A little background and my first forays into UDL
When I came to the career of teaching, it was by chance. I grew up in Dalton, MA, went to school in Manchester, NH, and was about to move to San Antonio, TX upon graduating college for my next big adventure. I had met my future husband mere weeks before I was moving to Texas to volunteer for a year in a boys' group home as a residential counselor. I had a degree in psychology, a certificate (like a minor) in Spanish and the desire to help people. I had a vague idea of staying in San Antonio when I finished my year of service, not having counted on falling for a young, bald, middle school teacher in Dalton before I even finished my first month in Texas. My very sophisticated life plan (stay in San Antonio) already had a monkey wrench thrown in it.
My mother started sending me job advertisements when it became clear that I was moving home to marry the bald man and would need to revise my life plans. One of the ads she sent me was for a teaching position in the high school I had attended. I had, at times, imagined myself teaching psychology, always at the university level, always "some day" and never with any actual clearly defined goal to get there. However, the job was teaching Spanish and Latin, to high schoolers who were barely younger than I. To make it more interesting, my only background in Latin were the classes I had taken while in high school. Game. On.
I ended up getting the job, probably through some kind of clerical error, and had to figure out what the heck I was doing pretty quickly. I was teaching Spanish II, Spanish III, and Latin I. I had a couple of textbooks (no teacher editions, however) and one month from moving home from Texas til classes started. A year working with high school aged students (well, high school boys, anyway) in Texas at least had prepared me for the age group I was about to be facing. The rest of it I was going to figure out as I went along.
I kind of feel like that has been what I have been doing ever since. I'm in my 14th year of teaching and I have since gone back and received my Masters in Education, so at least I'm not making everything up as I go along, but some days it has certainly felt like it. I've had decent success; I hold students to high expectations and have found that students will rise to them. My upper level students, upon entering college, have reported testing out of the lower levels of Spanish, so clearly something is sticking with them. I don't have behavior problems in my class. Students seem engaged on a daily basis. But.
But not all students.
A couple of things happened in the last couple of years that really started to make me take a look at my teaching practice. (I call it a practice because it continuously evolves and grows). The first thing is that they eliminated regular Spanish III and we only have Honors Spanish III. So I have students in that class that "belong" in either a regular or an honors class, and I have to do right by all of them. I all of a sudden had a lot more variability (ok, ok, after learning about variability, I realize I probably ALWAYS had a lot of it in my class, but it wasn't so obvious) in the kinds of learners in front of me, but had to push the boundaries because it is an honors level class. I really started to see students who were struggling and what I was doing wasn't working for everyone. The second thing that happened was that we got a new principal who encourages educators to take risks in the effort to improve our practice. I clearly had a problem, and I had the permission to seek out alternative solutions.
In the middle of last year, I threw out my Spanish III curriculum and I feel like I have been winging it ever since. I bought a book about gangs and started reading with my students more. They seem much more interested in the content and were naturally picking up on grammar concepts that I had had to explicitly teach before. Wow, this is cool! But.
But I still wasn't reaching all students.
So I flipped the classroom when teaching grammar. I started making videos for homework so that when students were in the class with me, I could help them practice the new skill, usually (almost always!) via a worksheet. I was definitely reaching more students this way. Yay!
Fast forward to May and a new initiative my district is starting. The UDL thing (always pronounced "oodle" in my head when I read it) that people were getting so excited about. Dr. Kristan Rodriguez was coming to present what UDL (Universal Design for Learning) was to us. I was excited to go, enjoyed my day with Kristan, and was super frustrated when I went home. I understood a lot, but I kept wanting to know HOW?? How do I implement this? You wet my appetite, now give me the exact rules that I need to follow. What is the formula? How do I make this work in a Spanish classroom? I liked the idea of UDL, but wasn't clear on how to implement it, and uncertain whether it would be another district initiative that came and went.
