Unraveling Macario

Raul Ruiz, Western High School

Raul is a Spanish language teacher at Western High School believed that the best way for students to learn Spanish was to fully immerse them in the language, Through Project Learn, Raul showed braved and began to view translanguaging as a tool. Raul started to eliminate linguistic barriers, thus used their full linguistic repertoires to make sense of their learning and comprehension of Spanish.

Unit: Macario

This unit of study in Raul's Spanish 4 class centered around the novel and film, Macario by B. Traven. Raul recognized that, given the difficulty of this text, he would need to provide ample supports and scaffolds to assist students in their comprehension and critical analysis of the text. This would also include providing resources in English to help build their vocabulary and higher level thinking. The materials included below focus on the final assessment for this unit, the creation of a digital "book" about the characters, themes, and plot of Macario. Students were encouraged to use their full linguistic repertoires to help them make sense of the text, but were required to complete their books primarily in Spanish.

Macario Unit Slides

Project: Macario Book

Directions

The final project for this unit centered around students creating a "book" about each chapter of Macario. Students captured and expressed their understanding of each chapter through images, recorded oral presentations, responses to higher order thinking questions, and written arguments. Throughout this project, Raul sought to develop students' higher level thinking, clarity of expression, and reasoning. Additionally, Raul gave students multiple creative opportunities to complete this project. While the final product had to be written in Spanish, students were able to leverage their full linguistic repertoires to help them make sense of what they had read and effectively demonstrate their learning in Spanish.

Macario “Book” Directions.pdf

Macario "Book" rubric

Rubric

Students were also given a rubric that thoroughly and clearly articulated Raul's expectations for this project. Students were evaluated on skills such as their oral presentation skills, the quality of questions presented about the text, grammar, and the overall quality of writing in Spanish.

Student Examples

Below, you will find two student examples of completed final projects for Macario. Each example provides a detailed and thorough understanding of the text, as well as students' clear and complex usage of Spanish to complete the project.

Student Example B

Student Example A

The Journey to Brave Up Continues

"As I move forward there is a different understanding/interpretation on how to achieve language goals. Translanguaging for me is a speed bump: You have to stop, gather yourself, and move forward rapidly. And it could happen over and over. A personal goal for me is to simply accept and be mindful of my own translanguaging philosophy- the speed bump. Pedagogically, it's simple- Go for it! The fear of not being successful has to go away."

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