Community Connection
The unit I am planning is based on the topic of travel for beginner Spanish classes. It will help them learn the importance and relevance of travel and cultural differences. Travel is an extensive topic, so, luckily, it would be very easy to pick various community connections for this unit. There are lots of options for a connection to the community, such as creating a poll to give the school to see how many people have traveled (whatever that means to the poll-giver) and how it affected them, parents could come in and speak about the importance of travel to them (even better if that parent could speak Spanish), I could bring in or video call someone who I have traveled with or met while traveling to show personal relevance, or have the students write to a pen pal.
My personal favorite of these, for my unit, in particular, is having the students write to a pen pal. There is a website that gives a map and shows where classes are participating in this online pen pals program. My students would go to this website, or another website if there is a better one in the future, and choose a key pal from a Spanish speaking country and who is around their age. I would have my students write to their keypals throughout the whole quarter, semester, trimester, or year, depending on how the class responded to the activity. I want them to be in contact for longer than just this one unit because it takes longer to get to know someone than just one unit in school. They will have mostly free liberty to discuss what they want to with their key pal, as long as it is appropriate. I would give them a couple of specific assignments during my unit about travel, such as having them ask their key pal about their experiences with travel or where they would like to travel.
I don’t want any community connections to feel forced, so I have cautiously chosen keypals as the best fit for my students. The fact that the key pal is a real person makes this a really authentic activity and will help the students broaden their horizons. I always want my students to feel as interested in my content as they can, so if the class didn’t respond positively to this assignment/activity, then I could very easily shorten it. However, the hope is that the students enjoy getting to know someone else and learning about another culture in a way other than through a textbook.
Just from the eight days I spent in a real classroom as a teacher, I could see that students, even if they don’t mind the content, had a hard time actually feeling interested in what they were being taught. A community connection would be a really authentic way to grab the students’ attention back and continue to teach them while changing up their day a little bit. Instead of being teacher after teacher, class after class, test after test, a guest speaker, or a field trip could really reset the students’ brains and help them focus on the upcoming classes. Community connections are a really effective way to show how relevant a concept is to their own community, as well as giving the students a slight break from the usual routine.
EDIT:
Additionally, this activity may not work. It may end up taking too much of my time and it may not be worth it to do this exact keypals activity. I wouldn’t want my other lessons to suffer because I am busy getting keypals set up. In lieu of this activity, I could do a very similar one within the school. I could have the students write to another Spanish class (even if the other class isn’t the same level). The students would still get the experience of writing to another person their age who speaks Spanish and I could focus less on organizing the keypals and more on my actual lessons. However, the students wouldn’t get the experience of speaking to a native Spanish speaker or talking about a different culture.
In short, the pros of doing the original keypals idea are as follows: talking to another person their age about their culture, speaking to a native Spanish speaker would help them see verb forms before they are taught and see more vocabulary, and could help the students see that while their cultures are different, everyone is still a person and it would help bridge the culture gap. The cons of the original keypals idea are as follows: it might take too much of my time and distract me from my lessons, some students might be uncomfortable with the idea of talking to someone they don’t know, and the correspondence time might be days in between. The pros of pen pals within the school are as follows: a faster correspondence time and I would be able to focus on my lessons better. The cons are that the students wouldn’t have the exposure to a native Spanish speaker or their culture and students might be more likely to fool around or be inappropriate if they were paired with one of their friends.
Common Core Teaching Standards Alignment:
Standard # 1 Learner Development: “The teacher understands how students learn and develop, recognizing that patterns of learning and development vary individually within and across the cognitive, linguistic, social, emotional, and physical areas, and designs and implements developmentally appropriate and challenging learning experiences.”
Indicator 1c: “Collaborates with families, communities, colleagues and other professionals to promote learner growth and development.”
Whether I decide to use keypals, which I would prefer to use, or penpals within my school, this standard is applicable. In reference to keypals, the students would be talking to students their age from other communities and learning how they speak and live their lives. This aligns with the “linguistic, social, emotional, and physical” aspects of Standard 1. In reference to penpals, the students would be working with other Spanish classes and I would (potentially) be collaborating with other teachers to make sure that my students received responses from students in their classes.
Standard #10 Collaboration: “The teacher seeks appropriate leadership roles and opportunities to take responsibility for student learning, to collaborate with learners, families, colleagues, other school professionals, and community members to ensure learner growth, and to advance the profession. “
Indicator 10g: “Uses technological tools and a variety of communication strategies to build local and global learning communities that engage learners, families, and colleagues.”
Like in the first standard listed above, keypals and penpals are both applicable to this standard. Keypals is an innovative technological tool that helps build a global learning community by allowing the students to communicate with other students to learn about their cultures. Penpals is another communication strategy that helps the students build a local learning community in which students practice their Spanish skills with other students.
21st Century Learning Standards:
Category: Communication and Collaboration
Standard: Communicate Clearly
Indicator: “Communicate effectively in diverse environments (including multi-lingual)”
This standard almost speaks for itself. Whether using keypals or penpals, the students are speaking in a language other than their native language differently and more diversely than they are used to. Most people, including myself, communicate mostly through text or social media. Keypals or penpals are different from anything that I am not used to doing and have never done in my entire academic career. As the students practice more with their Spanish and hear from another Spanish speaker, their skills will get better and they will be able to communicate even more effectively than when they started.
ISTE Standards for Students:
Standard: Global Collaborator- “ Students use digital tools to broaden their perspectives and enrich their learning by collaborating with others and working effectively in teams locally and globally. “
Indicator 7a: “ Students use digital tools to connect with learners from a variety of backgrounds and cultures, engaging with them in ways that broaden mutual understanding and learning.”
The digital tool in use here is keypals. The point of this activity is to communicate with students with different backgrounds and who speak a different language, specifically Spanish, to expose my students to people who aren’t just like them. It should help them realize, as mentioned above, that even though we come from different cultures, we’re all people. It should help them realize that every culture is worth learning about and will help them learn about what is unique about their own culture, as well.