There have been a lot of blog posts lately talking about Free Voluntary Reading (FVR) and the benefits that go along with having students read. I would like to add to the discussion and say that I have seen incredible gains in language acquisition by implementing FVR.
In particular, I have seen the benefits pay off in my Spanish IV students this year. For the past two years, these students have experienced FVR twice/week for 15 minutes. These students did not participate in FVR while they were in Spanish I or Spanish II for a number of reasons. However, for the past year and a half, these students have been purposefully dedicating time to reading in Spanish. When we began FVR (in Spanish III), many students chose novels that were written at a beginning level. Needless to say, I felt like they should be choosing more “difficult” books based on their level, but I allowed them to choose any book they wanted to read, and I kept my mouth shut about my feelings of their choices. After all, FVR is all about student choice, not teacher choice. As the year progressed, they grew a bit in their selection choices, but I was still not completely satisfied with what they were choosing. I was also getting quite a bit of push back from the students, as they did not really care to read, especially in Spanish. However, I firmly but kindly insisted that FVR was a valuable way to spend class time. It turns out, I was right. Upon returning to the classroom this year (in Spanish IV), many students chose to read novels written at an intermediate level. Some are even reading novels written for native speakers! And the best part is, they are comprehending the novels! They are talking about books they liked and offering suggestions to classmates looking for new books to read. And while all this discussion about reading is amazing, the best part is seeing the payoff in terms of their vocabulary. Their passive language is larger than I realize, as I often will stop for a quick comprehension check on a word that I have not used in class before, and the students let me know that this check is unnecessary as they have already acquired that word - from reading! Additionally, I am also hearing phrases enter their speech that I have not introduced, but are phrases that they have acquired from reading. The payoff I am seeing in terms of language acquisition is indeed very exciting, but was not instant. Acquisition has happened over time - a year and a half - and with purposeful dedication due to to a proven strategy. FVR DOES WORK, I have seen the evidence in my classroom.
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Adiós 2016, hola 2017. Time to start making – and keeping – New Year’s Resolutions. My district returned to school on Jan 3, just in time to have students discuss their resolutions for 2017, as well as learn a little culture along the way.
I began by teaching my students about the 12 uvas tradition on New Year's Eve. I used Martina Bex’s version, found here. This led to a discussion as to why Spaniards eat 12 grapes, as opposed to another number. We followed up with some PQA about New Year’s Resolutions. Students then created glyphs about thier New Year’s Resolutions. I recently found a post by Sol Azucar about incorporating glyphs into the classroom, and decided to have my students create their own glyphs using grapes and general New Year’s Resolutions. (A glyph is simply recording information in pictorial form. There is a very simple example here.) After students created their glyphs, they exchanged them with one another so that Student A could interpret Student B’s glyph. Then, Student A created a flipgrid video to present the data interpretation of Student B’s glyph. By creating the glyphs, students were reviewing the simple present tense via a ton of comprehensible input, and by creating the flipgrid video, they are reinforcing the difference between first and third person. Here is the link to the glyph I used for New Year’s Resolutions. Enjoy! |
Jessie Oelke
#deptofone providing compelling and comprehensible input Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.
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