta unidad, hablamos de los factores de la inmigración (g). Como dijimos, las caras de las figuras son cansadas y hasta tristes. Entonces, ¿por qué? ¿Cuáles son algunos factores (slower speech, meaningful intonations), factores, o motivos (again with intonation) para inmigrar? Factores, motivos,y razones son sinónimos (inclusive arm gesture, writing on the board with = sign with these words) en este caso. Y razones y motivos son cognados. Por ejemplo, un factor, motivo, o razón para crear arte es para fomentar conversación sobre un tema. Con tu compañero, ¿cuáles son algunos factores, motivos, y razones para inmigrar?

SS: chatting.

J: Hola, hola

SS: Coca cola

J: OK, dime. ¿Cuáles son algunos posibles motivos, factores, y razones….?

SS: una guerra.

J: OK, “Un motivo…” meaningful pause

SS: Un motivo es guerra. (sic)

J: Muy bien. Exacto, un motivo posible es una guerra. ¿Cuáles otros  factores contribuyen a la inmigración?

[solicits several more answers, repeating vocab words. Most likely one student will say “exilio” since they have seen it before.]

J: OK. Puño a 5. Puño, no entiendo las palabras motivos y factores, 5 entiendo perfectamente bien que significan.[scan room for fist to five.] (a) Muy bien, exilio. Hablamos de esta palabra el otro día. Y como vemos en las caras de las estatuas, las caras son tristes. Un posible factor puede ser el exilio, porque el exilio es una situación negativa. Es cuando te fuerzan [pushing gesture, makes gesture to push statue on screen] a salir de tu país [walking as if pushed, makes gesture as if pushing statue on screen]. Con tu compañero, ¿Que recuerdas? Que entiendes de la palabra exilio. En tus palabras, ¿Qué es el exilio? [pointing to word on board]

SS: [talking]

J: ¿Qué te pasa?

SS: Calabaza.

J: Vale. Dos voluntarios por favor. (teacher holds up two fingers and ticks them off as students respond. She holds them up until she gets both 2 responses she asked for.) Gracias, Miguel.

S: Creo que es cuando en política no es bueno y tu necesitas salir.

J: Exactamente. Perfecto. El exilio es cuando hay una situación política, y los que tienen el poder te fuerzan a dejar el país porque no los apoyas (supportive gesture with hands). Julian Assange está en el exilio. Hay muchos cubanos en exilio en Miami porque no están de acuerdo con los Castro. Gracias, Annie

S: Creo que también es muy triste porque no quieres salir.

J: Claro. Muy buena observación, Annie, gracias. Perfecto. Claro que es muy triste. Es una situación forzada. Puño a 5: entiendes o no “exilio” (a)

J: OK chicos, entonces, vamos a volver a las estatuas, a la obra de arte, y miramos esta vez la postura. Dijimos que las estatuas se lanzan, que es caminar con determinación hacia un lugar. OK amigos. Levántense. Vamos a lanzarnos por el aula. Cómo caminamos cuando nos lanzamos? Practica con tu compañero.

SS: [students get up and start walking around room. Some with more enthusiasm than others.]

J: Hola, hola

SS: Coca cola.

J: OK, dos voluntarios por fa. Sí, Alex. {student shows lanzarse walk} Muy bien. Alex se lanza. Muy bien. Un aplauso. OK, otro voluntario. Gracias, Meghana. [student demonstrates walk]. Perfecto, Gracias. Meghana se lanza. OK, Puno a 5 para “lanzarse”. [holds up fist and 5 fingers, scans room.] (a) Pueden sentarse. OK. Perfecto. Amigos, para terminar con este repaso de vocabulario, miramos el vacío en los troncos de las estatuas, la obra. Dijimos que representaba varias cosas, que por ejemplo, cuando te mudas, siempre dejas una parte de ti en tu país natal. Y usamos la palabra agridulce. Agridulce es una palabra que representa lo negativo y positivo. Agri= negativo [underline agri in color, and dulce in another] dulce = positivo. En el caso de la inmigración, puede ser agridulce. Por un lado hay factores positivos, y por otro lado, hay factores negativos. Crea una lista con tu compañero. Cuales son las emociones positivas y cuales son los sentimientos negativos cuando una person inmigra.

