We all have days when we’re not feeling our best or our students seem disengaged. For those days, we need lesson ideas that create a balance between high-energy moments and quieter, more independent student work.
In episode 115 of Growing with Proficiency The Podcast, I talk about practical strategies that provide tons of comprehensible input without relying on oral facilitation. I’ll highlight some of these lesson ideas in this post, but to get all of my lesson ideas, listen to episode 15 above or here.
Not Every Day
First, I answer the question that many of you might already have for me, “Why don’t I do this all the time?” For one reason, I love having organic, spontaneous conversation with my students, whether it’s through story asking, picture talk or personalized questions and answer. Their reactions and comments often push me to give even more input!
In Episode 88, I talked more about this with guest Dr. Bill VanPatten. Listen here.
On tougher days, I still stick with activities like social emotional learning or weekend chats, even when they seem like a chore. But, I keep these really short. In episode 115, I’m sharing my larger lessons for days like these.
Structuring Your Lesson Ideas
When I begin to design a lesson, I think about the lesson’s goal and why it matters. What I have found is that whenever I ask and start planning like that, my lesson is going to be richer and stronger because I have clarity of what I want my students to do or learn.
One example I share is that, recently, I was not feeling well so I needed to design a lesson that allowed more independent work. I decided that I wanted my students to learn about Mexican Independence Day. That was my goal. So, next, I needed a resource. Remember, I don’t want to be the input.
The resource you choose has to be a reading or an audio that is highly comprehensible, using a lot of the frequent structures that students are mostly familiar with and few new words.
Pre Establish Meaning for Your Lesson Ideas
My next step is to pre establish meaning of the key words. In my above example, I was using a Panorama Cultural reading. When my students read, or listen, to this input, I want them to be able to understand a big part, if not all, of what they’re going to read. So, how can I scaffold the input more?
First, you want to check with your students, what do they already know? I like to use a word cloud with key words and their meanings. I put it on my screen and I say, “Create a table and on one column, write all the words that you know and the meaning in English. On the other column, write the words that you don’t know.”
If students already know all the words, I tell them that I want them to select at least five words and give me a synonym or an antonym of that word. After five minutes, I pair students up and have them work on moving words from one column to the other.
Establish More Meaning
I also like to do a gallery walk. I use the same words from above and add in images. By matching images and descriptions, it helps students see the words in context. Listen to my full explanation of gallery walk here.
If students are up for it, you could also throw in a quick game. I talked about translation race with Nelly Andrade in episode 113. In translation race, you display a sentence and tell the sentence to your students, but nobody can write yet. Then, they work in groups or you divide your class into two. When you say 1,2,3, go, they start translating.
I also mention in episode 115 that I like using Total Physical Response (TPR) to help students understand key words and gestures, which she learned from Diana Castro. Listen above.
Reading Activity
I use reading activities to check if students are understanding the text. Some of these activities include traffic light reading and sketch annotation.
Traffic light reading involves students highlighting words they understand, are confused about, and don’t understand, and then discussing their highlights with a partner. Each category is highlighted with a different color, and I tell them to highlight every single word.
If everything is green, they know the word, for some of your heritage or advanced students, I tell them that I still want them to highlight everything, and then circle five words that they usually don’t use in everyday talking, Then, I want them to create a summary of the text. So, I try to push those students to do more than just highlight everything green.
More Reading Activities
Sketch annotation involves students creating a sketch of the main idea of each paragraph and underlining key points, which helps in accountability and comprehension.
Graphic organizers and storytelling help students understand the text and engage with the material.
Write and Discuss
After reading, I still want to do an oral recap. It’s important to do an oral recap after the reading to summarize the text and check for comprehension. I use a write and discuss activity where students summarize the text in pairs and then share their summaries with the class. Listen to more detail about this here.
Comprehension Questions
After the write and discuss, I want to do more comprehension questions, but I’m going to do it as a gallery walk. So, instead of giving them a worksheet with the questions, which usually doesn’t work for my classes, I put the questions outside my hallway. I write them on a piece of paper and tape them in the hallway. Students walk around answering or discussing the answers in pairs. You want students to find evidence in the text to support their answers and ensure comprehension.
Additional Activities and Assessments
To reinforce comprehension, you can use activities such as putting events in order and creating an illustrated retell. For the illustrated retell activity, students create a summary of the text using illustrations and then write a retell based on those illustrations. In episode 115, I also share activities such as playing games like booklet bingo, game key, and Kahoot. However, avoid games that are not engaging for your classes.
It’s also important to do assessments like one-pagers, where students illustrate their understanding of the text. I often also do a 10-question multiple-choice quiz to check their understanding. Another quick assessment is a reflection. This is where students answer, “What did you learn today?” to help them reflect on their learning. You can have them write this in English also.
Another important thing to remember is to adjust lesson plans and activities based on the current state of your class and your energy levels. Try some of these lesson ideas and let me know which are your students’ favorites. Don’t forget to listen to the past episodes that I mentioned. You can find the link to them below.
