Opening Up the Oral Conversation in the Language Classroom

In my previous post I mentioned that I have been coaching and mentoring a Spanish teacher Manu at The American School of London in the area of integrating technology.

Our main purpose or reason why we are using the technology is to get students orally speaking Spanish with their peers.  The recordings of these conversations can be used for the teacher as a way to formatively assess and as a way to drive future instruction individually or as a whole group.

Below is an overview of a grade 4 Spanish lesson written by Manu himself.  We hope you can use this in your classroom no matter what language you are teaching.

Tellagami app. Grade 4 Spanish

In 4 grade we start conjugating some of the most relevant verbs we used the previous year. The aim is to get students use the expressions they used in grade 3 to introduce themselves to talk about other people. We look at the changes we need to make in verb endings, adjectives and pronouns. Description reaches a deeper level, as we add new vocabulary to describe face and body features. 

Scaffolding:

After reviewing the parts of the body from grade 3 we presented the students with the sheet below, which contains the vocabulary of the lesson.  A number of games and activities are carried out during the unit to raise awarenes of the following concepts:

 PREVIOUS KNOWLEDGE: 

 Verb GUSTAR:  Me gusta Vs. Me gustan. 

 Este – Esta: This (M-F)

NEW KNOWLEDGE

 We look at the use of ES and TIENE as opposed to SOY and TENGO.

 We notice some adjectives with no gender change.

 We learn some “ES” plurals such as AZULES and MARRONES.

 We carefully build our sentences using the proper punctuation.

 We differenciate between ES for atributes and ESTÁ for states and places.

Drafting our project:

Students work with partners and interview each other using this template. They are encouraged to change their partner’s answers to make it work for our presentations:

Recording:

We use the Tellagami app. Each student takes a picture of their partner and creates their own Avatar. The idea is have our Avatar talk about our partner. Here are some examples:

Reflecting:

I like asking my students how they felt using the app as a way to improve their Spanish fluency and oral conversation skills:

• How does listening to your own voice help you improve your language skills?
• How creative can you be when the app only allows you to take pictures and record our voices?
• Would you use this app to talk about something or someone that interests you?

Thank you for reading. 

Manu