How do you prepare for the coming school year? I usually get so upset during finals review that I vow to do things differently the following year. I make lists, download activities, make all of these grandiose plans, and then come October I fall into the same old routines.
Not this year.
I'm really excited to finally implement something I envisioned two or three years ago. My classes are all level one Spanish (first exposure for most students to a World Language, other than Dora the Explorer), but they are all heterogeneous. I have special needs students in the same room as gifted students, heritage language learners (who speak a good deal of Spanish at home) and native speakers (who attended school until recently in a Spanish-speaking country), and the usual assortment of "regular" students. Since this is the first time students are really learning a World Language, I focus on skill development including memorization strategies. Some students pick up really quickly, while others need more repetition and practice. And then, of course, there's always the issues of other classes and their homework, compounded by the Common Core era. I came up with the idea to give a "test" after a quick presentation of the material, and then students would move into flexible groups depending on their performance on that test.
In most classes, that kind of differentiation would be akin to a unit pretest. For the majority of my students, though, all of the material is new at the beginning of a unit. By condensing the six week unit into two or three weeks, I can see who really needs the extra supports and who would be ready for the enrichment activities. I've done variations of this, but not as a complete curriculum. For example, this past year after a quiz I identified students who I felt needed extra practice on a given skill and "assigned" additional review work. Although I tracked who was assigned the work and who completed it, I didn't really offer extra in-class instruction and those students seldom came for after school extra help. What I'd like to do this year is after the 2-3 week presentation of the unit's main concepts, give a multiple choice version of the unit test. Students will then be assigned to enrichment or advanced groups. The enrichment groups will be for students who "passed" the different concepts, depending on what they've already mastered I plan to have a variety of activities like authentic readings (magazine articles, children's books, etc) and technology activities (podcast, websites, etc) that require students to use the concepts in a presentational mode. The advanced groups will be dependent upon what concept I'll review, some students may be in the advanced group all the time and others will just be there for grammar work. Those lessons will be more like the regular routines, direct instruction and drill and guided conversations.
I spent a lot of time reworking my first few chapters to cover all the material in 2-3 weeks. I don't plan on telling the students that there will be two parts to each chapter, I hope it just develops naturally. I'm not even sure if I'll count the first multiple choice "test" or not, since I don't want to spend a day "reviewing" and then a day "testing" for each unit BEFORE the actual test. Too much testing = not enough learning. I do have to be aware, though, that if students (and parents) think I'm going too quickly then the entire plan could fall down the drain.
I'm struggling with the day-to-day plan, though. How do I manage 125 students' individual plans? I've seen a bunch of the charts on pinterest for how teachers manage flexible groups, but they all seem geared to elementary school where there is the same group of students all day. My options seem to be five small charts (one for each class) or one large color-coded chart. The good thing is I only have two classes back-to-back twice a day so I wouldn't have to have all 125 students listed each period on the large chart. Or perhaps just have three charts, the two back-to-back groups color coded and then the singleton (that I suspect will have the largest range of student abilities). If anyone has experience with flexible grouping, I'd love to hear your ideas.
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