Addressing the needs of all learners in your Spanish class may feel near impossible on most days. Our students come to us with a wide range of proficiency levels and we have to take on the (what feels like an impossible) task of getting them all to the same place (more or less). So how can we offer our students the right support in our Spanish class? How can we support all of our students when we have so much going on in our class?
Whether your course ends in an exam or not, there is an expectation as to where your students should be on their language learning journey. We use the terms novice, intermediate, and advanced to gauge our students.
But in all honesty, you will most likely have all of these proficiency levels in each of your classes. You’ll always have that one student who can barely string together a coherent sentence or just really struggles with language. You’ll have some students with a strong base but struggle to add details or utilize more than the present tense. And you know you’ll have some high flyers who can easily integrate anything you’ve said into their language repertoire.
The reality of our situation can feel daunting and on most days impossible.
But…it doesn’t have to be that way!
The key to all of your students being successful in your classes is providing them with the right support.
This can again feel overwhelming because how can you challenge your high flyers while still giving tons of support to your needier students? Differentiated instruction is a buzz word that has been floating around the teaching world for a bit. I remember when I first tried this in my classes I was creating three versions of one assignment and handing out each version to the appropriate “group” of students.
It was not sustainable. With more than two preps, it’s insane to create three versions of the same assignment. Even with two preps- it’s too much.
Instead of changing the assignment, I decided to change my approach.
I began with reference sheets that I would give students for writing assignments. My mistake was, I put everything I thought they needed on one sheet- it was wayyyyy too long. My students were not even looking at it because it took them longer to read the whole thing and find what they needed than to complete the assignment.
More recently, I started playing with the idea of chat mats. I used them for Socratic Seminars in my classes. I noticed right away that they were working great. My students had what they needed when they needed it. Their contributions were more meaningful and well developed. I knew I wanted to transfer the same language to their writing so I allowed them to use their chat mats in different writing assignments.
It just took off from there. I started creating and using chat mats at every opportunity.
I’ve used them at every level from Spanish 1 through Spanish IB/AP and they work in all of my classes. They are a great way to bridge the gap between different levels of proficiency.
How do they address everyone’s unique needs?
I give all of my students the same chat mats throughout the year but through self-selection they can determine which ones they need for the activity we are doing. To help them organize you can give them one sheet protector to keep all of their chat mats in.
How to design them
The important thing to remember when creating these is you want students to be able to find information quickly so less is more. Overloading them with too many words or expressions will only deter them from using the chat mats because they are too busy and hard to use.
You can include images for reference and I highly recommend using tables to organize key words and phrases easily.
There really are no rules when it comes to chat mats so try out a few different styles and see what works for you and your students.
If you want to deep dive into chat mats, I recently created a virtual training with everything you need to know. You can check that out here!
How are these different than Anchor Charts or Reference Sheets?
The concept of all of these tools is the same- provide students with support they need in an easily accessible way. The benefit to Chat Mats is that you can use them in different classrooms. I am in a school where we do not get our own rooms. This means I am constantly moving and sharing with different teachers. I need to be considerate of my roomates and just don’t have the time to decorate 2 or more classrooms each year.
Chat Mats work great for me because they are mobile- I can take them into various classrooms and use them with various levels and they are super flexible. I can copy them on fun colored paper and give students a plastic sleeve to keep them in- durable and simple!
Save yourself time and your sanity with Chat Mats. No more decorating and redecorating classroom walls, and you are not locked into a set list- you can even leave some blank space to add in more words/expressions as the year goes on.
You may be wondering what activities you can use these chat mats with- the simple answer is ANY activity will benefit from a chat mat. I absolutely always use these when we have a Socratic Seminar in my class but they are also helpful for things like Weekend Chats and games.
If you’re ready to get started with Chat Mats now, you can grab some done-for-you Chat Mats in my TpT Store. I have a variety of levels already created and stay tuned for more Chat Mats in the works!
