At the recent #SCOLT17 conference, I attended a session presented by Norah Jones (@NorahLulicJones on Twitter) and she demonstrated a couple of approaches for doing an IPA everyday without killing yourself or your students. Here is how I used her model to bring my students back from vacation:
1. Share an authentic resource. I chose a short video called Vidas Paralelas about two girls, one from Colombia and one from Spain. We watched it twice; once without sound to observe and generate vocabulary and then with sound to hear the narration. Students had scratch paper and were asked to note how both girls were similar and how they were different. My students are in six table groups, so I asked for one detail from each group to share out on the board, as well as walking around to see what they had written on their scratch paper. Interpretive task--check!
2. Get them talking about it. The students were then asked to discuss and share additional information with their table groups for 2-3 minutes. Some groups talked for the duration while some had trouble figuring out what to say. My goal was to give them another opportunity to use the vocabulary by hearing the words, forming sentences, and writing details that they did not already have, which they did for the most part. See Takeaways below for how I would tweak this in the future.
3. Don't forget interculturality! Observing and discussing culture is a substantial part ot this unit because one of the essential questions is "How are Spanish-speaking cultures similar and different?" We talk about the fact that not everybody is Mexican or eats tacos. I steer them toward being cultural observers who may think, "Ooo, that's weird/ gross/ interesting/different," followed immediately by, "I wonder why..." The context for the unit IPA is to support the statement "There is not one Spanish-speaking culture, but rather many Spanish-speaking cultures." I asked students to discuss, "What cultural things do you notice in the clip?" Sometimes these things are subtle such as modern vs. historical buildings, so I may draw their attention to visual cues.
4. Give feedback. While they dug into this analysis in groups, I visited each table to listen to a 2-minute conversation that was essentially a repeat of what they did before, but possibly with some cultural observations. This served as a mini dress rehearsal for the upcoming unit interpersonal. I like doing this because it allows the students to be familiar with the process and expectations, so that they are free to focus on their language production. I used our district interpersonal rubric [ Rock Hill Schools Interpersonal Rubric 2016 ]and gave suggestions like:
"Try to group your information. If one person comments about family or community, add to the information, rather than just jumping to another random fact."
"For your interaction, be sure to ask questions, answer questions, and piggy-back off of other people's comments. This shows me that you are listening and responding to your groupmates, rather than just taking turns talking."
"To exceed expectations, I need to hear you make comparisons and use reflexive verbs since those were key structures in this unit."
5. Polish and Share Now that students have wrangled the input in at least 4 different ways (watching video, listening to others talk about it, writing their own observations, and taking part in a couple of conversations) it's time for the presentational part. I asked students to identify 2 ideas per group that were evidence for many different Spanish-speaking cultures. I have to say that I was really proud of one of my heritage speakers who said that she expected the girl in the more affluent situation to be from Spain, thus circling around to an earlier theme of stereotypes. I saw others nodding, which told me that her insight resonated with them, even if they didn't mention it. We ran short on time (doggone morning announcements!) but I would have capped this by asking everybody to complete an exit slip where they give 3-4 facts that they observed and expressed a cultural insight as a tweet or Instagram post.
Plus/Delta and Takeaways
Plus-- What went well...
I really liked the flow of this lesson and the transitions felt natural. The kids seemed to appreciate the dress rehearsal for the unit interpersonals and several groups had amazing conversations,for the unit assessment, so the feedback raised the quality of interaction and lowered students' level of anxiety. Winner winner, chicken dinner!!
Delta-- What I would change...
In retrospect, I would have been more specific in the instructions for the interpersonal by requesting at least one new piece of information from each person at the table or identify 3 additional similarities and 3 additional differences. Some students didn't jump in, but I have found that having table groups is great for accountability. If I say that everybody needs to talk, the table members will prompt and prod to make sure nobody gets off without doing their fair share.
I would also have front-loaded the video and cultural observations by showing a few pictures and asking students to predict which things were from Colombia and which were from Spain. These images might include food items, examples of architecture, stores with prices displayed, school uniforms or anything else that might flesh out what they are going to see in the video clip.
Takeaways-- This format is very flexible and can be prompted by a variety of authentic resources. In addition to video, you could use a collection of photos, an infographic, a short news story, a menu, or a series of social media posts. Having some visual support is helpful for novices (usually levels 1 and 2.) This could also morph into a Movietalk or other comprehensible input task. Hmm.... that gets me thinking....
Hasta pronto!
