I
chose this topic for my unit plan because I absolutely love it!! I saw this idea in a lesson plan when I was
looking around for Interactivity 3, and it grabbed me instantly. I’m a firm believer in achieving fluency
through real life conversations and immersion type settings. Spanish classrooms can employ an immersion
type environment, where the teacher only speaks Spanish and requests the same
of the students, but having a Spanish-speaking pen pal is a great way to get
students to practice their conversational skills in a way that is engaging and
motivating to them.
Matching up students to pen pals will encourage
them to express themselves in Spanish and to stretch their brains to carry on a
conversation in Spanish. By having
students write down new vocabulary words and verbs and later teach them to
their classmates, students are organically increasing their vocabulary and
learning form their classmates’ experiences as well. My essential questions and unit goals all
revolve around students’ conversational fluency and how to make the most of
this pen pal experience. I want students
to become cognizant of how they learn and improve their Spanish skills. I provided goals to help them define new
material they’re learning and essential questions to help them think about
their goals and how to effectively reach them.
I kept the resources fairly simple: I provided a Spanish translation site, a
conjugating source, and a forum to ask native Spanish speakers their questions.
