…Before the Big End-Of-The-Year Exams In Your World Language Classes
By Claudia Elliott and Christina Margiorie
How can we help our students be successful on all those big end-of-the-year exams? No matter what activities or strategies we use, there is one thing for sure: we need to build competency and confidence in our learners, so they feel empowered to face those challenging examinations especially if they’re taking the IB Language B or AP Language and Culture Exams.
We know that the clock is ticking. We only have a few weeks left before most of our students are taking some type of end-of-the-year exam. Some will take the AP exam. Some will take the IB exam, so what should we focus on?
First, we’ll share some ideas that we decided to ditch after a few failed attempts. Then, we’ll share ones that have proven to be effective and efficient to build competency and confidence in our students before those big end-of-the-year exams.
Let’s start with the failed attempts.
Ways To Build Competency And Confidence
Review Packets
Have you created review packets for your students to help them be ready for those end-of-the-year exams? We did and spent countless hours creating those packets. We even created Quizlet sets that accompanied the packets and passed them out to our students while also spending a considerable portion of our classes going over the content of those packets.
At first, we thought the review packets were very helpful. But the truth is that they weren’t. First, a lot of our students didn’t do the packets at all. Some students did them, but they were messy or they just copied them from the few students who really didn’t need to do them.
And the worst part was that we had to grade them.
After a few years of trying different versions of review packets, we decided to ditch them. We realized that these packages don’t help most of our students. On the contrary, students tend to feel overwhelmed by them.
So, what to do instead? We have some ideas for you.
Co-created Anchor Charts
“An anchor chart is a tool used to support instruction (i.e., “anchor” the learning for students). As you teach a lesson, you create a chart, together with your students, that captures the most important content and relevant strategies. Anchor charts build a culture of literacy in the classroom by making thinking—both the teacher’s and students’—visible”
Elizabeth Mulvahill, We Are Teachers
Anchor charts are student centered. They require active engagement from the students, and they focus on what students can do or know instead of what they can’t or don’t know.
This is how we usually structure this activity.
- On a big piece of paper create different charts by theme or topic. Write the title of the theme at the top of each paper.
- Divide my class into small groups.
- Give each group a paper.
- Put a timer of 5 to 8 minutes. During that time, each group needs to write everything they remember about that topic down.
- Then, rotate papers. Each group will receive a new paper. They will have 1 to 2 minutes to read everything and then add more information.
- Rotate until every group had the chance to review all the papers and add information.
Don’t you love it? We are taping on what students remember and not highlighting what they don’t remember. Once everyone has finished, you can see the gaps in information. You can see if they are missing something really important. That is crucial because then you know what you need to focus on those final weeks. You can fill in the blanks.
But that’s not all. Once all groups have finished the anchor charts, you can post them around your class as a gallery walk and ask students to read them one more time and complete different activities. You can even create a scavenger hunt.
Now, if you’re teaching IB, we know what you’re thinking. This can be a great opportunity to review different types of texts. You can post them around the class, then print out a variety of authentic texts and have students classify them based on the information provided in the posters. It’s great.
I love this type of review. It empowers, is engaging, and it’s student-centered.
A One-Size-Fits-All Approach
Another mistake that we made in the past is believing that all of our students benefit from the same review.
Every class that we have is made up of a unique group of students. Some are stronger than others, some are great at recalling vocabulary, and some have impressive production skills. Each class is filled with different students and our focus leading up to the exam should reflect that population.
So, how can you address them all?
Create Choice for Students
The first step is – ask them.
A simple Google Form survey or poll will give you a better idea of what students need to work on. When creating your survey, think about the exam. Offer students options to work on listening, reading comprehension, vocabulary review, writing practice, practice with writing prompts, etc.
What if you have many different areas that students want to review?
Create small groups within your class. Invite students to collaborate on the topic of their choice and share their ideas with each other. Review does NOT have to be teacher-led with you standing in front of the room and lecturing.
The collaboration between students is not only engaging but a great way for them to strengthen their skills by “teaching” their peers.
LANGUAGE BOOSTER TASKS
What types of activities can we find for our students that are interesting and relevant to their lives? We want to find a way to challenge our students to practice their skills outside of our classroom while building confidence.
Some great ideas include:
Inviting Students to listen to a Podcast– Podcasts have become so popular in the last few years. They are a great way for students to practice their listening skills related to a topic of interest.
There are many student-friendly podcasts out there. Charlas Hispanas has a great variety of topics, and the language is very comprehensible for students. Also, ¿Sabías que? is great because it’s a conversation about cultural topics as well.
Students can choose a topic that is interesting to them, or you can assign a specific topic. After listening, you can create an activity where they write a reaction, 3 things they understood, a question they have, etc. OR you can just invite them to listen to simply gain more exposure.
This is a perfect activity because it has a variety of native speakers (yay for exposure to different accents) and our students ALWAYS have their Air pods in so why not listen to something en español?
Quick write – What about if we let our students write for fun? You can have them just write for X number of minutes the first or last minutes of class. You can give them a prompt and let them write.
After writing, you can always ask, “What do you need?” Have students tell you what they need. That metacognitive piece is so important for any learner but especially for the upper levels.
Now, if you want to spend more time with the writing portion, check out this incredible blog post written by Christina Margiore about Prepping for the IB Writing Test.
What are some of your favorite activities to build confidence in your students? If you’re looking for a few ideas, grab your copy of our FREE IB Language Checklist– it’s perfect to build confidence AND competency at any time of year but especially before the IB exam!
Before we go, we want to invite you to our FB Live Session “Building Competency and Confidence before the IB Exam” next Monday, April 18 at 6 PM ET in my FB Community Growing With CI.
One Response
I am a student and I was really searching for this post as I was a bit tense about what would actually happen after exams but reading this post gives me a confidence to trust and believe in my powers.