My first “top knot”! En español.

Trying out a new method after a teacher workshop.

Top knot. You may be thinking, “what?” In the GMWP we often referred to our new how to ideas as “top knots” and so here is my “top knot” on an attempt for student created vocabulary lists. Thanks Holli Reckin for the great analogy. Teachers are always looking for new ideas and new tricks to use in the classroom. How we find them gets sticky. There are so many websites and resources to waddle through. I use the verb waddle because we want to learn new things in a timely manner, but there is always a stack to the left, to the right, in front, and behind waiting for us to bump into it. So when we referred to a “top knot,” I envisioned a place or source that gives you a quick glimpse at something that works along with a quick how I pulled that off explanation. Yes, there will be changes and adjustments. . . but we are teachers, there is always change, and there is always adjustment.

My new idea stemmed from my teacher workshop question, “How do you build student confidence in using their words to write?” As mentioned in my previous post, Finding The Big Picture to Make A Mark on Their World, I have decided to let the students take some control over their language learning. They will be partly responsible in creating the classroom vocabulary list. In a perfect world, this would enable them to invest more interest in what they are learning along with excitement to learn more words. Right? Well, I am a language nerd, so as a student, I would have been interested and excited. Unsure whether all or even some of my students share the same outlook, I am going to take a leap and put my first foot forward with this new approach. excited.

• Step 1. Explain to students that they have control in what we are learning.

Blank stares of really? looked back at me. Yes, really. I began to see the wheels turning. Yes! I have some interest. Maybe a little skepticism from some. Really, there is no way we are helping to make the vocabulary list. Yes, you really are! Well, for this unit we will try it out and hopefully we don’t fall flat on our faces.

• Step 2. Have students establish their comfort zone. (Student Sample — Page 1)

I had students working in small groups of 3–4 start creating a Google doc of the nouns, verbs and adjectives they felt comfortable with. They listed them in Spanish. It was important to remind them several times that the unit theme was Who am I?

• Step 3. Have students move into the learning zone. (Student Sample — Page 2)

Students then worked in the same groups to come up with a list of words that they did not know but wanted to. This was the fun part. I heard some students listing off words while other students said, no we know those words and were able to recite the Spanish for them. (ooooooo, recycling past vocabulary was taking place. Score!) Other students were coming up with out of the box, yet very relatable and fitting words for the unit. Who am I? Grouchy, concealer, freckles, hoodie, armpit, dive, dream, cheer, text, leggings. It will be fun to look back at the vocabulary time capsule in a few years to recall fashion and culture of 2016. As I compiled this time capsule of vocabulary for them, I thought to myself, I should really have them do this! So, next unit. . . again, always room for change.

• Step 4. There are still more words out there.

I told students a secret, shhhhhh, don’t tell anyone, I told them. (There is no such thing as a secret when you say that.) “There are a lot more words out there and one way to learn them is through reading and listening.” Blank stares. OK, let’s try it out. I played a short video of a very young boy from Guatemala talking about what he likes to do on a normal day. My students only had to list words that they heard frequently or words that they were curious about. Bam! More vocabulary learning. They liked the idea of having an individualized list of words.

• Step 5. Morphology: the study of the forms of words.

Yes, that is step 5, the study of forms of words. I looked through all of the vocabulary words that they had come up with and saw a pattern in some of the words. There were quite a few adjectives that stemmed from verbs on the same list. Frustar — Frustrado. So I added a morphology section to the vocabulary list. A place to teach a side grammar lesson that many times would have been left at the wayside. I did see some aha moments across the faces of more than the students who get a grammar sparkle in their eye. I think I reached even more than the handful of language nerds (like myself) that get excited about grammar.

• Step 6. Put it all together. Yikes! (Final List)

Are there changes I would make, of course! One Google doc per class would have been more efficient than 8 per class. I do have 5 classes and so sorting through 40 Google docs was a little tedious. I was able to sort the words they had created into 6 headings. They had 4 to start with, so that wasn’t bad, I just had to divide up a few.

The following class, I wanted to use some of the words from their list, but did not have the master list ready quite yet, so I just printed off 10 copies of the adjective section to use in all my classes. We played the game Guess Who and students were actually using the new words! Amongst the words of comfort they were speaking, I frequently heard them say new words — braces, contacts, pale. Then I heard, I wish we had mustache on our list. So, no, the work is not done, we will have to continue learning with their words. My first top knot may need bobby pins or to be repositioned, but as I saw a few students wanting to sneak the adjective lists away in their binders, I don’t think we fell flat on our faces.