Whether you are a new IB Spanish teacher or a veteran, you can relate to the stress that the IB Spanish IO brings to your planning. As an internal assessment, the planning, execution, and grading of this assignment falls on us, the teachers. It’s no easy task so I am sharing some tricks/tips to help you minimize your IB Spanish IO prep stress.
- Practice “exam-like” situations
I know, who really has time to do this? With classes of 30 (or more) it can be near impossible to practice Individual Orals with each of your students. For many years, I struggled to do this. I either practiced with each student 1:1 and lost precious time in the classroom or I skipped over individual practice and hoped that everything else that I was doing was enough.
To be honest, neither scenario ever felt right to me. I always felt like I was missing out on class time with my students and I was frustrated. One day, I came across an idea for journal writing for students. It said that students don’t have to write an entire journal entry but even writing for 3 minutes each day or 5 minutes 3x per week would help with their writing skills. I thought to myself- why not apply this to speaking?
By breaking down the exam into two parts and practicing them separately for a few minutes each, students get practice with both situations and more frequently. The IA (Internal Assessment) is broken down into two parts- presentation and interview. If students can practice with both of these situations they will feel very comfortable with both parts on the exam day. So, what can you do to practice?
For practice talking about images, find 10 practice images that cover a variety of topics. This will make your IB Spanish IO prep so much easier. Some ideas for practicing:
- Speed dating- pair up students and give them 1 minute each to talk about the image
- Group practice- in small groups assign students roles and have them think critically about different aspects of the image (example: one student talks about what they see, one talks about what theme the image connects with, one talks about the message/meaning of the image, and one student makes a cultural comparison). Once done with one image, rotate roles for a new image.
- Use Technology- Using Formative or Google Voice, give one image to all students and have them record their observations. Give them a time limit you’d like them to meet (ideally 2-3 minutes). You can listen to them and provide individual feedback, or have your students listen to themselves while looking at the rubric and “grade” themselves with justification from the rubric.
Now that you have some ideas for practicing with the presentational piece, what about the interview? How can students practice responding spontaneously?
Socratic Seminars- this is the only practice that I do with my students and they feel extremely well prepared and comfortable with the interview questions because we have done so many seminars in IB 1 and IB 2. If you’re new to Socratic Seminars, check out this post on getting started.
Since we do a Socratic Seminar for almost every topic, my students feel like they have practiced spontaneously talking about the topic at some point. They are the perfect way to lower students’ affective filters and encourage spontaneous speaking.
- Teach them how to prep
The next step to preparing your students for the IB Spanish IO is the preparation. Your students will have 15 or 20 minutes (SL or HL) to prepare for their presentation. Your students need to 100% understand what they have to do during their presentation. This will allow them to organize their thoughts and maximize their planning time.
Speaking of organizing- teach your students how to take notes. Think about what things your students should mention (meaning, cultural connection, personal connection, etc.) and come up with a way for them to organize (maybe 4 boxes or a 3 step ladder). This will allow them to quickly come up with a way to organize their presentation instead of writing 10 random bullets.
- Give them confidence
As nervous as you may feel to administer the test, just know that your students are probably ten times more nervous. They need to know that you are there to help them through this process and help them find success.
I usually give my students a stress ball and a piece of candy as soon as they walk in the room. This makes them smile and immediately makes them more comfortable.
Your students need to know that they won’t feel “trapped” during the interview with you. Many of them are nervous that you will ask them something that they don’t understand or can’t answer. Remind them that you are there to help and will do your best to give them a good question. Open-ended questions are best as they allow students to take the response to where they feel comfortable. It’s also great to throw in a personal question to make your students feel more comfortable.
Teaching IB Spanish can feel overwhelming. If the IA just feels like too big of a task, don’t worry- I have the perfect resource for you. In this resource, you will find images curated for the IA, graphic organizers for your students, and discussion questions that you can use to either practice in class or have with you as backup questions on the day of the exam.
