World LanguageModern foreign languages6th, 7th, 8thYear 7, Year 8, Year 9
How to build self-directed learners in middle school Spanish
A Spanish 1 student meets all four of the unit's goals, then asks Sparky in Spanish whether schools in Mexico have afternoon classes. Here is how every student in the class can see which goals they have met and choose what to practice next.
Jemel Fanfan | Founding Member at Flint
"Flint allows students to track their progress and identify areas for improvement in real-time. This has fostered more self-directed learning as they actively use AI tools to reinforce concepts and explore topics beyond the standard curriculum."
Jessica Shan, World Language Teacher & Instructional Coach at International School of BeijingWhy this matters
In one middle school Spanish class, a student answers half in English and can't tell which sentences still need work. The student beside him met every goal of the unit by Tuesday and has nothing left to try. Both find out where they stand when the unit test comes back.
Self-directed learning with can-do statements
Self-directed learners set goals, check their own progress and choose what to work on next. World language classes already have the goals: the NCSSFL-ACTFL Can-Do Statements are written to help learners "set learning goals and self-assess and chart their progress" (NCSSFL-ACTFL, 2026).
- Show each student which goals they have met, with their own sentences
- Let the student pick the next goal
- When every goal is met, let the student go past the unit
A teacher can't check 28 students' Spanish against four can-do statements in the middle of a conversation. Sparky, Flint's AI tutor, checks every student's sentences in their own chat and shows them where they stand.
Two students, the same four goals
The teacher wrote the daily routine unit's four can-do statements into the activity. Sparky's greeting lists them and ends with the same question for the whole class. Everything after it is one student's own chat.
Eli
Sparky
Eli
Me levanto a las seis y media. Then I... um... take a shower.Sparky
Eli
Me levanto a las seis y media y luego me ducho.Sparky
Eli
A las seis y cuarenta. Then I brush my teeth and get dressed.Sparky
Eli
Me cepillo los dientes y me visto. How am I doing?Sparky
Eli
Goal 3. ¿A qué hora te levantas tú?Sparky
Eli
Me duermo a las diez. Yo me levanto a las seis y media, pero tú te levantas a las cinco y media.Sparky
Saw which two goals were left, picked one, and met both
Lena
Sparky
Lena
Los lunes me levanto a las seis. Me ducho, me visto y me cepillo los dientes a las seis y veinte. ¿Y tú, a qué hora te levantas?Sparky
Lena
Mi hermana Sofía se levanta a las siete y media, pero yo me levanto a las seis porque tengo práctica de natación. ¿Los chicos en México van a la escuela temprano también?Sparky
Lena
Prefiero tarde, me gusta dormir. ¿Hay escuelas en México por la tarde?Sparky
Lena
Sí, me gustaría el turno vespertino. Me levanto a las diez y voy a la escuela a la una.Sparky
Met all four goals, then asked about school in Mexico in Spanish
Eli mixes in English, so Sparky gives him the Spanish words and he says each sentence again. When he asks how he's doing, Sparky builds him a checklist of the four goals with his own sentences under each one, and he picks the goal to work on.
Lena shows three goals in her first message and spends the rest of her time on her own questions about school in Mexico. Sparky asks "¿Preferirías...?" and Lena answers with a different conditional, "me gustaría", which the unit never taught. Sparky names the conditional and shows her how to use it with one of the unit's reflexive verbs. Many Mexican secundarias, which teach grades 7 to 9, run a morning school and an afternoon school in the same building (Cárdenas Denham, 2011), and the afternoon shift usually starts at 1:30 (N+, 2025).
The students and chats are examples we wrote for this page from test runs of the library activity. The checklist is the one Sparky built in the first run.
How to see where the class stands
Sparky grades each chat against the four goals, and students can see the rubric while they work. The activity page shows which student needs you right now and which goal the class should practice next.
Example activity page
After a Spanish 1 class talks about their mornings
The school and students are made up for this page. In this example, the student still answering in English is the one to sit with first.
Set up the activity for free
The daily routine activity is in Flint's public library, with the four can-do statements, Sparky's role and guidelines, a greeting that lists the goals, and a rubric already written. Students can type or speak, and each of Sparky's replies has a Listen button. Open the activity, select Try this activity to copy it into a free Flint account, and move it to a class. To test it as a student first, select Try session myself in the activity settings.
To use your own unit, replace the four statements in Guidelines for Sparky with your unit's can-do statements and keep the instruction that asks for the checklist:
Example guideline
These are the unit's can-do statements: [your statements]. After every three or four student messages, and whenever the student asks how they are doing, make an interactive checklist of the statements. Mark each one "Shown", with the student's own sentence that showed it, or "Not yet". Then ask which "Not yet" statement they want to work on, and let them choose.
For more world language activities, see Flint for world language.
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