How To Help Spanish Students Improve Writing

Need ideas for how to help Spanish students improve writing? In my school, we use rubrics that are based on the ACTFL guidelines to rate our student’s proficiency. About half-way through the year, we move the “meeting the goal” proficiency target up a bit, and we need to help our students understand how to elevate their writing, and also give them tools to do it!

Add a Time Frame

By second semester of year 2, you can help your Spanish students improve writing by adding another time frame. You can begin with the simple preterite (I know… it’s not so simple) or maybe even the imperfect with the theme of talking about their childhood.

It takes a long time to develop comfort and accuracy with verbs for students who are learning Spanish in a classroom setting. But that doesn’t mean we can’t do targeted practice. First, I give lots of contextualized practice working just with the new tense. And once some familiarity and comfort has been developed. I teach my students how to use a compare and contrast formula to use both time frames. For example: Here is a sentence that our Spanish students could create:

This year, I study biology, but last year I studied general science.

Using Sophistication Words To Elevate Writing

Another trick I use to help Spanish students improve writing is to actively work on “sophistication words”. I have a freebie here for you to grab! I break these words into 3 categories: Key Words (like last night, now, usually- words that indicate time frame), sequencing words (first, then, later), and finally transition words (but, because, although).

Many of these are high frequency words that students ask for all the time. I have a word wall in my classroom, and these words feature prominantly!

You can also have a few “words of the week” on your board. Ask students to see how many activities they can work them into when speaking or writing. Ask them to spot those words when they’re listening or reading. It doesn’t take long for students to store these words in their long-term memory, and they go a long way in helping them sound more proficient!

Use Targeted Writing Activities To Help Spanish Students Improve Writing

At the end of the day, my students do learn a lot by just being in the classroom, regardless of what activities we may be doing. But all of my students benefit from targeted practice. I do two kinds of activities to give students the chance to really write and improve with purpose.

Activity 1: Group writing: My students LOVE when they get to do a group writing challenge. I try to make the prompts relevant to them and interesting, and I also try to have at least 2 options. The groups can choose the prompt they are most interested in. These prompts are pretty open-ended, but they may focus on including specific elements.

I choose elements that I know students either struggle with, or things that I know will elevate their writing. Giving students time to practice including these elements is really important if we want them to be able to do this on an assessment. What I like about these group challenges is that they are easy to differentiate and scaffold. The high fliers will elevate to the moon! And the students who aren’t ready for a trip to the moon can still feel successful with the targeted asks. And, of course, my students know that I will pick a winning group (based on creativity, group cohesion, whatever) and let them pick a prize from the prize box!

Activity 2: A 4-day series for students to look at writing samples, use our proficiency target descriptions to rate them, and then take a sample writing and improve it to the next proficiency level.

Sometimes students aren’t thinking deeply about what they’re producing or how to make sure they’re demonstrating the breadth and depth of their language skills. This mini-unit on elevating writing gets students to really pay attention to what the differences are between proficiency levels. When they are asked to improve one sample, they have autonomy in how to do that based on the markers we’ve been looking at. (Adding more detail, adding another time frame, including sophistication words.)

I create this for my students a few years back, and I will be using it in the next few weeks. I’m already breathing easier because I know my planning is done, and all I have to do is hit print, copy a few things, and I have 4 days ready to go!

I hope some of these tips will help you plan lessons that will improve your Spanish students’ writing! Look below if you could use some help with materials!