Unit Reflection

The most successful activities in the unit were by far the projects all throughout the

unit, especially those highlighted in my lesson plans and the final project where students had to

create a trailer for a movie. Students always seemed more engaged when they were leading

the classroom and their learning, getting up and out of their seats using the target language as

much as possible. At times they would bemoan and complain about having to actually do

something rather than sit in their seats all hoursomething theyre used to in many of their

other classes I fear. For me, my idea of a successful unit plan is to get the students up and

talking in the target language as much as possible. This mini projects that only take a day are a

great way to achieve that.

In addition, I think using picture associations to teach vocab is a great way to teach

vocabulary instead of the traditional cut and dry way of one-to-one translations. In the long

run, when words can have multiple meanings, the one-to-one translation can be confusing to

the student. If a word being taught has multiple meanings, you can create a picture association

for each meaning. In addition, for words that truly lack an equal translation in the students

first language, picture association can greatly help students understand the complex nature of

these words. In the future I can even look into doing video associates, with words like

sobremesa, which has no English equivalent and would be extremely hard to associate with a

picture. Sobremesa is the conversation that keeps flowing after a meal is finished. This could

be greatly associated with a video, perhaps my own personal video someday when I return to
Mexico or another country? That can definitely be arranged, as I want to develop my own

videos and video materials in my professional career.

Not all in the unit plan was a strong as I had once thought it would be, though. I think I

spent a little too much time on teaching vocabulary. I tried to mix in a variety of different ways

to explicitly teach it when I missed something of great importance. Instead of starting with

vocabulary practice every day for nearly four weeks, I could have spent a week or two tops on

introducing and practicing the words, and then implicitly teaching these words and their

meanings through meaningful contexts in the classroom. This is something I will look to further

improve on in my future of vocabulary teaching.

Also, I feel my methods of introducing some grammar concepts are a little too dry. In

this particular chapter, Im not too worried about it, as having the Librito del pretrito will

greatly help my students with ever-so-difficult preterite tense in Spanish in future classes. The

preterite tense is by far the tense with the most irregulars that simply just need to be

memorized and recalled when wanting to produce the language. The Librito is a great tool for

their future endeavors in Spanish-language learning. However, I feel I incorporate too much

drill and kill when first introducing a new grammar concept. I need to utilize some other

methods Ive used in prior classes, such as the PACE model. This is something I need to be

critical with myself when developing lesson plans in the future.

By making these changes, I believe I can definitely improve student involvement and

performance with the subject material. By focusing more on interpersonal communication

tasks and having students do their own learning through discovery, I will give them a deeper

understanding with the material, allowing them to take all the information and knowledge
abreast. This will greatly increase the odds that it stays with them for life rather than forgotten

after they unit plan, or the class, ends.

After teaching this unit plan, however, I am better able to see things from my students

perspective. After years of college-level Spanish courses and a year living abroad in Mexico, I

lost sight of many of the complexities of the language that my students know have that I cant

even really see. For instance, day 1 while pre-teaching, I just remembered when my class

brought up the fact the words me, te and nos are both IOPs and reflexive pronouns, something I

had not thought of in a long. This also made me think about DOPs and how all of these

together can be easily confused by my students. It made me more aware that sometimes I may

have to take a step back and reteach some of the material, comparing and contrasting it to

earlier knowledge so that can have that deeper understanding again. I could see some of them

get flustered when they found out me had two different uses in Spanish.

One thing that Im absolutely sure of though is how beneficial my year living in Mexico

was not only for learning and gaining the confidence in speaking Spanish, but for my growth as

a future educator of the Spanish language. Going into the year I studied abroad, I knew very

little about many things in Mexico, and Latin America for that matter, one of those being pop

culture icons through the Spanish-speaking world. With this unit being about pop culture icons,

this was a great opportunity for me to teach to my students about many of the stars that live in

the Spanish-speaking world. When I went to Mexico, I knew only a handful of artists, actors,

and those of the likes. After living there for a year, I feel almost more knowledgeable about

Hispanic culture icons than I do about English ones considering I pay very little attention to pop

icons here in the English-speaking world.

 Also, I never truly understood the importance of sports, especially soccer, for the people

of Mexico. I had just gotten to Mexico in the summer of 2012 for the arrival of the Summer

Olympics. By happenstance and through sheer determination and effort, Mexico won the gold

medal for the very first time ever in soccer. Hearing the cheers and eruptions from the people

all over was something I had never experienced here in the United States. With Mexico being

the underdog and winning their first gold medal in the sport they love, it created an

atmosphere that is still inexplicable to words to this very day. But the pride Mexico has for all

its athletes, including stars such as Mara Guadalupe Gonzlez (athletics), Germn Sanchez

(diving), Mara Espinoza (Taekwondo), Misael Rodrguez (boxing), Ismael Hernndez (modern

pentathlon), Alejandra Orozco (diving), Ada Romn and Mariana Avitia (both archery), and Luz

Acosta (weightlifting), is very apparent. And this is just one country. The pride that many of

these smaller countries have for their Olympians outrivals that of many American athletes. And

Ive only began to talk about many of the pop culture icons in the Spanish-speaking world,

leaving out some of the biggest names in acting, broadcasting, sports, directing, or the likes.

To conclude, however, all these experiences have helped me introduce my students to

some great icons who arent widely known in the English-speaking world. All of the information

I have here is simply for the current unit plan. There was so much I learned in a year abroad

that my knowledge and abilities as a teacher grew exponentially that year. My experiences

there always surface in some way, shape or form depending on what Im currently teaching in

my classes, even if it werent a Spanish class.