My main goal was to create a very student-driven exploration of culture. The ACTFL standards ask students to explore the connections between products, practices, and perspectives of the target culture, but it's often up to the teacher to select which products, practices, and perspectives to focus on. With a large range of options, how do we choose which are most relevant and important to share with our students? One option is to let students direct the focus of those explorations. Here's how that worked out in my classes this week.
 |
| Here's a copy of the guided notes I used with my class during this assignment. |
Act 1: Ask questions
I put students in groups of 3 and explained that they were going to explore an aspect of Spanish-speaking culture. I showed students this video and had them write down any questions they had. (It's a nice glimpse of the processions in Sevilla, shot with a fancy camera that really makes it feel like you are there.)
After the video, groups shared their questions. As they shared, I typed up a list of their questions, helping them rephrase and combine duplicate questions. Then we read over our list of questions and took a poll of how many people were interested in each question.
Here are the questions my students asked:
Once we had a list of questions and an idea of the questions that people were most interested in, I had each group choose two of the "highest scoring" questions to focus on.
Act 2: Look for information
I gave each group access to the laptop cart and independent work time to research their questions (after a quick discussion of reliable sources and how to cite them.) Some chose to research the questions on their own, and others started with resources I put together with LessonPaths.
(By the way, this is the first time I've used LessonPaths, and it's pretty great!)
As groups worked on their own, I could circulate and check in, and help (attempt to) develop some research skills.
Act 3: Share what you have learned and connect it to your life.
We returned to our list of questions, and groups shared out the information they found. In this case, this part was during a second class period.
What worked:
It was pretty great to watch the class discussions unfold on their own. We talked about a lot of the things I've talked about with classes before - the history and symbolism of the processions, the role of religion in culture, and the inevitable questions about any connection between the nazarenos and the KKK. One question from 8th grade was regarding whether Catholics could be in the KKK. If I was running the class discussion, I probably would have highlighted that the nazarenos are not the KKK, and would have focused on the separate histories of Semana Santa in Spain and the KKK in the U.S. However, students were running the investigation, and on their own they explained that Catholics were one group targeted by the Klan, and connections to their study of "To Kill A Mockingbird" in English class.
We also talked about things I never would have thought of. For example, one question from seventh grade was "Were any animals harmed in the making of this video?" I thought it was just a smart-alecky question, but I had already assured my students that there was no such thing as a stupid question if it was sincere. I added it to the list. At the end, as we were going over the questions, a student responded: "Only in the food!" and another countered: "But not on Good Friday, because Catholics don't eat meat!" and finally another student began explaining about a story she knew about one statue of the Virgin Mary used in processions, which has a necklace made out of some kind of animal skin, because of a legend connecting its white hide with purity.
(I had never heard that one. She couldn't remember the name of the animal in the story, or details about the legend. I've done some tentative online searches, which produced some pretty fascinating websites but no answers. Anyone know of this legend?)
In the end, letting the students ask and answer the questions was a lot more meaningful than if they were just answering questions from me, or if I was just answering their questions. I asked for student feedback after the activity, and many students expressed that they liked the opportunity to find out the answers to things they were curious about.
What I would do differently next time:
Next time I would rethink the group aspect of this assignment. I had students in groups from the beginning of the activity, but in the future I think I would elicit questions from the class first, and then group students based on the questions they were interested in. I might also have students take individual notes (to increase individual accountability) and then prepare a summary as a group. This would give students the ability to continue research at home, without being limited to class time and the logistics of group work outside of class.
I'd also like to harness the collaboration potential of Google Docs to more quickly compile our list of class questions, which did take up some time that might have been better spent on the actual research. Especially with a longer video, I could have students type up their individual questions onto a shared document, so that we could quickly sift through them, condense questions, poll for interest levels, and assign groups to specific sets of questions.
Anyone else have some great ways to create student-driven culture lessons?
No comments:
Post a Comment