I enjoyed the meeting on November 30th as we dicussed posing a problem to help the students start their thoughts/inquiry. Our group had a lot of good discussions on how to start implementing many of our constructivist ideas into the classroom. I am going to start approaching the vocabulary in each chapter in a different way. For example our next chapter in year 2 is shopping. Instead of giving the students the vocabulary for the chapter then continually drilling that vocabulary in different activities, I can pose the question, "what words would you need to know to successfully shop for a day in down town Mexico City?" Then in groups the students could construct a list of vocabulary. I bet that the words in each group would be incredibly similar, if not the same. In addition, I'm sure the vocabulary would be almost identical to the book. I could tell them to make sure they think of verbs, nouns, adjectives, and expressions. Then we could move on to finding the Spanish words for the vocabulary and using it in dialogs and other activities.
I think the by in to these words would be awesome, as the students themselves said this is what we need to know. I guess I could then approach every chapter this way as well.
To me, this part of 21st Century is exciting. To discuss how to change/tweak my classroom in incorporate more constructivist methods to allow the students to really be the center of their education and hopefully increse the metacognitive/critically thinking skills of the students at the same time.