Soy yo: Novice Story Framework, Socratic Seminar, & Writing Prompt
I recently wrapped up @karacjacobs “Soy yo” unit. (Side note: It’s amazing!) And at the last minute threw in this quick activity.
I wanted to get students writing more but my Spanish 1 kiddos aren’t ready to create something this complex from scratch as fast as I wanted them to so I created this framework for them based on the story from Kara’s unit.
I showed them my example, explained the activity, then set them loose to create their own. Students shared their stories in groups of 3. When they were done, I shared the second “example” I had which is about Víctor from Señor Wooly’s, “Guapo”.
We transitioned into a modified Socratic seminar in which I paired them up, showed this slide show, gave them 30-45 seconds to talk with a partner before sharing as a class. This all wrapped up with a surprise writing activity inspired by Justin @SpanishPlans post about essays in Spanish. I used the three prompts at the end of the slide show.
Final Thoughts & Reflections:
1. I sprung the writing on them as a surprise because it was a last minute addition on my part. I’m glad I did because I got to see what students could really do!
2. I need to add more structure to the Socratic seminar portion and may add a Flipgrid component to be able to hear ALL student voices and provide feedback.
3. I didn’t use all of Kara’s amazing unit as I was a bit short on time & will expand the unit next time.
4. I LOVED Justin’s rubric (which I modified a bit) and want to make & use more as formative assessment.
5. The story framework needs a bit more clarity for students as some still had questions on what to do. I’d like to adapt it to be more open to use with future structures/characters/as sub plans.
Awesome! How did their writing turn out?
Honestly, a bit all over the place as far as ability. It was really amazing to see what some of them could do & a bit disheartening to see how little some of them wrote. It’s good information to have though! Plan to do more of this the rest of this year and implement a more regular schedule of it next year when I have them all again in level 2. Thanks so much for the inspiration!
I gave it as a formal assessment, so my students had the motivation to do their best. But it’s a good way to see what their fluency looks like.