SS: talking

J: [makes a two column chart with a plus and a negative at the top and agri over the negative sign and dulce over the positive sign.] Que te pasa

SS: Calabaza.

J: OK voluntarios, por fa. [writing on board as students share. Gets at least 3 ideas for each column.] Perfecto. Agri: triste, cansado, enojado. Dulce: emoción, anticipación, esperanza. Tu sientes todos estos sentimientos al mismo tiempo y es agri y dulce; agridulce. Con tu compañero, ¿Cuales son algunas cosas agridulces en tu vida?

SS: chatting.

J: OK 3 personas que no han hablado hoy. [holds up 3 fingers, ticking off as kids share]. Vale, Icaro.

S: la escuela [kids laugh].

J: OK. muy bien. Explica.

SS: Es mucho trabajo, pero estoy con mis amigos y también me gusta mucho jugar a fútbol, y aprendo mucha información.

J: Vale, perfecto. Ir a  la escuela es agridulce, o por lo menos, hay ambivalencia. Dos personas más. Gracias, Jenny.

S: Películas pueden ser agridulces. Tristes y alegres.

J: Perfecto! Muy bien. OK, Miara.

SS: también, libros y canciones.

J: Excelente. ¿Puedes darme un ejemplo específico?

S: [names some pop song I do not know, but I nod knowingly along with other students] Con frecuencia el arte representa ideas agridulces como en el caso de las estatuas. Puño a cinco: agridulce (a). Un aplauso. OK. Chicos. Saquen el cuaderno. Con estas 5 palabras, escribe sobre el mensaje sobre la inmigración que Bruno Catalano comunica a través de su obra, su arte, su obra de arte, Los viajeros.

 

Luis Fonsi’s “Corazón en la maleta”

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

This song is a lot of fun for many reasons. First because it is a quintessential break-up song. Second, because it is Luis Fonsi before his “Despacito” fame. Third, because it is a “banger” as the kids say. Lastly, it has a fun retro feel in the video. Though be warned, there is some bare-midriff shimmying if your school is conservative. My students always love this song and I have to give Mary Ann Mestre-Price credit for turning me on to it.

We are doing a vacations unit and I used this song in a previous travel unit with the Zachary Jones worksheet. The worksheet is helpful because it has a great intro-question about what we say when we break up with someone and it has a nice word match for the harder vocab in the song. He lists this as an advanced resources, but I have used it only in Spanish 3 or 4.

Day 1

This year, I decided to tie it into the travel unit in a few ways. The first day, I gave students color-printed copies of many infographics about packing and travel. (Just google “empacar la maleta”. I do not want to poste possibly copywrited materials.) I had them find the cognates and 2-3 main ideas in their infographic. We switched partners in a few ways, then moved on.

Photo by Nubia Navarro (nubikini) on Pexels.com

In the next activity, students were asked to choose a dream vacation destination. I elicited them from the whole class and wrote the list on the board. The students did not always know what the Spanish words for, say, Sweden were, but I just wrote the Spanish and ignored the English. We then had new conversations about why they wanted to go to these destinations in particular.

Next, I had copied the song worksheet and a blank suitcase cartoon, like this one, back to back. I also drew in a handle and wheels to “modernize” it. I prompted students to use the infographics and share infographics in order to “pack their suitcase” by drawing what they needed for their particular destination. I gave them about 8 minutes to draw.

Next, since we are in the beginning of the unit, I asked them to circle the drawings for words that they did not know in Spanish so that I can grow our vocab list. After that, we did a few more circling questions/conversations about what they are bringing to go to their destinations and why.

Day 2

They next day,  we listened to the song and used the Jones handout to fill-in the blanks and the vocab box to learn some new words. By this time, the kids are bopping to the song and asking to hear it again.

Next I drew their attention to a hand-written/drawn pictograma, also in the style of Zachary Jones, that I made of the chorus from the song. This section of the lyrics really ties into travel since he sings that he will get away from his ex by any means necessary: on a plane, by train, or overseas. A pictograma is where you draw a little image over each word or phrase of the song. It can really help the kids to grasp the meaning. I then presented my 5 lines and also used gestures and intonations to make the meaning clear to the students. Then I checked for understanding with a think-pair-share sequence. I also asked them about the central metaphor of travel as break-up and heart in suitcase as leaving someone. This was prepping them to understand the rest of the song.

