Professional Knowledge

In my classroom my main goal is to find content that will relate to my students. The more they relate to it the more intrigued they are to the lesson. In the artifact below I ask the question why it is important to know how to say clothes in Spanish. At first, they just put for fashion and clothing like models. After they finished, I gave them more professions like FBI, police, and then the students started putting doctor and in safety. I added this question to show my students Spanish can help benefit you in all professions. For example, I had an activity where one person had to be the FBI agent, and the other a witness. They had to describe clothing to the FBI agent and the agent had to guess who they were talking about from the pictures.  

Instructional Planning

When planning for my AP lesson I used the SOL goals to help me plan my lesson. In the AP class many of the SOL’s have to do with the students being able to communicate and compare products, practices, and perspectives in Spanish. For one of my lessons, it was about natural disasters. I tried to incorporate the grammar, vocabulary, and culture practice into the lesson. For this activity the students went to Jam board where each group had to pick a storm from a Spanish speaking country and report about it. I gave them the links to the authentic sources. They could use pictures and had to have at least four sentences/descriptions using past participle. At the end each group presented their storm like a news reporter.

Instructional delivery

Assessment for learning

I tutor Spanish in my free time and one of the things that I do every session with them that I plan to do in my classroom is speaking warmups. After each lesson I add a new slide to the warmup to reinforce past chapters. Each slide they have to speak and answer questions like how the weather is today, what is today’s date, how do you feel. I have my student answer to me while tutoring, but in a bigger classroom I would have the students talk and answer these to their partners. This helps them practice and reinforce old vocabulary and grammar.

morning-work.pptx

Learning environment

I want to emphasis to my students that this is a learning environment, and it is okay to make mistakes. I want my students to feel comfortable to speak their mind and practice the language. One method I use is to make fun of myself and show them the mistakes I make too. For example, I am still trying to learn how to use certain tech and mess up with it sometimes. I tell my students see this is a learning environment, I am learning to use technology as you guys are learning Spanish. In the video below you can see how goofy I am dressed up for the clothing lesson. I did a tiktok challenge where you had to say the type of clothing you have and where it’s from. I understand not everyone wants to say where there clothing is from, so too make them feel comfortable I told them, if you don’t want to say because you don’t want us to copy your beautiful outfits than you don’t have too. Seeing me dress up and be silly I feel like relaxed them more and made them feel more comfortable doing that activity.

Culturally Responsive teaching

I want my classroom to be a safe environment for my students. I want my students to be able to be themselves. I want my classroom to feel like their classroom and center my lessons and activities to things that relate to the. It is important to me that the students are being represented in the class. I think representation is important because when a student’s see they are being represented, they don’t feel like an outcast and begin to feel a part of the classroom. For one of my AP lessons for my observation I did it on beauty and style. During the lesson I wanted to emphasis that what is beauty and stylish is different for everyone. I did this by having them do a Jam board where everyone put up their style like hair, makeup, jewelry, and clothing and shared with the class. Everyone got to see the different styles and they had a lot of fun. I also showed them a video of people in Spain saying what is beauty to them. After the video I had everyone write what is beauty to them on a post-it and put it on the board to share.

Professionalism

Student academic progress

When making mini lessons for my teaching class, I realized some of my classmates have not seen any Spanish before, so I made a google doc, so they wouldn’t be lost on Vocabulary and Grammar. I also used comparisons I thought people that have taken a Spanish one course would know. The pictures I used helped my non-Spanish- low level speakers to understand the commands or questions I was asking in Spanish. For example, I had a slide and myself said levántese and then I had a gif of someone standing up. For my classmates who know Spanish me saying that and the slide they automatically knew what to do, for my lower levels the picture helped them understand what I was asking for. For the AP class I observed in my lessons and directions were all only in Spanish as the goal for the class is to be able to listen, write, read, and speak all in Spanish for the AP test. They also know more than the French students/Spanish 1 students who have just started learning the language.