I started reading more about UDL, I started following Kristan and her colleague, Katie Novak, on Twitter, I started reading articles they posted on the topic. I joined two different book groups on UDL and finally started seeing where I needed a lot of work - student choice being a very obvious place to begin. Ok, ok, I can do that! I also started to add student reflections this year - making students reflect on their learning process.
This whole school year, UDL has been in the back of my mind when crafting new lessons. I have been trying to be realistic and not attempt to change everything at once. I have been primarily focusing on Spanish III since that curriculum is already in flux the most. And this winter I also started taking a graduate class with Katie Novak. At this point, I've bought in. I've seen the small UDL (oodle!) changes that I've made already bear fruit. I've seen student engagement (actual engagement, not just students doing what I tell them to do) increase.
So last week I made a lesson, with the goal of it being to review how to form the preterit tense in Spanish, and a focus on -ir verbs that make a specific change in the preterit tense. I flipped the classroom and had students watch a video I made reminding them of the info they learned previously on the verb tense and adding the new information and specific vocabulary we would be using in class. Then I created a "menu" to guide student practice. I got the idea during our first class session with Katie Novak when she showed us a video on using menus as an option to give students more choice. Students could sit where they wanted and work with whomever they wanted, provided they were on task. On task looked different depending on what they chose. Here is what the menu looked like:
My mother started sending me job advertisements when it became clear that I was moving home to marry the bald man and would need to revise my life plans. One of the ads she sent me was for a teaching position in the high school I had attended. I had, at times, imagined myself teaching psychology, always at the university level, always "some day" and never with any actual clearly defined goal to get there. However, the job was teaching Spanish and Latin, to high schoolers who were barely younger than I. To make it more interesting, my only background in Latin were the classes I had taken while in high school. Game. On.
I ended up getting the job, probably through some kind of clerical error, and had to figure out what the heck I was doing pretty quickly. I was teaching Spanish II, Spanish III, and Latin I. I had a couple of textbooks (no teacher editions, however) and one month from moving home from Texas til classes started. A year working with high school aged students (well, high school boys, anyway) in Texas at least had prepared me for the age group I was about to be facing. The rest of it I was going to figure out as I went along.
I kind of feel like that has been what I have been doing ever since. I'm in my 14th year of teaching and I have since gone back and received my Masters in Education, so at least I'm not making everything up as I go along, but some days it has certainly felt like it. I've had decent success; I hold students to high expectations and have found that students will rise to them. My upper level students, upon entering college, have reported testing out of the lower levels of Spanish, so clearly something is sticking with them. I don't have behavior problems in my class. Students seem engaged on a daily basis. But.
But not all students.
A couple of things happened in the last couple of years that really started to make me take a look at my teaching practice. (I call it a practice because it continuously evolves and grows). The first thing is that they eliminated regular Spanish III and we only have Honors Spanish III. So I have students in that class that "belong" in either a regular or an honors class, and I have to do right by all of them. I all of a sudden had a lot more variability (ok, ok, after learning about variability, I realize I probably ALWAYS had a lot of it in my class, but it wasn't so obvious) in the kinds of learners in front of me, but had to push the boundaries because it is an honors level class. I really started to see students who were struggling and what I was doing wasn't working for everyone. The second thing that happened was that we got a new principal who encourages educators to take risks in the effort to improve our practice. I clearly had a problem, and I had the permission to seek out alternative solutions.
In the middle of last year, I threw out my Spanish III curriculum and I feel like I have been winging it ever since. I bought a book about gangs and started reading with my students more. They seem much more interested in the content and were naturally picking up on grammar concepts that I had had to explicitly teach before. Wow, this is cool! But.
But I still wasn't reaching all students.
So I flipped the classroom when teaching grammar. I started making videos for homework so that when students were in the class with me, I could help them practice the new skill, usually (almost always!) via a worksheet. I was definitely reaching more students this way. Yay!