I then paired students and gave them each a line of the main verses of the song and set them to the task of creating their own pictograma verses. I circulated to help with vocabulary and comprehension and also had a supporting list of words I knew they would have trouble with on the board (tornillo suelto, piedra, sacar, sordo, pataleo, lloriqueo, recorrí, atraganté, desventaja). I gave them about 10 minutes for this activity.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Day 3

In my class since we were playing games at the beginning and end of class, this activity stretched into Day 3, but you can squeeze it into less time. To bring it all together, I had students hang their pictograms (I had two sections of the same class and hung them together) and do a gallery walk in preparation to write about the meaning of the song. I had 12 images, so they rotated in pairs. I circulated offering clarifications.

Next students were seated and I gave them these two writing prompts:

1. Write a summary of the song in 2-3 complete sentences.
2. “Corazón en la maleta” is a series of metaphors and images. The central metaphor is travel as break-up. Using the posters you have created, choose 2 more images or metaphors and explain them in your own words, in complete sentences.

The gift that keeps on giving

Believe it or not, there is more to do with this song. Since the whole thing is in the preterit, I am going to use it to do a PACE-like grammar lesson …stay tuned. Pun intended.

Ideas for differentiation

• Just explore the chorus and 2-3 additional lines
• Prepare the drawings or photos with quizlet words and have students match photos to the lines of the song instead of drawing on their own.
• Have some classes or groups “read” the pictograms of others.

Class Novel: Antes de ser libres, Julia Álvarez

 

Photo by Vincent Gerbouin on Pexels.com

For the last couple of years I have taught a class called Caribbean Voices in order to bring more awareness to the diversity of the Spanish-speaking world, mainly the influence of Latinos of African Descent. (For more awesome resources on this topic, try this Facebook Group and this Podcast Episode, which features this researcher, Dr. Krishauna Hines-Gaither.)

Main topics of the course have included clave rhythm and its influence in salsa and reggaetón, as well as Celia Cruz and salsa, the Pedro Pan airlift, and syncretic religion. This year I wanted to incorporate more readings, so we read a Spanish translation of Antes de ser libres by Julia Álvarez, a writer of Dominican descent. Here are some pros and cons from the experience along with some tips of how I would approach the novel next time:

What worked

• The novel is extremely engaging and the students loved the story. The protagonist is twelve and the books is written as a young adult novel. But it is not too young for high school students since the themes are so adult and there is a 16 year-old sister. This is also a thriller and a bit of a mystery. Students were literally on the edge of their seats on group reading days.
• I watched El trópico de sangre along with the book (Note: preview for a couple of nude and violent scenes you need to skip) and the visuals with Michelle Rodríguez, whom they recognize from the Fast and Furious franchise, and the story of the three Mariposas really drew my students in. They loved it.
• Despite the fact that it is a young adult book, the level is hard for Intermediate to Advanced students. In order to scaffold the reading, I needed to create many sheets of vocab and different kinds of summaries to prep students and I also did  a lot of reading aloud. Reading aloud is a great strategy for scaffolding a difficult reading. (I will write about this topic at a later date.)
• Students appreciated the serious themes of the novel. Unlike most readers, which can feel contrived, the novel is based on the writer’s family and feels much more authentic. It is also a much more exciting way to learn about history and the Trujillo regime than a historical text, though, via the novel, I was able to introduce supplemental readings that students found more interesting because of the novel.
• This was one of the first whole, actual novels that my students read (as opposed to readers) and they seemed to feel accomplished when they finished.

Some hiccups

• This books is a translation, albeit a good one. I am always torn with translations. I really wish I could find more compelling reads, at level, that were true authentic texts, but I am still searching.
• The print is small. This books is one you can tackle with Intermediate students, but the print is unnecessarily tiny.
• You are never going to please everyone. I cannot say 100% of the students loved this novel, but at the end of the semester, all did say it helped them with vocabulary acquisition. The vast majority enjoyed the story.

Would I use it again?

Absolutely, without hesitation for the right level (Spanish 4 or 5 with students who have done some reading).

Active Reading: Why Summarizing and Paraphrasing Are the Best

Photo by Tookapic on Pexels.com

Actively Reading Derrida

In in my Ph.D. program at the University of Virginia, we had to take a class called Introduction to Literary Theory. We read a wide range of theorists from Freud to Foucault in an attempt to apply their thinking to literary analysis. I found Derrida’s “Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences” impenetrable at best and was counseled to summarize each and every paragraph in order to better understand it. This was the first time I was given an explicit active reading strategy in my 20+ years of schooling. What the what? I was heartened to learn that my professor also needed this technique to dissect the texts and relieved to learn it worked.

Derrida’s piece was not technically written in a second language (it was translated from the original French), but it sure felt like it at the time. Despite teaching the four skills (Reading, Writing, Listening, Speaking) for years, my next meaningful encounter with Active Reading was at The Parker School in Devens, MA, where I was getting my teaching certificate through the New Teacher’s Collaborative.

What is Active Reading?

At Parker, I was new to Proficiency-based teaching and assessment, but they had been doing it for years. Our rubrics for Interpretative Assessments included a section on Active Reading and we encouraged students to dig deeply into texts. The strategies on the rubrics and used in class activities were:

• Identifying cognates — this is super important. When there is a sea of long words on a page, a student can get intimidated, but if many are cognates, they calm down. Also, the hunt for cognates often enjoyable and can feel like a puzzle at the intermediate level
• Identifying words you do not know
• Identifying key words (analysis)
• Asking questions (in the margins)
• Inferring (hard to measure, but a good one to push students to document Ex. “I don’t know this word, but I thing it has a positive meaning”)
• Summarizing
• Paraphrasing
• Word work (definitions, pictures, etc.)

Why Use Active Reading in Class?

You might ask why I would be pushing for active reading when task-free reading for pleasure is proving to be so important. I think that there are two kinds of reading and that both are important to language acquisition. As I mentioned in a previous post, I have no doubt that students acquire when they are reading for pleasure, but the skill of dissecting a text you do not yet understand is also important for language learners. Here are my reasons:

• I always related my work in the classroom back to real-world applications. If a person is working in a job where they are using Spanish or traveling, they will come a across many texts that are not at their level and they will need to find a way to understand them.
• I think we should be practicing all three modes of communication at and above level regularly.
• I do not want to edit every authentic text that I present to students and they do not want that either.
• I want to present a variety of levels for differentiation’s sake too.
• Teaching cultural topics will involve texts that are not at the intermediate and novice levels.
• Students experience satisfaction when they can understand a text after active reading whose meaning eluded them before.

My Favorites: Summarizing and Paraphrasing

Sometimes very self-aware students will tell me that they do not understand a text despite knowing many of the words on the page. Well, this also happens when they don’t realize it. It is easy for a student to think they are understanding a text, but not really be getting the main ideas and important details. This is why summarizing and paraphrasing are the best strategies (and also the least popular).

Summarizing and Paraphrasing involve analysis and synthesis. They require a breaking-down of the meaning of the text (analysis) and a recreation into a student’s own words of the meaning (synthesis). To do it successfully, students cannot have a surface-level understanding of the text and they must dig deeper than the recognition of a few words. This pushes them and leads to better comprehension.

Problems, Pitfalls, and Avoiding Them

Students do not much enjoy this process, and for good reason: it is hard work! With exception to the simple word-identifiers, the other reading strategies force students to slow down their thinking process and document it. Summarizing and paraphrasing additionally force students to stop and identify the errors in their interpretation.

To soften the blow, I will just have students read less more often. I also give them “credit” for it. Too often active reading is a means to an end, but in my assessments, both because I want to highlight its importance as well as incentivize strong work, I want it to be part of what I actually assess.

Another point of relief is providing important vocabulary words while students are doing this active reading. Once they have begun trying to summarize what they are reading, they know which are the most important words and can better discern which they need to understand the text.

I plan to keep using active reading — I have just seen it work too often to abandon it. What are your thoughts on active reading? How do you use it?

Independent Reading Project

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

I was inspired to change one of the major assessments in my Spanish 4/5 class after attending ACTFL in Boston in 2015. While I did not go to Stephen Krashen’s session, my colleagues did and they came out energized and jazzed up to add more reading to our curriculum. They talked about his theories and research focused on reading and acquisition. This made me think of my own reading experiences in both English and Spanish and how I knew it was true that these experiences were a huge part of my development as an English and Spanish speaker.

