I love getting students to express themselves in the target language in fun authentic ways (don’t we all?), and this is a great way to do it. I’ve got a more formal student instruction sheet with a single-point rubric available on TPT here (French version here), and I’ve done pared down versions of it as part of a stations day or as an early finisher as well. You can also make this activity as formal or informal as you want to, which makes it ideal for “keep the lid on it” time. For Spanish 2 or Spanish 3, you could have students do this during the first week of school as a get-to-know-you activity as well! I find it’s a great way to spark conversation with kids about the things that are important to them. I’m a big fan of decorating the room at the beginning of the year with work from previous years as a way to build connections with students who know some of the kids I’ve already taught. This project also gives you some great memories of each kid, and some first-day-of-school decor for the following school year. In the field, he wrote “La vida está aqui.” On the wall he wrote, “La tarea.” (ARE THESE KIDS BRILLIANT OR WHAT?) One of my Spanish 2 students one year had a picture of an ugly wall in front of a beautiful field. Some would have sentences about sports (“Jugar al fútbol es mi vida”) or their friends (“Nosotras hablamos, comemos, y estamos felices”). ![]() My Spanish 1 students would have something as simple as “A mí me gustan papas fritas” with a corresponding French fry selfie. They’ll be left with a really cool, personal keepsake from Spanish class that is 100% them. Or, during those last weeks when the students laptops have been turned in and you need to kill time, you have them hand draw these beauties. You make them do this in Google Slides, Google Drawing or Adobe Spark and have them add in gorgeous images, fonts, or graphic design elements. The premise is pretty much what it sounds like: students have to write the story of their lives in exactly six words – no more, no less. You can see some creative examples in English and read more about it here. What is something that I am certain of It seemed simple at first glance, but grew more complicated the longer I looked at it. I stole this idea from a creative writing teacher, who informed me that the six-word memoir is a “thing” in the adolescent writing world. All Education Family Life Professions & Career Travelling The Importance and Role of Confidence in My Life 642 words 1 Page I had to ask myself an interesting question. ![]() I loved having a couple “wind them up and watch them go” activities at the ready to end the year, and one of the most fun ones for me was the six-word memoir. Once the last grades are in, however, it gets a lot more challenging to get the kids motivated to do pretty much anything, and of course, we’re totally exhausted too. ![]() In my last post, I shared my go-to end-of-the-year PBL, la fiesta perfecta. It’s that delightful time of year where we’re all just trying to make some good class memories, make sure we all survive, and not be that teacher who shows movies for two weeks. We’re approaching what my fave principal used to call “keep the lid on it” time. In Virginia, we’re still basically staring down four more weeks of school. For those of you who have finished the year already, congrats.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |