In my second year, being the newby Spanish teacher amongst the two other INCREDIBLE Span/French teachers in my department, I had the 'luck' to take on a split class (they had done it before and politely passed on it this time around): Spanish 9 and Intro 11 - includes grade 11 and/or 12 (Intro 11 is basically Spanish 9 and 10 crammed into one semester). Yay for me...
I'd never fully taught a split. How do teachers even teach splits? I'd taught Spanish 9 four times in one year, Spanish 10 twice, and Intro 11 once (as its own course) - now I had to cram two semesters worth of material into one while at same time teach the other two thirds of the class one semester worth of Spanish 9...what? That was obstacle one. Obstacle two ended up not being quite as big an obstacle as I thought as the semester progressed and they got to know each other (eye rolls did occur every now and then though). How were the 16/17 year olds going to react to maturity level of the 13/14 year olds? Because we all know, even though you were that age once YOU were NEVER that immature...
The semester started out smoothly. We were all working together on the same lessons. Sometimes the Intro 11s got more challenging activities and a few extra vocabulary words, but for the most part we were all on the same track. After two units, I knew I couldn't keep the Intros on this pace; things had to pick up for them if they were going to be able to get through the entire curriculum. Panic.
I had seen other splits in action, but either it wasn't the same kind of split or their solution didn't quite appeal to me. I had had a short term placement that included a split that was Spanish 10 and Intro 11. Method: intense review of Spanish 9 to get everyone caught up with either last year's material or, in the Intro's case, to get an intense overview of the basics. This was followed by a more in-depth focus on grade 10 content. By the time I covered the class, the students were all in the grade 10 curriculum. It seemed to work. The students were closer in age and the class could work in such a way that everyone would always be (almost) at the same point in the curriculum. During the Spanish 9 review period, apparently the Intros took on more work to get extra practice.If I was going to have a split, this would have been the more favourable grade break to me...but this wasn't an option in my case.
Another short term placement I had included a Span 11/Span 12 split. This class was used to the following method: the teacher teaches the Spanish 11 students; the Spanish 12 students come into class and expect to see their daily plan on the board. They write it down and promptly leave the class and take off for the 'library'. Sometimes they would stay in class, but they had become so accustomed to not having their teacher around that when I would approach them to discuss where they were at and if they needed help, they took it offensively....like I was "checking up" on them. Well...I was, I guess, but because I thought I was their teacher. One day I sent a grade 11 student to the library to ask for the grade 12s to come back for an announcement. Not surprisingly, I think it was like 3/7 students that ended up actually being in the library and were able to come back. This wasn't my favourite solution to a split. What was I going to do?
The Spanish department in the school I did my teaching practicum at was SUPER organized. I mean, like wow. They had black duo-tangs with the basic schedule of a unit, so that on any given day you could flip the little black duo-tang open and see that if you are on day three of unit 5, you should be covering such and such using such and such activities. About two years after I finished my practicum, I went back to the school to cover the early portion of a maternity leave. My mentoring grounds had become even more organized! They now had unit packages. Stacks and stacks of paper were photocopied into booklet form and the students were free to work ahead, however they wouldn't have the notes until the day it was covered in class, but the entire unit (notes for grammar with fill-in-the-blank gaps, vocabulary, written activities, directions for which textbook activities to turn to, project outlines, conversation outlines, test outlines, everything) was right there in their hands. There were no split classes here, but this super organized approach definitely led me to what would become my split class solution.
I am a very organized person. Tasks take me longer because I like to be organized. I suppose another way to say it is that I am a perfectionist (I know many teachers are), but thinking back to my practicum school I knew that their level of organization and perfection was above me. My classes didn't function on a unit schedule. Sometimes full class plans got excluded or put off for a variety of reasons. However, thinking back to the unit booklet was something I found very useful. I had notes and activities already to go for Spanish 9 and 10 because I was now in my second year. There was A LOT of tweaking going on though, so I thought there is no way I can go through all of my notes and activities this much in advance and photocopy entire unit booklets for my Intros while at the same time planning for and teaching Spanish 11 for the first time, not to mention planning and teaching for my Spanish 9s.
I was getting closer to MY solution to the split.
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