When teaching for acquisition, the focus of instruction is communication. During class, students read, listen, write, and speak in the target language. When students miss class, it is helpful for the teacher to find ways for the students to spend time reading and listening to the target language, ideally on the same topic(s) that were discussed or covered in class.

BIG IDEAS

Whenever we consider student absences and make-up work, there are a few big ideas to keep in mind.

1. Students are often not in control of their own schedules. Their absence may be due to choices that someone else made on their behalf, and/or they may not be able to dedicate additional time to completing make-up work due to existing responsibilities. Furthermore, not all students have easy access to environments that are conducive to completing schoolwork outside of the school day. Consider how you might demonstrate flexibility and discretion in your absent/make-up work policies.
2. Absenteeism impacts feelings of belonging to the classroom community. In communicative language classes, classroom community and feelings of connection are built and maintained every day as the class talks about the lives of its members and about each featured topic. When a student is absent, the impact is the same as when you miss out on an activity with your friends, and you don't understand any references that are made to it moving forward. When students return from absences, take time in class, in the target language, to catch the student up on what happened while they were gone in the same way that you would catch up a friend on what they missed in a conversation while they went to the bathroom.

READING ACTIVITIES

If students missed out on reading, share the texts with students to read. In order to help them attend to the reading, consider sharing a during-reading or post-reading assignment with them. Here are some generic forms that can be used for that purpose:

• Textivities worksheets

If students have missed out on reading texts that were published by The Comprehensible Classroom, the texts can be assigned to the students in digital format via Garbanzo.

LISTENING ACTIVITIES

If students missed out on listening, it is more difficult to create asynchronous versions of those assignments. Instead of recording yourself and sharing audio files with students, look for pre-made audio content that is level-appropriate for students to listen to. Some examples include:

• Garbanzo (audio is available for all texts with Premium Subscription)
• The Garbanzo Spanish podcast (free; printable activity sheets also available)
• The Somos Flex curriculum (each unit includes at least one audio story)

WRITING ACTIVITIES

Writing assignments can be given to students to complete outside of class.

SPEAKING ACTIVITIES

In general, practicing speaking does little to nothing to help students acquire language--especially when it is completed out of context. We do not recommend creating make-up speaking activities for students.

ABSENT WORK SOURCES

• Every unit of The Somos Flex Curriculum includes a multi-page, print-ready packet of assignments that can be distributed to any student that misses one, some, or all days of the unit. The content corresponds with the original Somos Curriculum, and so these print packets can be used for teachers that are following either Somos Original or Somos Flex.
• El mundo en tus manos: Whether or not you teach with these articles in class, they can be printed or assigned digitally to students who are absent. Each article is provided at three different levels of text complexity, making it easy to use the same material for multiple levels of language learners. Consider giving students the choice of which article to read as their make-up work.
• With a Garbanzo Premium Subscription, students can be assigned single lessons, multi-lesson learning paths, or the opportunity to self-select reading material in the Biblioteca.