One way to boost engagement in our students is with quick wins. When I started teaching 18 years ago, everything was new to me; the language, the culture, the country, and the profession. I remember going to faculty meetings and hearing the principal say that he really wanted to see rigor in the class. At that time, I understood rigor as being difficult.
Back then, I was approaching the class in a very traditional way. So, I challenged my students. I centered my lessons around the textbook and wanted my students to master vocabulary words and other parts of grammar. Well, my students were challenged but also frustrated.
I started to notice behavior issues, student frustration, and heads being put down. Finally, one of the other teachers I worked with told me about quick wins. She said to start with something that everybody can do. Today, I’m sharing five quick wins to help you make your students feel successful. To learn more about quick wins, click above ⬆️ to hear me describe quick wins in more detail.
Quick Wins #1
The first quick win I want to share are Do Nows. It’s an activity that I do at the very beginning of the class. I want to start the class with my students feeling, “Oh, I can do this” and “Oh, my gosh, look at how much I understand.” My Do Nows are always related to the story that I’m telling the class, the article that we’re reading, the book that we’re reading, or the short clip that we just watched.
Also, I try to bring, for example, sentences with images where they can match the sentence with an image. I’m very intentional on the language of the sentences that I want to use, the structure that we have used the most and that we have reused and recycled the most because I know that with those sentences and structures is where my students are going to feel the most successful. And, most of the structures are on the walls. This is a quick activity that is going to let us start the class on a positive note.
For more detail on my Do Nows, listen to episode 7 of the podcast above.
Quick Wins #2
The second activity is providing choices to show what they understand. If you say show me what you understand, then it can be anything that they understand. It also gives them different choices to show you that they can understand and use Spanish. They can use Spanglish, they can use English, or they can illustrate it.
My students feel validated. I’m also supporting them in their understanding of the language. In episode 7 of the podcast, I share a story about one of my students and the huge progress they made with this quick win.
Quick Wins #3
The third quick win is Exit Tickets. We want to check at the end of the class if they got it or didn’t. I use something that I can really look at quickly and grade fast. I don’t do these every day, but probably every other day. And, I tell my class that we’re gonna do an exit ticket at the end. I do it in a way that my students are going to be extremely successful.
I don’t use a new word that I just introduced that day. Instead, I’m using the ones that we use the most and that my students have acquired the most because I want them to see how much they can understand. I do five sentences, true or false, translate, or a listen and draw, just something quick that they can do. I do that, and at the end of the five minutes, they give it to me and I look at them.
Quick Wins #4
In the past, when I asked my students to produce output, I wanted them to produce output from the head. Sometimes I do that. But when it’s something new, when it’s something that we’re trying in the class, or a specific activity, I give them a ton of scaffolds and sentence starters. They can choose whatever is their preference for an answer.
I give them the language so they can use it. When they use the language that you’re giving them, they feel successful, They also feel excited that they can use the language to communicate their ideas. That’s a huge, quick win for our learners!
Quick Wins #5
This quick win is just very simple. It’s giving a quiz to your class, the same quiz many, many times throughout the period of your unit. I select 10 structures or 10 key words from a story, and I put them in quizzes. In episode 7, I talk about the software I use.
I have my students take a quiz at the very beginning, and they’re going to do terrible. I write the average but don’t give them the grades. At the end of the class, I do it again. And, it’s really quick, and I always give the average. Then, they start asking, “So, what is the course average?”, and I write it on the board. They see how they’re progressing and how they’re making progress.
Sometimes it’s hard for our students to see progress because they’re getting a lot of input and it’s so messy putting their words together. So, when we build in these types of activities into our lessons, our students get excited. I also use lyrics and music for quick wins. If you haven’t listened to episode 6 of Growing with Proficiency, The Podcast, listen to it HERE or HERE. Bertha Delgadillo shares some great activities that involve music that you can use in your World Language classes. I hope this gave you ideas and inspiration to try quick wins to help boost engagement of your students.
I want to also share with you a free resource that I created, I think two years ago. It’s great for this time of year, and a lot of teachers who have used it have told me that it really, really works with their classes. It’s a one page article about how the Hispanic community celebrates Thanksgiving in the United States. If you’d like to grab it, click here.
3 Responses
Hello Claudia
My name is…Guess what?
Claudia😉… quick win.
I love the details you speak in your blog. Very personable still productive. All said is great, results from the start.
Thanks for all you do…