Submitted by Tamie Morphew
Objectives:
Content:
Students will:
- Demonstrate understanding of the concepts of products, practices, and perspectives.
Cultural:
Students will:
- Identify some of the products, practices, and perspectives of a Spanish-speaking school.
- Familiarize themselves with the structures and practices of Spanish-speaking schools.
Language: Content Obligatory
Students will:
- Use school related vocabulary such as: materias, clases, requisitos, facilidades, actividades, estudiar, advansar, universidad, trabajar, in order to describe their own school, ask questions about another school, and understand descriptions of another school.
- Use interrogative words such as: Quién, cuándo, cuánto/a/os/as, dónde, de dónde, adónde, qué, por qué, cómo, para qué, to interview Spanish-speaking students in person or through email.
- Use verb first word order to write questions without question words. ¿Verb + subject + rest of the sentence? (when expressed) (if any)
- Use tag question words such as, ¿no? and ¿verdad?, to write questions. Noun + verb + rest of sentence + tag question word (when expressed) (if any) (¿no? ¿verdad?)
- Use appropriate vocabulary, such as: me llamo..., soy de..., voy al colegio..., to introduce and describe themselves and their school to others.
- Use verbs such as: entender, repetir, comprender, and poder, to ask for clarification when they do not understand.
Language: Content Compatible
Students will:
- Use the present tense to ask, understand, and answer questions about school.
Learning Strategies / Social and Skills Development:
Students will:
- Use the present tense to ask, understand, and answer questions about school.
Time Frame:
Four 50-minute periods.
This does not reflect the time waiting for the epals to respond.
Materials Needed:
- Computers with internet access.
- Email partners from a Spanish-speaking school.
- Copies of handouts
Description of Assessment (Performance Project):
Pre-activities:
Teach students how to write questions using question words and without question words, using a verb first word order. You could use a word wall to reinforce usage of question words. Students could play 20 questions to practice asking questions and understanding the answers. An activity of scrambled questions would reinforce the word order of questions. (Handout 8: Interrogativos) (Handout 9: Scrambled questions)Have students prepare questions to use in e-mail exchanges with students in a Spanish-speaking country or in an interview with an international student from a Spanish-speaking country. The questions should help students uncover practices and products of the Spanish-speaking high schools.
Have students exchange questions with a partner and edit questions for language accuracy and comprehensibility. Also have students evaluate whether or not the questions will elicit the information desired about practices and products. See handout 10 for peer editing checklist.
During activities:
Students will exchange e-mail correspondence with students from a Spanish-speaking school about school culture. Correspondence should include questions to uncover some of the products, practices, and perspectives of that school. Various penpal sites are listed in the resources section.The teacher will set up the classroom exchanges using one of the epal services listed in the teacher reference section. Have the students introduce themselves in the first letter and explain the purpose of the correspondence. If all students are corresponding with students from the same school, you may want to divide the questions up so that the students are not receiving answers for the same questions. This will allow you to have class sessions where the students share the responses that they have received to their questions. It will also be interesting to see if different correspondents give different answers to the same questions and will allow for class discussion about why that happened. There will be a wait time between sending the emails and receiving responses.
If epals are not an option, it may also be possible to have students conduct interviews of international students attending classes in your district. This can be structured in different ways, depending on the number of international students and the size of your class. I had a small class (ten students) do this with two international students, from Ecuador and Spain, as a panel discussion. My students took turns asking previously written and assigned questions and took notes on the answers for use in the next lesson.
Post-activity:
After the students have either received responses to their e-mail questions or completed the interviews, have them collaborate in small groups to list some of the products, practices, and perspectives of the schools they corresponded with. Students should keep their lists for use in the next lesson.
Assessment:
Student progress in question writing can be checked by collecting the questions that they write after they have been edited by a peer. The teacher can evaluate student progress by assessing the emails that are sent for grammar usage and student comprehension can be checked when email responses are received. Speaking and listening comprehension can be checked during class discussions about the responses to their questions.
References and Resources:
Epals from http://www.epals.com
Keypals@teaching.com
Site to find other classrooms to collaborate with.Epals at http://www.iecc.org
http://languagecenter.cla.umn.edu/lc/surfing/email.html
Many links to epal Internet sites.
Attachments:
NOTE: some attachments are in PDF form (get Acrobat Reader)Handout 8: Interrogativos
Handout 10: Peer Editing Checklist for questions.
Handout 9: Scrambled questions