Blended Update

Last week in my Honors Spanish 3 class, we tried blending for the first time this year. On that Monday, the students were allowed to “blend” for the last 30 minutes of class. The students were gearing up for a unit test and a grammar quiz and as a result had lots to do. In order to move, the students have to first look up their current grade on Infinite Campus. Then, they have to fill out this planning form.

After that, I double checked that each student had correctly filled out the form and made sure everyone was wearing their blended moving lanyard. Then the students were allowed to move and work on the materials that they chose.

On Monday, 23 of 24 students left the room. They were GIDDY as they left. The vast majority of them chose to move to the North Cafeteria. Lots of those students indicated on their form that they would work with a few other students from the class. The one student who stayed behind worked on her own, but asked me questions as she went. I was nervous as all get out and didn’t quite know what to do with myself. It was an odd feeling to be “in class”, but not with my students.

The following class, students had closer to an hour to blend. This time, more students chose to go to the library than the North Cafeteria, six students stayed in the room, and many students opted to work individually. The students who stayed in the room were able to get individual attention from me when they had questions. Several students worked on a pre-writing and pre-speaking test elsewhere and then emailed me a copy to proof and give them feedback. I started to see some real potential in the blended model.

This week we won’t blend as they took a unit test on Tuesday and will start a new unit on Thursday. I’m currently working on plans for next week and hope to find/create activities that will facilitate collaborative work between the students as an effective way to develop their skills with the new vocabulary. I don’t always want the students to work on Spanish by themselves as it doesn’t address the need for oral communication that comes along with the course (and just learning to speak Spanish in general).

With our alternating block schedule, it’s hard for me to definitively say exactly how many times per week or on a specific prescribed day (like the first day of the week) we will blend. I want the blended time to only occur when and where it makes sense to the lessons, really in a more organic nature depending on the material we’re learning at that given time. My goal right now is to plan far enough ahead so that the students can take greater ownership of their workload and time management.     

That’s it from the wonderful world of Honors Spanish 3 Blended!