Novice-level dictogloss activity with art by Carmen Lomas Garza

Hi, there! I haven't used this blog in quite some time, but I wanted to share this lesson that I used with novice-level Spanish students in my first-semester class this semester in our unit on family and friends. 

I was really happy with how this lesson came together! Students were able to process language while learning about Carmen Lomas Garza, a well known artist who creates art that challenges negative stereotypes about Hispanic communities in the U.S. 

Check out Carmen Lomas Garza's paintings here on her website and in her books Family Pictures / Cuadros de familia and In My Family / En mi familia. As you might notice, her artwork is perfect for discussing topics that we often cover in novice-level Spanish, such as family, hobbies, places, food, and celebrations. I knew I wanted to incorporate her work in my class this semester, and then this video from Florencia Henshaw's YouTube channel Unpacking Language Pedagogy gave me the idea to do a dictogloss activity! If you haven't checked out any of Dr. Henshaw's videos, I highly recommend you do so! They are so very helpful for teachers applying language acquisition research in their daily practices. 

I chose one of Lomas Garza's paintings called Barbacoa para cumpleaños and used it as inspiration to create this short text to use for the dictogloss activity: 

Hoy es sábado y es mi cumpleaños. Tengo diez años. Hay una fiesta en mi casa con mi familia y mis amigos. En la fiesta, nosotros comemos, hablamos y jugamos juegos. ¡Es muy divertido!

It is a short text with simple sentences, which is especially important for novice learners. Most recently we have been talking about what students do with family and friends and targeting the nosotros/as/es ("we") form of verbs. One of my main goals with this text was to include more of those verbs, hence the text uses "comemos, hablamos y jugamos juegos".

After creating the text I wanted to use, I followed the steps that Dr. Henshaw outlines in her video, so here is how I structured the lesson. 

Step 1. Preparation for the dictogloss task 

First, students did a few activities to anticipate the vocabulary and structures they would encounter in the text. We started with a couple of conversation questions in pairs:

• ¿Cuántos años tienes? How old are you? (Review question from earlier in the unit)
• ¿Cuándo es tu cumpleaños? When is your birthday? (This is new, so I provided some scaffolding for their response, including the months.)
• ¿Cómo es una buena fiesta de cumpleaños? ¿Aburrida o divertida? What is a good birthday party like? Boring or fun? (They have seen aburrida a lot for describing classes 😂but they have not seen divertida as much.) 

Next, we did a structured input activity (Dr. Henshaw also has a great video on structured input, fyi) to target the nosotros/as/es verb forms and students selected which are the most typical activities to do with family and friends to celebrate a birthday. Here is the activity that we used:

Step 2. Students listen to the dictogloss text

I read the text twice and students listened without writing anything.

Step 3. Students write the text from memory

In pairs, students worked together to rewrite the text from memory to the best of their abilities. I walked around checking their progress, and they were doing pretty well! When it seemed like most groups had written pretty much everything they remembered, I told them to stop writing, and I read it one more time. They were able to fill in more details and complete the rest of the text pretty well with that third listening. 

Step 4. Checking their work and making corrections 

I assigned several groups a sentence from the text to write on the board, and we discussed as a class if each sentence was correct and made edits as needed. Then I showed them the original text and we compared it with what they had written. 

Step 5. Meaningful extension activities with the dictogloss text

We did several activities to get even more out of this text:

1. I showed students a slide with four different paintings by Carmen Lomas Garza and students selected the painting that they thought matched the dictogloss text. 
2. We read a short biographical description of the artist, which included information about the artist's use of her artwork to challenge negative stereotypes of Mexican American communities in the U.S. Then students did a retrieval activity by trying to fill in missing key vocabulary of the description they read. 
3. Each group of students worked together to add a few more details to the original dictogloss text. Then each group chose a detail or two to share with the class to create a more detailed story as a class. The highlighted details below are what students added to the text.
4. Finally, students did a little writing about another one of Lomas Garza's paintings called Empanadas. We brainstormed some vocabulary they would already know to describe the painting, and then I helped them with unknown vocabulary they might need, such as how to say "kitchen," etc. 

Students added the highlighted details to the original text.

Here is the slide deck for this lesson and the structured input activity. Please feel free to make a copy and adapt it for your class. And please let me know if it's useful and share back any modifications that worked well for you!