Elena - 17 years and still teaching strong

Posted on 11/08/09

It's frustrating. My level II's still have problems with
noun/adjective agreement. They intellectually understand it but
make careless mistakes on projects.

My level I's have a project in which they have to create a
family scrapbook. The family can be their real family or a
fictitious family. They have to describe the family members
using adjectives correctly (make them agree), express age. use
possessives, and use tener, ser, and gustar correctly. In the
rubric I emphasized that special weight is being placed in
noun/adjective agreement.

On 11/08/09, 21 years...and still teaching strong wrote:
> On 11/07/09, Srta F wrote:
>> This is my first year teaching, and I am having a really
>> hard time with my pacing of lessons. I'm not sure how many
>> days/classes to spend on a topic before moving on or
>> assessing. I am on an A/B block schedule, so I only see my
>> class(es) every other day for a longer period of time
>> (70min).
>>
>> So, for example, we've been working on descriptive
>> adjectives. I've spent one week so far on this subject (two
>> class periods. So how much longer should I be working on
>> adjectives? One more week? Longer?
>
>
> Go back to best practices:
> 1) What's your instructional goal? The students will learn 10
> new adjectives to describe how they look? (teach yo soy with
> 10 adjectives. Make sure they are all singular and do not end
> in O). The students will be able to describe a friend's
> personality? (teach él es/ella es with 7 that end in O - then
> teach masc/fem)
>
> 2) Tell them the instructional goal. "by the end of this
> lesson, you need to be able to describe yourself using 10 new
> adjectives. To help you do this, you need to learn the words
> for strong, popular, intelligent, hard-working, etc.
>
> 3) Give relevant practice. Make sure the kids are cycling the
> previous rules in practice activities. Activities can be
> games, white board activities, worksheets, essays.
>
> 4) Assess! Assess! Assess! Assess! Can they describe a
> friend's personality using the correct form of SER and the
> adjective? Parking lot activities, quiz, presentations, etc.
> They don't have to be formal assessments, but you and they need
> to know if they are ahead, on track or falling behind.
>
> 5) Pacing is determined by how long it takes them to meet the
> goal. If you break it down to appropriate instructional goals
> with a good task assessment, adjectives can be taught in 30
> minutes. If you "just teach adjectives", you can go on for 30
> days.

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