I just gave my second final exam to a mixed group (levels 2-5). I stole the idea from a traditional teacher in our building.
The concept was that the kids were returning ten years after having graduated to the Russian class reunion. They had to have 15 pictures that they would share with classmates. They also had to write up a certain length in advance so that I would know they had prepared their stories and didn’t just waltz in to make everything up the last day (though I honestly wouldn’t have cared…I wanted to give them the practice in getting ready). I did a two-stage correction for them—sat with them in class during FVR or at lunch clarifying the obvious mistakes (“did you mean you are still living there or you did live there?”) and then they e-mailed me so that I can make these into books with their pictures.
We prepared for this exam by telling stories all year and by reading all the biographies on Sarah Palin and Chuck Norris (thanks, guys!) that I could find in Russian. Those helped establish some of the phrases they would need for “studied at,” “transferred schools,” “established a company,” “became an actor/writer/governor,” and so on.
When they got to class, they drew partner names and had ten minutes to sit down and hear each other’s stories while I set up the food. Then each partner introduced the other to the class. I had limited partner introductions to five facts, but next time I’m going to put in a time limit of a minute, because kids went over in a big way. Once that was finished, the whole class walked around eating, sharing pictures and telling about their lives. One kid has 100 kids and has been living in Moscow, adopting orphans (knew that word would come in handy). A girl got a scholarship to go study languages in Nepal, and she ended up teaching children there. One of my juniors was the first woman on the moon, and that is where she met her future husband. Several people have children and famous husbands. Sad to say that one girl (a US Senator) killed Victoria Beckam, who was at the time married to one of my boys after having divorced her husband…
We have an 80-minute block period (usually we have two-hour finals, but the seniors get out early so we did this two weeks earlier than the non-seniors would have finished). All I had to do was walk around, marking grades on a rubric similar to Bryce’s. got to ooh and aah over children’s pictures and houses and travel photos. By the end, there were very good grades: two kids got C’s (progressing) in speaking. Most of them met expectations, and a number went well over. The best part was that three Russian exchange students walked in after a field trip because they didn’t want to go back to their regular classes, and it took them a while to understand what was going on. Once they did, they got into the action and started asking lots of questions. They told me that my kids spoke very well and that they thought this should be the end of every language class. One of them came up to ask me about my own ten-years-later life, and that was fun too. I am definitely going to work a visit from native speakers into this final next time.
When the bell rang, the clamor from a group of kids sharing their lives in Russian was so great that no one noticed. We’ll have to hug our seniors at graduation. I was planning to play a couple of graduation songs we’ve learned and hand out cards and do a little speech. Instead, we had to stop class, sweep up the food, and yell “Da svidanya!”