Diane’s idea of combining Charlotte’s Zoo Wall with Star of the Week is wonderful and so I moved it from the comments into a post for ease of reference by those who might want to do it next ear. It really could be fun to teach. I thought of these ways to apply the idea:
We could work with the art teachers in our buildings on a year long Art/Foreign Language project, a major curricular unit in both classes.
The project could be called, in different languages depending on what class they are doing it:
The Animal Project
Le Projet des Animaux
El Proyecto de los Animales
etc.
or something like that.
The two parts of the project would be:
First semester: The Art Part
The kids make their animals to eventually at the beginning of the second semester fit on the special chair in the foreign language classroom and be the star for the week. The children make their animals from clay or papier maché, etc.
A set of guidelines could be established. For example:
1. The animal must be able to fold it’s legs and sit on the chair in the foreign language classroom (no restriction on the number of legs). It should be made to not fall off the chair easily.
2. Animal must be no taller than six feet.
3. Animal must be treated properly and stored in a safe place.
4. No cages.
5. Food is optional.
etc.
Second Semester: The Language Part
When it’s time for their animal to be moved from the art room to the foreign language classroom, one per week, the kids could sit next to their creation and answer questions for it.
We could follow the Star of the Week format to create questions. Here are some examples:
What is your name?
How old are you?
Why is your nose purple?
Do you like having paws?
Are you the only animal like this, or are there others?
What do you eat?
Where do you sleep?
Do you hibernate?
Can those wings fly?
Do you shit in the woods?
The problem of the kids’ not having enough vocabulary to answer is easily answered by the teacher instantly translating in the response. This happens in regular Star of the Week sometimes as I observed it in Sabrina’s classroom.
Part C: Assessment
1. Demonstration of Mastery/Exhibition
This year long project with the art department would allow us to assess what our students did summatively, which doesn’t happen often in CI classrooms. That alone would carry value to administrators whose buns would get in an uproar if they saw no evidence of summative assessment in our work for that year.
I suggest that we choose as a model for the summative assessment Common Principle #6 of the Coalition of Essential Schools (Ted Sizer):
“The diploma shall be awarded upon a successful demonstration of mastery – an “Exhibition” that may be jointly administered by the faculty and higher authorities.”
Having taught in a Coalition School, I have seen how the Exhibition works. It is not unlike an oral defense for an advanced degree. The student would come with her animal to a committee consisting of the art and language teachers and any parents or anyone else who wanted to attend.
The teachers would lead the (cream puff) questioning in their respective languages. Besides the animal, the child could show an artifact – the book they made that resulted from the story the class created after doing the vPQA under the guidance of the language teacher. The vPQA slide show that resulted from the project could be shown.
This Exhibition could be a sort of celebration really, where questions like these are asked in both languages:
1. (Art teacher) Can you tell us why you chose to use those materials to make your animal?
2. (Art teacher) Did you run into any difficulties along the way? If so, could you describe how you met them and what the outcome was?
3. (Art teacher) What was your favorite part of this project?
4. (Language teacher in the TL) How old is your animal?
5. (Language teacher in the TL) What are the colors you have there on your animal?
6. (Language teacher in the TL) What was your favorite animal in the class?
These questions could be given to the child in advance of the Exhibition, of course, as part of a self-reflective activity at the end of the project before the Exhibition.
Every child would get an A on their project just for doing it. I like that way of grading. The emphasis would be not at all on the grade but rather on the students’ demonstration that they can create something and then after a year talk about it in another language.
Note: CES aligns beautifully with what we do in TCI instruction. If you study all of the ten Common Principles, among them you will see these elements:
1. personalization
2. teacher-as-coach
3. demonstration of mastery
4. tone of decency and trust
Unfortunately, some years ago I made a concerted effort to contact a number of Coalition schools as well as the CES hierarchy and concluded at the end of my informal research that in the foreign language departments of CES schools nothing was being done in one single school of those I polled around the country, nothing, that reflected the Ten Common Principles. Rather, each of the foreign language teachers I spoke with gave me a report that made me quickly see that I was talking to a teacher who was preparing their students for rigorous high stake testing like the IB/SAT tests.
For a number of articles on that topic here on the PLC: https://benslavic.com/blog/category/tprs-and-the-coalition-of-essential-schools/
2. The Parade
A bunch of parents could organize a parade for the kids at the end of the year. That could be a lot of animals on display because if only even one teacher did the project that would be a parade of around 100 animals. The parade could have a grand marshal (an older beloved member of the faculty) and prizes could be awarded for the most creative animal, etc. – all those float categories they have in the big parades – and it would be something to look forward to as an end of year big celebration.