Course Materials (5th Year Review)

SAMPLE ACTIVITIES

In order to promote interactive teaching and learning experiences, I try to create activities that are linked to students’ interests, their digital skills, that are strongly aligned to the curriculum content, and that contributes to improving students´ competency in Spanish.
In this document, I am going to present a variety of class activities that have been designed taking into consideration these four precepts and that aim to help learners to acquire academic and cultural content in a constructive, dynamic, and interactive way. Also, these resources and tasks become more than class activities because students create transmedia products that can be useful in their nonacademic lives, such as: a professional portfolio to apply to a job they are interested in, a real interview with Spanish speakers about contemporary issues that affect society nowadays, and video campaigns to promote awareness about topics such as bullying, mental health, COVID, and the environment.

UN2101 INTERMEDIATE SPANISH I

I believe that it is very important to present the content of courses in a very clear and structured way. For that reason, I have worked very hard to create a syllabus that is easy to navigate and that compiles all the information students may need in a central location. When I arrived at Columbia in 2018, we were working with the book Gente. Soon after, we started working with the redesign of the Spanish program curriculum, so the current textbook is Proyectos.
My research expertise is in the intersection of digital humanities, linguistics and applied linguistics to teaching foreing languages. When the Covid-19 pandemic hit the world, I used my extensive knowledge in digital literacy to redesign my courses to become online courses. Since then, my courseworks pages are the most important resource for my students. It is very well organized, easy to navigate, and all the documents, resources and tools necessary to be successful in my courses are always available on the platform.
This is how the UN2101 Spring 2022 courseworks page looked:

MICROWRITING

In the past three years, I have realized that students struggle a lot to write in Spanish while in class. For this reason, I have created a set of in class micro-writing tasks to help students develop their writing skills and confidence in their capabilities. These short writing activities consist of writing about a specific topic for 10 minutes without using any resource (only what they remember). After doing this task, we spent another 10 minutes going over the texts and making corrections all together. In this video I explain how we work in class with micro-writing.

KAHOOT

To help my students review, and taking into consideration the gamification theory, I have created a set of digital games using Kahoot that allow them to review and test their knowledge. To access the games, just scan the QR code.

To access the games scan the QR

Brainscape digital cards

Using the Science of Learning theories, and with the support of the CTL redesign grant, I created over 1000 cards for Spanish Intermediate 1 to help students acquire linguistic concepts using spaced practice and retrieval theories. The work can be accessed by clicking on these links:
Digital access to Intermediate Spanish I cards:
Access to Intermediate Spanish I digital cards
Chapter 11 (142 cards)
Chapter 12 (194 cards)
Chapter 13 (250 cards)
Chapter 14 (246 cards)
Chapter 15 (177 cards)

FINAL PROJECT INTERMEDIATE SPANISH I (2101)

To me it is crucial to present projects that really motivate the student and that foster a real use of authentic materials. Considering that, I designed a final project for Intermediate Spanish I that uses scaffolding to construct and move the language learning forward and that creates a final product that will be useful for students in their real lives. This project is titled: Professional Portfolio.

The creation of this portfolio is divided into four steps:

Research the internet to pick a real Spanish speaking company where the student would like to work. This research will lead to the creation of a digital presentation of the company and the job the student is applying for.
Preparing the resumé for applying to the specific job the student chose.
Writing a cover letter to present the application to the company.
Creating a video CV where the student presents his/her strengths and qualifications to be considered for the position they are applying for.
The final step consists of a mock interview in class. The student is the candidate and the rest of the class is the selection committee.

This hands-on final project promotes the use of Spanish in an authentic context as well as the development of skills necessary for understanding the process that underlies applying for a job. Some samples of the great work students have created are below:

INTERMEDIATE SPANISH II

This semester is the first semester I am teaching Spanish Intermediate II with the new book Proyectos, so I have created all the content from scratch. All the new activities, projects and tasks created can be accessed from the main courseworks page. In this short video, I explain how the content is organized. By clicking on the image, it is possible to access the course in courseworks

PRESENTATIONS TO EXPLAIN GRAMMAR

FINAL PROJECT INTERMEDIATE SPANISH I (2101)

For this course, I have created a new final project that consists of interviewing a Spanish Speaker about the topics presented in the five units studied. This project helps students to use Spanish in a real context and to review all the content learned during this semester. The work is divided into five steps:

Students have already told me that they feel this project is very interesting and allows them to speak in Spanish in a real context. Students have submitted three parts already and the content is brilliant. As you can hear in this interview:

GAMES TO REVIEW

The last unit contains very complex grammar structures. So I have created digital games to help the students learn the form of the new verb tenses.

All these resources are available on my courseworks page that can be accessed through this link. To help you better visualize the organization of this course, the syllabus is attached in Appendix I.

3300 SPANISH ADVANCED COURSE: AFRO-LATINAS IN THE US: GENDER, RACE AND SOCIO-POLITICAL FORCES IN THE DIGITAL WORLD

This is a new course that I have created to position diversity and the digital world in the center of curriculum. It is a fact that strikes us every day. The terrible events that we witness daily reflect the urge to address racism and gender discrimination in Academia. This hands-on course positions students in the center of the teaching/learning process, by making them transmedia designers and creators of podcasts in Spanish that portray relevant Afro-Latinas in North America and beyond. By using authentic materials, academic papers and current research, students will create a series of podcasts that analyze the main topics presented in the course.
The main goals of this course are:
●      To explore the concept Afro-Latina and its impact on the construct of the linguistic, social and cultural identity.
●      To analyze the role of Afro-Latinas in US society.
●      To understand how antiracism and gender discrimination impact Afro-Latinas in US.
●      To give visibility to Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, and Intersex (LGTBQI) Afro-Latinas in US to promote inclusion.
●      To interview Afro-Latinas to know from firsthand their road to achieving their goals.
●      To produce transmedia resources to share the knowledge outside of the classroom through social media (Instagram, Twitter, and other social media platforms).
All the content is based on authentic materials and explores the conceptualization of the term Afro-Latina and the presence of Afro-Latinas in various contexts. Through the creation of transmedia products that will be shared in the digital world, students will become creators of knowledge. Click the image below to access the course and all the content.