My Evolution of Teaching the “Family Unit”

2005: First year teaching. Family unit project: make your family tree in Spanish, talk about it to the class.

One student stabs the word “padre” with his pencil so much, he rips thru his (complete) project. Note to self: this was a bad lesson.

2006: Make a pretend family tree. Still, lots of questions that show me that not all kids enjoy it “what if I don’t know my mom” etc. Me “I said a PRETEND tree”. But, some kids want to do their real family, so other kids still feel a pressure.

2018: I’ve heard the notion of not teaching family vocabulary at all – but I think it is still useful to know the words. Teach family vocabulary ‘unit’. No family tree. No projects. Just low level memorizing/story telling/circumlocution/ songs like BASHO mi familia and MacArthur Familia Grande(with gestures – bonus words TENGO, TAN). Still – some kids struggle. A few so much, they had behavioral problems that I didn’t see before or after.

2019: Move family vocabulary entirely into a different unit. Learning it is a goal, but it is not THE goal. Songs/TPR/Class family tree (thanks to my French teacher colleague, Robin Murray)**/readings on families of famous Spanish speakers. This year was much better. Still a work in progress, and I hope it keeps getting more sensitive to the needs of my students while still having them learn family members.

What do you do in your classes to teach family vocabulary?

 

**this activity involves mapping a fake family tree out with desks. Then the teacher narrates a story about the family members while pulling actors from the class as they sit on the desks. My colleague Robin also used it to review possessive adjectives.