Tuesday, September 4, 2012

Literacy Survey



Students in Spanish II create a "Yo soy" poem
Spanish I students cut out their name and add 10 adjectives to describe themselves
Here is the Survey I created to give to students in my Spanish I classes at LCC. The students range from freshmen to juniors. I checked with my CT to be sure I didn't leave anything out. Although this is an assignment for class, I told her this is a great time to get to know students by asking them about their interests, strengths and weaknesses. Also I wanted to show you some of the artwork she has been having her students in Spanish I and Spanish II create to display during Back to School night and for the rest of the year! Even though the survey was not conducted digitally, I wanted to show you guys that it could be embedded in a classroom blog and students can easily fill it out from home.

In hindsight it would have been much easier to have had the students fill them out on a computer, but I feel like I would have had much less participation. The results were fairly consistent between the two periods. I kept them separate because I was thinking it would be cool if we really did revolve a unit around the topic that the class majority selected on their surveys. Period 1 has an even amount of sophomores and freshman. Whereas period 2 has almost all freshmen. Also period 1 had half of the students wanting a unit revolving around Dia de Los Muertos, and the other half about music or poetry. Period 2 had almost all students choose Dia de Los Muertos. Because of this, I feel like it would be really fun to revolve a unit around Dia de Los Muertos. We could have students make an altar for a famous person in the Spanish culture. In addition, for both classes the students evenly marked that they felt like they would need the most help with Speaking/Pronunciation and Grammar/Spelling. I was surprised that the majority did not select that they needed help with performing skits. The skits were my biggest fear in high school! My favorite question asked was about the reason why they chose to take Spanish. At La Costa, the students can choose from Art, Photo, Drama, Technology, and Languages to fulfill their elective requirement. Because of this, the students taking Spanish must really have the desire to be there. Almost all students marked that they took Spanish because they would be able to use it in the real world. Marvilloso! When I was in high school, I chose it because it seemed like the easier out of French and German. I feel like this shift is great because the younger generation is starting to understand that knowing more than one language is very beneficial and Spanish especially in Southern California. I was really grateful to have performed this survey with my classes. I feel like it told me a great deal about my students and I hope to be able to actually use the information I found out by conducting it. Many of the students marked music as an interest for them, so I would love to try to play Spanish music quietly while they are working independently. The students work hard and sit in silence for nearly two hours, a bit of music would be nice.










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