Mis vacaciones ideales

Since I just returned from vacation, I figured it would be a good time to clear out the pictures on my camera.  While doing so, I came across some photos that I took of student work at the end of the school year.  I never seem to have work available when people ask for stuff, so I figured this would be a great time to take some pictures.  (Sadly, I forgot to include a picture of the rubric with the grades.)

This is a Spanish 1 project, appropriately titled "Mis vacaciones ideales."  We had just finished part of a chapter dealing with vacation vocabulary, weather, seasons, and months.  I created this as an end-of-year project, with the writing completed in class.

Here is the assignment:

Again, I tried to combat a lot of the plagiarism issue by having kids write everything in class and hand in two rough drafts.  I ran into an issue with this as many students didn't finish typing their project up when we had our last lab day.  I had them email me whatever they finished that day and had them swear they wouldn't cheat.  I think only one person broke that promise and paid for it with a big-fat zero.

The results of project were as expected.  There were few projects that were outstanding, many in the middle, a few that were not very good at all (didn't meet the requirements, unthoughtful), and a couple that turned in nothing at all.  This is to be expected in a level one public school class where foreign language isn't a graduate requirement, isn't it?

Here were the "highs":

My litte over-achiever 

A "middle":

This is her best work all year. Grammar issues, but conveys her message.

The "lows":

I'm surprised this kid turned in something (3 days late), especially since he knew he had no chance of passing for the year.

This kid has some major learning issues and is very reserved (very tough to deal with in a foreign language class).  I was glad that he turned something in, but it was incomplete.

This was a fun project for them to work on and for me to watch them work on.  Some students went above and beyond, which always makes a teacher happy. :-)

I hope to do more fun projects this coming school year with all of my classes, but especially with my 1's because it's so important that they actually enjoy learning the Spanish so that they will be motivated to continue their study of the language.  I suppose the same can be said for the higher levels!