You are on page 1of 2

What to Do How to make this happen…

Increase engagement and rigor by…


Do Now: Engage/  ID-ing/correcting the error: Have students examine a list of sentences and then ID the numbers of errors they
Challenge: Capture student attention, activate can spot in each sentence and/or correct the sentences
student prior knowledge, stimulate thinking with
rigorous questioning, raise key questions, etc.  Sequencing exercise: Have students reorder the sentences of a letter, paragraph, or reading passage in a logical
sequence
 “Cognates of the Day” Challenge: If you’re teaching vocab w/ a lot of cognates, ask students to try to define as
many of the words from the list they’ll be learning that day. This is a fun way to boost confidence and also speeds
up INM since you’ll have already gone through some of the vocab during the do now!
 Inferring in context: students infer the meaning of new vocabulary or themes covered by the day’s objective in
context
o Example 1: label school objects around the room with brightly colored signs and have students
write down their best guess at a translation of those words
o Example 2: have students infer the meaning of the word “verde” in the English sentence Ms. Glenn
is wearing a verde colored shirt today…or to make it harder…infer the meaning of a word within the
context of a complete sentence in Spanish
o Example 3: Present a series of words/pictures in English that share a common theme…similar to
SAT analogies, etc (present photos of celebrities who are related to one another, ask students to ID
what they have in common and/or what they think—based on the clues—that they’ll be learning
about that day)
 Timed drills: Have students conjugate as many verbs/translate as many sentences/complete as many
computations using numbers in Spanish, etc. as they can in X minutes for a prize.
 Rewriting sentences: Have students rewrite sentences for different subject pronouns
o Example: Tell students to rewrite sentence this sentence so it is talking about what “They” do: “Yo
como mucha comida cuando tengo hambre””Ellos comen mucha comida cuando tienen hambre”)
 Answer ?’s in Target Language: Present students with questions in the target language and have them write
responses in Spanish to these sentences. To assess comprehension, ask students to translate each of their
responses. When having students share out their do now answers, ask them the questions you had them respond
to…this scaffolds the warm-up into a form of speaking practice.
 Play games that challenge students to spiral old material
o Example 1: Hot Seat—Divide students up into two teams (usually by splitting the class), have each
side send up a representative from either half, and challenge each side to respond to the other’s
representative with a new question in Spanish from any unit that students have studied. If a side’s
representative answers the question in Spanish with an accurate sentence in Spanish, that team
earns a point. After each attempt, a new representative is sent up, and the side who racks up the
most points wins.
o Example 2: Repaso Oral (from Uncommon): Video demo available HERE
INM: SHOW, THEN TELL: First present rules or FIRST, show students what they’ll be learning by having them…
vocabulary in context, have them infer meaning,  Infer the grammatical rules: When introducing grammar concepts…show them the application of a rule in context
apply academic language, and then CFU in of statements in the target language first, then have them infer rule. You can facilitate this by having students write
student-centered ways the rule out, or by encouraging kids to discuss their theories with a “think-pair-share”
o Video example with a gustar lesson can be found here
 Complete conjugation tables: fill in part of a conjugation table and ask students to use their skills at pattern
identification to complete the rest of the table. Quickly cold call on students to help you fill in the verb chart so they
can check their answers
 Contextualize language: Introduce vocabulary in context and have them guess the meaning. You can do this by
speaking in Spanish for a brief interval of time using key vocabulary as Betsy does in this video.
 “Cognates of the Day” Challenge: If you’re teaching vocab w/ a lot of cognates, ask students to try to define as
many of the words from the list they’ll be learning that day. This is a fun way to boost confidence and also speeds
up INM.

THEN, apply academic language to the rule you’ve had them infer or tell them what the vocabulary means after they’ve
tried inferring the meaning
• See how she switches into “telling” mode starting at slide 10 of this PowerPoint

CFU in student-centered ways

You might also like