Fast forward to May and a new initiative my district is starting. The UDL thing (always pronounced "oodle" in my head when I read it) that people were getting so excited about. Dr. Kristan Rodriguez was coming to present what UDL (Universal Design for Learning) was to us. I was excited to go, enjoyed my day with Kristan, and was super frustrated when I went home. I understood a lot, but I kept wanting to know HOW?? How do I implement this? You wet my appetite, now give me the exact rules that I need to follow. What is the formula? How do I make this work in a Spanish classroom? I liked the idea of UDL, but wasn't clear on how to implement it, and uncertain whether it would be another district initiative that came and went.
I started reading more about UDL, I started following Kristan and her colleague, Katie Novak, on Twitter, I started reading articles they posted on the topic. I joined two different book groups on UDL and finally started seeing where I needed a lot of work - student choice being a very obvious place to begin. Ok, ok, I can do that! I also started to add student reflections this year - making students reflect on their learning process.
This whole school year, UDL has been in the back of my mind when crafting new lessons. I have been trying to be realistic and not attempt to change everything at once. I have been primarily focusing on Spanish III since that curriculum is already in flux the most. And this winter I also started taking a graduate class with Katie Novak. At this point, I've bought in. I've seen the small UDL (oodle!) changes that I've made already bear fruit. I've seen student engagement (actual engagement, not just students doing what I tell them to do) increase.
So last week I made a lesson, with the goal of it being to review how to form the preterit tense in Spanish, and a focus on -ir verbs that make a specific change in the preterit tense. I flipped the classroom and had students watch a video I made reminding them of the info they learned previously on the verb tense and adding the new information and specific vocabulary we would be using in class. Then I created a "menu" to guide student practice. I got the idea during our first class session with Katie Novak when she showed us a video on using menus as an option to give students more choice. Students could sit where they wanted and work with whomever they wanted, provided they were on task. On task looked different depending on what they chose. Here is what the menu looked like:
Menu to practice
Preterit
Appetizer (pick 2…one from each category)
1.
Watch a video:
Songs of preterit
or
2.
Using the words from the notes
Make a quizlet
Use A+ (app) to work on spelling
Create flashcards
Your
own preferred method for learning vocab
3.
Review your notes on the preterit from google
classroom
Main Course – choose a method of practicing that works best
FOR YOU. When you think you are done,
come show me your work. I will let you
know if you need to keep working, perhaps on another main course choice, or if
you can go on to dessert.
Worksheet #1
|
Illustrate the
conjugation of 10 verbs (reg and flip flops)
|
Worksheet #2
|
Write a paragraph with 20
verbs
|
verb chart
|
create a lesson teaching how
to conjugate the verbs
|
Other – run it by Ms.
Shannon first
|
white board practice
|
Create your own practice
sheet using the verbs
|
Dessert:
Online practice found on Google Classroom
Students worked on this menu for a few days (we have 55 minute blocks and begin each class with "charla" - which simply means chatting in Spanish). I was able to move around and help students who were struggling and could benefit from one-on-one time with me. I was able to redirect students who maybe didn't make a good choice for the main course (which was pretty evident based on how engaged they were). When students reached the dessert part of the menu, I ended up adding the option of having them also circulate to help their peers who were still practicing the new skill. I had the list of vocabulary at my desk so students could make sure their list was complete, I also had the answers to the worksheets and verb charts.
Students kept on asking when the assignments were due. It kind of blew their minds when I said it wasn't, and also, hey by the way, the answers are right here, you should take a picture to make sure you are doing it correctly. All of a sudden, students weren't working to complete an assignment and get homework points. They were working on it until they felt comfortable and confident with the skill so that they could apply it and recognize it in writing and reading. They were working so that they could learn. This is a huge mental shift, for them and for me, that I am so excited by. I saw true engagement, true learning, and I was able to spend more time with my struggling learners. We are on vacation this week - I am looking forward to getting back into the classroom with my students to find out what they thought about this new way of teaching grammar. I will let their reflections inform my teaching for the next grammar concept we tackle. I'm hoping they enjoyed learning this way as much as I enjoyed the process! Time will tell. Nah. They will tell me!
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