Me & My Community - Teaching Places in the City

The city unit has always been one of my favorite units to teach. See my posts here about using beebots and coding as a way to teach third graders how to give directions. However, in middle school I have had adapt how and what I teach for this unit. 

Some considerations:

This unit falls in 8th grade and programming beebots is a little babyish for them. They would still probably like it and I think I will add it back if I can, BUT the emphasis cannot be on giving directions. I will save that for the travel unit where it makes more sense AND we can spiral back to places in the city vocabulary.

I teach in an IB school which means I need incorporate certain things. For this unit we focus on sustainability and connections. They did background reading in English about the UN's Sustainability Goal 11 and then learned key terms in Spanish such as espacios verdes, uso mixto, transporte público, el reciclaje, paneles solares, sostenible, etc. 

There are multiple parts to their summative assessment - first they listen to a conversation about where someone lives and answer questions - interpretive listening. Then they write a description of their own neighborhood - presentational writing, and finally they work with a partner to plan a sustainable community  - interpersonal speaking - also with a written description - more presentational writing (although next year I think I will make this a recorded speaking assessment because they struggled with this kind of task on the STAMP test.) 

Unit focus:

sustainability

places in the city

the verb to go

frequency words

Review of Tiene, Hay, and Es

description words     

What we did in class:

We started out with this Basho and Friends video and students filled in a picture dictionary. They also took notes on the verb IR and we used this song from Real Language Right Away to reinforce the structure "Voy a..."

We played ¿A dónde va Juan? This game is one of my favorite ways to practice vocabulary. I picked a place in the city where Juan (our class mascot) was going and students had to guess using a complete sentence. This was also a way to practice the sentence frame "va a..." Later they played with a partner. You can also mix it up and guess where I'm going, where we're going, etc. to get in different verb forms. We also played scattergories where we spun a wheel and students had to list places in town that started with that letter. 

Students completed two different class surveys. One was a find someone who page where they asked if classmates went to different places. In the next one they picked one place and asked classmates if they went there and how often.    

 

Once we learned some description words, we practiced describing our city. As a scaffold, I gave them a list of statements that may or may not describe Lexington, where we live. They had to discuss in Spanish if they agreed or disagreed with each statement. Then they chose several to write a description of our city. In a later class they had five videos featuring cities from around the Spanish speaking world. They had similar statements they had to check off as true or not for each video. Then they picked a city and wrote a description of that city. They were also writing with less and less scaffolding each day as a bellringer. 

I also realized that if I wanted them to design a neighborhood with a partner and stay in the target language then I needed to give them the vocabulary and time to practice at doing just that. I had students choose what they thought were the five most important places in a community. Then they had to justify their reasons using the vocabulary sheet and come to an agreement with their partner. 

These statements would also come up in their written descriptions as well. Finally when students were ready, I modeled how to fill out the graphic organizer for their group project. Then I gave them paper, art supplies and let them loose. They had three days to plan, draw, and finish their community maps. I gave them an additional day to write their descriptions. Next year, I will either have them do a gallery walk and present their communities OR have them record themselves speaking since that is one area they struggle with.

Check out my next post for pics of their finished projects! 

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