TAKING AN INTEGRATED SKILLS APPROACH
This was a lesson designed for Elementary learners of Spanish and the aims were as follows:
1. To introduce students to some basic ingredients common in Spanish cooking
2. To provide the students an opportunity to practise the comparative structure in Spanish
3. To familiarise the students with some typical Catalan dishes
4. To encourage the students to work on their fluency by presenting their findings in front of their peers
The reason why we chose to focus on each of these areas was because we wanted to give them an integrated skills lesson. Indeed one of the positive aspects was that we focused on different skills, such as grammar, pronounciation, vocabulary, while we also integrated some cultural aspects into the lesson plan.
CONTEXTUALISATION
Along similar lines, we had aimed to present and teach the target language in as authentic a context as possible and we believe that we have been successful in this regard. As evidenced by the video below, we provided the students with a scenario in which they were asked to position themselves so that they could see the meaningfulness of the task:
TIME MANAGEMENT AND PLANNING
However, the downside to the above choice was that, given that we had only been allocated 20 minutes for this demo lesson, we eventually weren't able to spend as long as we would have liked to spend on each stage - particularly on the feedback stage - as we ran out of time. This can be illustrated by the video clip below, where we are seen having to cut the task short, with some students being given less time to present their findings than the rest. This was unfortunate and arguably unfair on the latter. In hindsight, we could have instructed the students to only look for a set number of ingredients, e.g. 4 or 5, as opposed to leaving it open-ended.
STRUCTURE FOR MEANINGFUL USE OF TARGET LANGUAGE
On the flipside, we chose to present some of the target language (see clip below) which was to be used from the start and, in anticipation of potential pronunciation issues, we also chose to drill it. The fact that we provided a certain degree of structure for the presentations bit enabled us to ultimately save time during that last stage of the lesson, where the students were presenting their findings. It was also brilliant to see that they were able to activate the target language in a meaningful context, so, all in all, this is an aspect that we are happy with.
INSTRUCTION-GIVING
Another factor that led to us running out of time was that our instructions in the beginning were not as clear as they should have been. As a result, the students embarked on the task without being 100% certain on what was expected of them and we had to provide renewed instructions almost halfway through. In retrospect, it would have been better if we had not rushed through the instructions part in the beginning (although, with that being said, this is bound to happen in an observed lesson due to nervouness!).
MEANINGFUL USE OF TECHNOLOGY
In line with the spirit of proPIC, we decided to make use of technology for the purpose of (a) sharing the task poster (via Slack), (b) providing an authentic context (as mentioned above), and (c) providing a certain degree of flexibility and freedom in decision-making. That is, students were encouraged to choose their own recipe (from a set of options), recipes, ingredients and supermarkets. The reason why we opted for this approach was because we wanted the students to own the final product, i.e. their mini-presentations. Watching the lesson recording, we were very pleased to see that the students immediately embarked on the task and they seemed to be very focused and engrossed until they were notified that their time was up.
This can partly be attributed to the element of competition that we incorporated into the activity: students were given the mission to find the supermarket that would enable them to make the recipe at the most affordable price!
AIMS AND CONTENT INCONGRUENCY (CATALAN VS SPANISH)
Part of the fedback that we got from our peers immediately after the lesson related to our choice of Catalan dishes even though this was a Spanish language lesson. Some of them rightly pointed out that finding recipes for those dishes in Spanish online involved an extra step of translating them from Catalan, which delayed them (and perhaps frustrated them, too?!). We thought this was a very valid point. However, this was because we had originally planned to give a Catalan lesson. We later did away with this plan because none of the supermarkets offered their food items in Catalan and hence that would have made the search process impossible for the students. We acknowledge however that we perhaps should have also changed the dishes to some Spanish ones instead. That was an oversight on our part.
ALL IN ALL...
This was a fantastic learning opportunity for us individually but also as a group. Elisa has done a similar video-based reflection before, however, Lydia and Julia had not had a similar opportunity in the past and therefore found it extremely helpful. Finally, the immediate feedback that we received from both Richard & Tobias and our peers was very insightful and offered us a different perspective.
Elisa, Julia & Lydia
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