Spicy Spanish

Spicing Up Spanish Class by Cawood Cornelius and Terry Vest

This article emphasizes the importance of spicing things up in a common assignment. This assignment was to give a report on a Spanish speaking country in order to engage students learning Spanish. They were able to make the students’ learning experience a little more interesting by involving technology in their project. For example, students were to gather information from books and online resources. What I liked about this assignment was that students were able to sign up to get a secure e-mail address in which they were able to communicate with each other to provide details about their country. They also had the opportunity to email their country’s embassy to receive even more information pretty much instantly. As we saw in the article we read as a class, timing is very important for students. This engaging assignment allowed for students to gather information and also make a presentation on it. Presenting to the class and to their teacher was for their improvement in speaking Spanish and well as learning about the different countries.

I this is a perfect example of what I would do in my class. I don’t know if I would change anything about the assignment. The teachers showed how well prepared they were with technology for the students, in order for their learning experience to be a great one. I really liked how there was a cart of computers that were taken into the classroom for the students to use. I think we need to give students the opportunity to use computers in class just in case they don’t have access at home. I think that in addition to this assignment I would allow some of their work to go up on the walls, like posters, etc. I know that this is common for elementary school but I think this would also be good for students in high school since it would give them pride of their work and seeing constant information may actually stay in their minds for a good time. This technology would be useful in order to gather information as well as to learn and practice a new language.