Depending on your current situation, some of us might be able to try to teach new content while others may be in a situation of enrichment only activities. To help with all of this, this next strategy is meant to be anchored in what Laura Terrill and Donna Clementi call their major language functions. Here are their major functions that they refer to in their book The Keys To Planning for Learning. The idea behind these language functions is that at all proficiency levels, learners can produce language to accomplish these functions. While at the novice level they may simply be expressing their feelings and emotions by repeating back phrases like "estoy bien/mal", intermediates can take it a step further and explain more by saying "estoy alegre porque puedo pasar el rato con mis amigos virtualmente todos los días" and advanced students could say "me molesta que nosotros no tengamos escuela porque me encantaría terminar el año con mis profesores y mis amigos y continuar a aprender más español en persona". With these 6 functions in the back of my mind, I created an online activity that could encompass these functions as well as the themes/topic we are working with. Here's a copy of my template that I'm working on. Here's the break down of how I set this up.
So this theme was different and asked the students to ask questions, express a preference and narrate their daily routine. Are there mistakes...of course! Are there probably parts they looked up...yes. I accept both of those because reading over this as a whole, I know that this student did his best to complete these language functions. What I appreciate more is the bottom part where they self-reflected. The student indicated that questions were done easily, the explanation of favorite class and narration of their day they want to review more. As the teacher, I can now prepare possible extension activities to target these language functions (maybe using Idea #1 from a previous post).
Here's a blank copy of the template with the directions and the language functions. If you click on it and do file make a copy you can create your own. Here are my step-by-step directions. 1. Make a copy of the document 2. Choose a theme/topic for your writing activity. 3. Decide which 3 language functions you would like to target 4. Write 3 basic questions/tasks for learners to complete where the targeted grammar isn't stated but is implied based on the directions. 5. Provide a space for them to write and give directions if needed (how much to write, can they use Google Translate, are they being graded, are there certain vocab words you want included) 6. Provide a self-reflection at the bottom for them to determine how they felt about their learning.
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