Lapbooking with Spanish

Lapbooking..

So, I was tired of the same old projects for my niños-yo. They're within a magnet program at our school, and a lot of their classes focus on Project-Based Learning (check out http://www.bie.org/diy for more on project-based learning) and they get bored with the same poster or tri-fold business.

Now that I'm on both sides of the desk in a classroom as both a student and teacher, I am not generally a fan of PBL. Mostly, the partners and groups bother me. I have always been the member who took on most of the burden of a group project while the other members sailed by on my coattails. Any time I survey the niños-yo after a PBL project, the main complaint is that one kid took over and the other kids did nothing. And it shows in the work I get. Even with assigned roles, this tends to happen.

My tweak to making PBL projects work is to have each person be responsible for their own project, but assigning them a collaborative group to meet, think, and discuss their ideas with. They can share their creativity and keep each other on task (even middle schoolers love to tattle.. I mean.. help their compañeros remain on task) while still turning in their own project.

No parents can complain (much) about the grade because of other team members, which makes life less stressful, too. Having a checklist (instead of a rubric, which is still subjective) helps also. I choose to make projects mostly in-class ordeals.. I have been known to give Mommy an A and Pepé an F if Mommy did it.

In these lapbooks, the students are to summarize new vocabulary and grammar skills acquired in a set group of lessons/ chapter/ unit. They are to pretend their audience is a younger student of Spanish as well as their parent and present all the information in the unit, demonstrating their understanding of the concepts. Pictures, visuals, pull-outs, fold-outs, etc. make the book more fun to build and engaging for other learners who explore a student's lapbook. Creativity is key here to make ones lapbook stand out from all the others!

Anyhow.. here's my prototype (always helps the kids have a general idea of what it is you expect from them.. visuals help). The niños-yo will design and create their own better lapbook. We talked about how Maestra spent about 4 hours while watching football one afternoon making a quick one just to show them how to do it. This is their what-do-I-do-now project to summarize the units we're in.

Front cover

Sorry for the picture quality (iPhone foto). These are stem-changing "shoe" verbs
(infinitive and definition) we learned in this unit.

Flip open the flaps to reveal conjugations.

All my writing is in Spanish. Challenging students to follow suit
with at least 90% Spanish in theirs.

I made mine out of one and a half file folders. I taped the extra half inside
so I had more space to add information and pictures.

Awesome sites for help with Lapbooking include:http://lapbooking.wordpress.com/lapbook/ (answers "What is a lapbook?")http://www.ourlapbooks.blogspot.com/ (examples)http://www.homeschoolingonashoestring.com/lapbooks.html (examples)http://www.homeschoolshare.com/lapbooking_resources.php (foldables for lapbook)http://www.eduplace.com/graphicorganizer/ (graphic organizers for lapbook)

Hope this project adds to your repertoire of things to do with your niños-yo!