Month/Year of Graduation

5-2019

Degree Name

Bachelor of Science (B.S.)

Department

Education

First Advisor

Saundra Shillingstad

Abstract

This capstone project looks at a specific unit taught in a Spanish classroom through the use of comprehensible input and the types of activities that were used in order to support comprehensible input in the classroom. It provides a collection of comprehensible input activities that may be used in the foreign language classroom along with providing rationale for the activities, research-supported assessment and instructional strategies, and examples of differentiation and assessment for the unit. A variety of activities were used including class story creation, running dictation, and nonverbal representation. Ways of assessment also varied throughout the unit, incorporating both formative and summative assessments. This unit was conducted during a student teaching experience at the middle-school level. The participants were seventh and eighth grade students in a first-level Spanish classroom.

One assessment strategy that was used in order to track progress was timed writes. Students were asked to write for six minutes about a specific topic at the beginning and end of the unit. Through a comparison of the pre and post writes, it was found that a majority of the students were able to write more words in Spanish relating to the material from the unit during the post write. Overall, students were successful in learning the material in the unit through the use of comprehension based teaching strategies and assessments. Further research must be conducted on this topic in order that students are exposed to the best possible teaching methods in the foreign language classroom.

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