For our 2017-18 Professional Development, Ms. Crissman & Ms. Raniolo created a series of journal prompts around Spanish and Latin American cultural topics. These prompts allowed us to enhance our own personal knowledge of culture and present it to students using this new instructional practice. Although the journals were written in Spanish, students were encouraged to use their own creativity in their responses to demonstrate what they learned, allowing them to express thoughts and ideas that were above their Spanish proficiency level.
The majority of these journals were used as formative assessments intended to give students the opportunity to gain confidence in their own Spanish writing abilities. Since we wanted this to be a project students would enjoy, we asked for them to also provide us with feedback after each journal based on their interest in the topic, their ability to express themselves creatively, if they feel that particular entry helped them improve their writing, and how we as teachers can help them continue to improve. This reflection piece was added in February as an addition to our original project.
Our Personal Goals:
As World Language teachers, our goals with this project were to increase our personal knowledge of current ways of life in C2 and integrate this culture into the content taught in our Spanish 2 classes at Wicomico High School. We focused on including all 3 P’s of culture (Products, Practices and Perspectives) into the journaling activities for our students. Throughout the year, we created cultural activities with follow-up writing prompts to increase our use of culture in the classroom. Students were to take what they learned from these activities and create presentational writing responses in L2 by comparing C1 and C2.
Our Goals for Students:
Our goal for our students is for them to be exposed to Spanish and Latin American culture in as many ways as possible. This will allow them to begin making more cultural comparisons from the lower levels of Spanish and to demonstrate their understanding and connections through writing creative journal entries. The goal of the journals is more to give them a safe place to write and be creative, which will hopefully lead to them producing more in L2. Students are encouraged to use both text and visuals in their journal entries.