My school has all the foreign language teachers give the national
exams every year. I'm not exactly sure why, to be honest. The material
covered by the National Spanish Exam
is very different than what we cover in class. The grammar is right on
target with what I teach from year to year but the vocabulary is
unrelated to that which we cover in our textbook and far more
extensive. For example, I do not cover astronomical terms or celestial
bodies with my Spanish III students but that material is on the test.
Nor do I discuss world religions, philosophy, and dogma with my Spanish
IV students, but again that material is on the test.
It
becomes a challenge every year to decide what to include and what to
exclude from the list of NSE vocabulary. I want to focus on pragmatic
vocabulary to what extent I can and I certainly do not want to overwhelm
my students. So, do I include a lesson on astronomy or not? It's the
sort of question I have to repeatedly ask myself as I am lesson
planning.
For years I've had students do well on the
exam for the most part. But, as the vocabulary gets more and more
distant and my textbook series diverges from the NSE
vocabulary from year to year, my students in the upper levels score lower on the tests
than my students in the lower levels.
And in all my
seven years giving this test, I've never had a student score in the top
5% of the nation and get a gold medal . . . until this year. This year I
had, not one, but TWO students score gold medals - both of them in
Spanish III. I also had a student get a silver medal, several students
got bronze medals and there was a whole slew of honorable mentions. I'm
so proud of them I could just burst, honestly.
I think
I'll make a bulletin board to celebrate them. I think it is important
to showcase academic achievements because not everyone is a star athlete
or a brilliant singer. And schools have a way of putting the spotlight
on athletic and arts achievements while sometimes overlooking academic
ones. Probably because sports programs and band competitions are
competitive and those students come home with medals whereas the
students who are academic achievers tend not to bring home trophies and
the like. I already asked our local PTA for money for a pizza and ice
cream party for next year but a bulletin board and an awards ceremony
will be just the thing to make it a real celebration of excellence.
Hasta pronto,
--AnneK
0 comments :
Post a Comment