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Helen was passionate about the teaching of Spanish, believing that the Learning Languages area has more to offer teachers personally (as well as professionally) than any other area:

Spanish is the curriculum area in which I have the least content knowledge (i.e. language acquisition) yet it is the curriculum area which has given me the most personal and professional development opportunities. (08.03.10)

Language#teaching#pivotal#

Helen made efforts to incorporate Spanish into all parts of the school day and not just during Spanish time on a Friday. She took advantage of unexpected and unintended learning opportunities as they arose. An example of this was when a friend from Argentina contacted her during class-time via an online message tool that had been left on accidentally. She said the children were able to read the simple Spanish conversation they were having together in real-time and follow the authentic communication about

the weather and a recent Argentina-Mexico Football World Cup match. The follow-up conversation with the children was about more than the Spanish language and Helen went on to say that her teaching of Spanish was pivotal to all her teaching:

Languages are now pivotal to my teaching and central to it because everything I do I think how can I involve languages in this and that has probably given me a whole new lease on teaching and it’s probably at a time when I was becoming very dry and dull and boring. ‘Languages’ has completely revitalised the way I teach things and that is significant and that is why I am here and why I am doing this and I would love to do more of it. (HelenINT1)

Helen’s initial teaching resource for Spanish was the Ministry of Education funded ‘Si’ kit which is one part of the Learning Languages Series (LLS) (Ministry of Education, 1998b)65. While Helen found the LLS kit very useful to begin with, she did not follow the recommended 20-minutes lessons three times a week as suggested in the LLS introduction as it was not possible, or even appropriate to turn the learning on and off in the primary classroom. Once Helen had gained sufficient confidence in the level of Spanish language she needed for the classroom she found that she only used the Si kit as a safety net every now and then to refer to a specific phrase or vocabulary item.

Using#Spanish#for#classroom#routines#

Spanish classes at Helen’s school were timetabled to occur once a week. However, Helen exposed her regular classroom students to as much Spanish language input and output as possible during the rest of the week through a number of classroom routines. One such routine was the roll call. At the beginning of the year each student was allocated a number in Spanish and at the start of each day, and sometimes at other times during the day, Helen would call out the numbers to determine who was present and who was absent. Students responded to the roll call in Spanish as well. There were sometimes other occasions that might demand checking on attendance—such as during a fire drill, or when students were off-site. Helen is convinced this is an appropriate use of Spanish:

[This routine has developed] into a legitimate and effective roll-taking method back at school with my kids fully understanding the gravity of the legal implications of the school record of attendance and that we are not ‘playing’ at Spanish when I take the roll in the morning—or when I use it at fire drills and off-site. (02.04.10)

The beginning of the day was also when the date, day of the week and season were recited in Spanish by Helen’s homeroom class. A student monitor then checked that these items were correctly displayed on the board each morning (see Figure 8).

Figure 8: Helen’s classroom whiteboard and students’ display of Spanish phrases

Other routines where Spanish was often used throughout the day included the handing out (and collecting in) of books or worksheets. Students used display boards to remind themselves of phrases they could use in class (see Figure 8). Helen described these exchanges as something like:

Helen: ¿Cuantos libros? How many books? Student: Cuatro por favour Four please

Gracias Thanks Helen: De nada no worries

Helen also used other questions to encourage Spanish language input and output:

¿Como se dice X en español? How do you say X in Spanish? ¿Que pasa? What’s happening (today/now)? ¿Te gustaria un dulce? Would you like a sweet?

(12.03.10 and 17.03.10) This last question worked well in all classes, at choir practice and at the Spanish camp. Students were required to respond in Spanish nominating the colour of the sweet they would like.

6.4$ Teaching$successes$

Helen measured the success of her language teaching by how readily students were able to use the Spanish language they had learnt: such as the girl who, upon arrival at school on a cool autumn morning volunteered Hace frio (it’s cold). This led to a conversation later at roll-call about how languages differ in the way intended meaning versus literal meaning occurs. In this case ‘it is cold’ is used rather than the literal ‘it makes cold’ (18.03.10). Another spontaneous use of language came from the boy whose task it was to write up the day’s learning on the board. He came out with ¿Que pasa?(What’s happening?). This question would normally be said by Helen to be followed by a run- down of the day’s activities in English.

Although these were small gains by students, to Helen it demonstrated their ability to use the language in meaningful contexts because they had a need to communicate and they were confident enough to do so in Spanish.

Interestingly, this spontaneous use of Spanish was also how she measured her own language acquisition i.e. by the number of times she ‘caught’ herself thinking in Spanish or unintentionally using Spanish such as when she was attending a workshop about mathematics teaching and she found herself counting the play money in Spanish (17.03.10).

On another occasion when students were out of the school grounds they used the numbering-off technique in Spanish without any prompting from Helen to check that all were in attendance. They were proud of being able to do so quickly in Spanish while other classes were laboriously responding to names read by the teacher. Helen added that this was also a great safety skill for when students were out hiking in large numbers.