Give the students credit for their bright ideas

Today I was amazed by my students' ideas in their daily reflections once again. I absolutely love it that they take responsibility for their own learning and share their bright ideas with me. Today a student told me that we should look at learning as a computer with temporary and permanent memory and that for obvious reasons we should try to commit the new vocabulary words to long term memory by really trying to learn the pronunciation. In my first period class, we did the usual after group practice of the vocabulary words on Quizlet and played the match and Quizlet live games. This was a lot of fun and enjoyed by all. But, in second period the class decided to have the students pronounce the words individually and I put a native speaker in front of the class. Interestingly, she didn't accept anything instead of perfection and some students ended up having to pronounce the words numerous times. This actually took up the entire class period, but toward the end the students' pronunciation had improved dramatically as had their confidence in their speaking abilities. Quite amazing actually. In their reflections they expressed this as well and most said they wanted to do this again next time. Of course this will have to hold until next week, since tomorrow is our designated Genius Hour, during which the students work on their extended Spanish projects. Power to the students!!!