The problem I wanted to solve was how to add reading while making it rigorous enough and the main focus of a major assessment. In the class in its format at that time, it was focused on different thematic units with various smaller assessments and then a bigger project at the end. The problem I saw was that this project was very focused on student output, rather than giving them “credit” or assessing well their input.

The first thing I knew I needed to do was to create something student focused. Krashen’s theories include that the reading that students do must be of very high interest to them and that it must be the end in itself. I knew I would have trouble meeting this last goal, but that I could easily make it interesting to students by letting them research whatever they wanted that was related to the Spanish-speaking world. This is the description of the project. It includes requirements, examples, and a calendar.

Over the years, I have had kids do these project:

• The Chilean super telescope.
• Lots of baseball!
• The subjunctive mood
• Reading an entire novel independently
• Mexican vs. Tex-mex
• Caribbean pirates
• Flamenco and Fandango
• Sicarios: reality vs. portrayals on TV
• The Spanish-American War
• US-Mexican Economic ties
• A student watched el Internado in Spanish with Spanish subtitles
• A student watched and read the transcript for El Ministerio del Tiempo (Netflix and RTVE.es)

Getting Kids Started

One of the hardest parts for students is getting started. The first year I had no materials and told the students that I had no idea what we were doing and that we would see how it went. Now, I have better tools to help students. I use this document to help students brainstorm. Some choose a topic quickly and move straight into searching for sources. Others need more help. One of the questions I ask students is, What is a question you have always had as you went through your Spanish classes? That usually leads to an idea. I then help them to refine their topic since I know more about the Spanish-speaking world.

Fleshing Out the Ideas and Finding Sources

After choosing a question, I have students think about related ideas, problems that they might have, and how they need me to help them. This is to avoid students getting stalled without asking me for what they need. I call this a “proposal.” Another thing that is important is that they must list and get their sources approved. This helps you to judge how much they will understand and if they are doing “enough.” This is the heart of the project and you want to make sure that students are reading sufficient sources, sources at a level they understand, and sources that are interesting to them.

Possible Problems and How to Avoid Them

Knowing your students will help you and your students. You likely know which students need more guidance and which do not need as much. I circulate with a series of questions in the target language that helps me to monitor their progress.

• What do you think the level of these readings is? Are they very hard? Is the level slowing you down?
• What are you doing today?
• What do you have to do next?
• What do you need from me?

Here are some problems and how to avoid them:

• Student’s can’t find sources. Help them! The point is to be reading, not struggling with Google.
• Student’s don’t find a variety of sources. Who cares! The point is that they are reading about something they are interested in.
• Student’s have trouble with the reading due to level. First, if they are struggling with an article or video, I give them more “credit” for a source, say  it might count for 1.5 or 2 sources instead of 1. I will also tell them to read and when they get stuck call me over to paraphrase.
• You feel like your classroom is silent. I start out class or end it with interpersonal activities with students checking in with each other and chatting about what they are learning.

Ending the Project and Showing Learning

Students show what they learned in their readings using active reading and note-taking.  But in order to assess them, I also give them what amounts to an oral exam of the type they will have in college when or if they do an Independent Study. I do not want them focusing on producing a product or paper as much as I want to know they were engaged and learning. Although this unit could be ended with a project to show learning that is more presentational in nature. But what I do, is to read their notes and active reading and create a series of questions to cover some of the ACTFL functions: description, narration, comparison, creating questions, etc. I also make sure to have at least one question that asks students to relate the content that they learned to the wider world or their own life/context. These conversations are usually about 10 minutes long. I call them “conferences” in order not to make students nervous, but ultimately it is an oral exam. I let them have their notes and if a question stumps them, it is OK to move on. I am looking to see they understood the readings, can talk about what they read without too much reliance on notes, can speak about things in details in emerging paragraphs (ACTFL text-type), that they can analyze the content of the readings, and that they can synthesize the ideas into their own opinions and ideas.

Why Do I Think this Project Works?

I love this project and students do too. They ask for it. When students are in the heart of this project, I see them glued to their sources, 100% engaged and they are excited to talk to me and others about what they are learning.

I have also observed student’s language making leaps and bounds as Krashen promises. Some of the conditions that he says to incorporate are not always there: the readings are not always at level and students are taking notes on the project, where he would advocate for no task, but students are so interested in what they are learning that these things don’t seem to affect their acquisition.

I hope to keep using this project for years to come.