More Spanish

El Mundo de Birch is back :)

One of my favorite profesional blogs to read is El mundo de Birch.  I was very happy to see her new post regarding a conversational activity she does with her kids.  I was soo excited, I created my own to use with my kids on Friday.  You can see the PDF at the bottom.  I wanted the students to be mindful of the tenses they have learned so far, so I set up the questions to include present, imperfect and subjunctive.  I know I will be doing this again when we practice conditional & future.  I can't wait to see how it goes.  Thanks Sharon!

Download Conversación con naipe

You can read about some of the modifications I made to this game here.

Hunger Games: practicing movie/sports vocabulary & subjunctive

First of all a shout out to a new Twitter buddy @srtabarragan, who brought The Creative Language Class blog to my attention with this post on using The Hunger Games in Spanish class.  I wanted to grab some of that Hunger Game energy and use it in my Monday lesson on the subjunctive. 

First I showed them the poster linked in the Creative Language Class blog and had them work with a partner answering questions about what they saw.  If you use Realidades 2, this is a great time to recycle vocabulary from lesson 6A & 6B.

We then saw the trailer in Spanish.  I was surprised to find out how many kids didn't realize how dubbing a movie into another language worked. The actors spoke much too quickly for my Spanish 3 students to understand, but it was a good time to have them practice using context clues to help them comprehend. It's also a good example of language usage at a authentic pace.

I asked my students to write a sentence using the subjunctive to recommend, suggest, insist, etc from either one of the character's point of view to another character in the movie, or from my student to a character or Ms Collins. (You can find an edited list of what they came up with in the PDF at the bottom of the post.)Even the students who had not read/seen the movie were able to come up with something.

Tomorrow we are doing a quick warm up to review subjunctive conjugation with a partner activity based on the sentences they came up. (Also below) The student will first write out their answer & then go over the answers with their partner who will have the "answer key".  They will need to help each other out to understand any mistakes they made.

Download Hunger games student recommendations

Download Los Juegos de Hambre Practica con subjuntivo

I hope you can use some of these materials or lesson plan ideas in your class too!

Scavenger hunt

I have never seen my students so excited! Today was the Spanish 3 Scavenger Hunt. Yesterday students worked with a partner to write out directions from my classroom to anther school appropriate location.  At this location the students on the hunt would find a prize placed by the first set of students. My principals are fabulous to support this activity, and most of our staff is willing to join in the fun by allowing the kids to come in their classrooms to "search" for a clue.  My students are  practicing using  plural commands with this activity, and many realized the value of giving clear directions. Another take-way for them was the need to retain vocabulary from previous lessons.  They didn't have dictionaries or vocabulary sheets with them as they hunted for their prize, and had to rely on what they remembered to be successful.You can find the handout I gave my students here. Let me know if you try this with your students.

Student blogging in Spanish class

I started planning my student blog project last fall.  I mentioned that I had tried a variation of student blogging with previous classes, but didn’t care for the results.  Although it is still very early in the project, I really like the changes I made and the results so far are encouraging.  Let me start off by describing how I organized this project.

Purpose:  I want my students to produce written communication for an authentic audience.  I also want my students to self-select and internalize vocabulary that is of interest to them, and that in turn, they might be able to use in other forms of communication.  Another goal for this project is to allow students to gain confidence using web 2.0 tools, and develop an academic presence online.  It’s my hope that students will continue to write in their blogs as long as they are enrolled in a Spanish class at my high school, giving them a digital portfolio that reflects their growing fluency over the next two and a half years.

I wanted a component of this project to be student driven, so I allowed them to select any topic that was school appropriate to write about.  I gave them a week to think of what they might want to write about.  This has been the biggest difference between previous blogging projects.  Last time I attempted a blogging project, I gave my students a prompt or assignment, and had them write to that.

Audience:  Although I would like for my students to have an audience of native Spanish speakers, I have not been able to successfully find that audience for them.  I teach a total of 120 intermediate language learners, and I believe that they can be their own audience.  I have assigned a specific “blog buddy” to each student.  This student is in their physical class, and will be the primary peer editor during this project.  In addition, I had my students self-select 3 other blog buddies from any of my Spanish classes.  They signed up for their partners on a spreadsheet that identified the blog topic and blog url.  When a student’s slots were filled, the student would need to select a student that still had available slots.  Some students selected blog buddies based on the topic, but most selected blog buddies based on friendship. Each student has at least 4 blog readers, but I have noticed that some students are visiting and reading other blogs beyond the 4 that they have selected.

Organization tools: I am using Google Docs and our class Ning to help manage the organization.  I loaded my class roster on a Google Spreadsheet, and had each student type in their blog url and topic.  I have each of these documents posted online on the sidebar on our class Ning.  Students can always go to the Google Doc to get the url if they need to.  After they added the urls, I change the permission on the Google Docs so that students wouldn’t accidently delete information.  I printed a spreadsheet with the student names and had the students use this one to sign up for their blog buddies.  I kept the hard copy in case I have to refer to it or if the students forget who their blog buddies are.

I did a little research on blogging formats and decided to use Blogger.  Our district is using Google Apps, so the same account that they use for Google Docs, and Gmail should also work for their blog.  Our high school is in the process of rolling out these web tools. Most of my students are just starting to use some of these tools this year, so that meant that my students were using their Google account for the first time when they signed up for their blog.  

I found out the hard way that having more than 25 blog requests coming from the same IP address raises a flag at Blogger, and after my first class created their blogs, my third bell students were denied the requested blog.  I believe Blogger thought it was being spammed. I switched platforms with my fifth bell class to Wordpress.  The same thing happened there after 20 or so blogs were created.  This means that I have students working off of two blogging platforms.  The good news is I get to compare the two, and see which is easier to use for future projects.  The students who were not able to create their blog in class did it for homework.  Both platforms are easy enough to figure out, and with one or two exceptions, the students successfully had a blog to start writing on the following day.  

If you are doing this with a single class, I don’t think you will have any problems.  If you have more than 30 students, you will want to have the students create their blog at home or stagger the classes that are creating the blogs over the course of a few days.

Previously, my student’s blogs were housed on our class Ning.  Although this is very convenient and easy to use, the blogs would not follow them when they moved to Spanish 4.  They can also customize what their blogs look like with both Blogger and Wordpress, and I think it helps give them a sense of ownership over them.   Another advantage is other readers can comment on these blogs outside of our school.  The class Ning has a limited membership, and non-members cannot leave comments.  

I will do my best to write a follow up post on how I have been grading this project, and share a few sample student posts within the next few days.  If you have any experience with student blogging, I would love to hear from you.

Comparing food & eating habits across three cultures

As I mentioned in my previous blog post, I am taking a couple of graduate classes in conjunction with the Educator tour to China.  Another assignment for my class was to create a curriculum unit that would benefit my students in my Spanish class.  I had many ideas, but I didn't want to stray too far from my curriculum, so I created a lesson that compared foods across three cultures: Spain, China and the United States. I wanted to create a unit that allowed for some choice, but that was focused enough so students would not be overwhelmed.  

The lesson's objectives are the following: 

Using the target language (TL) students will be able to investigate, compare, contrast and analyze food in three cultures: Spain, China and the United States. Students will use the TL to discuss the relationship of food to a country’s culture.

Here is a PDF of the lesson I will be submitting to EF. Download Food Comparison Lesson Plan

I will be collecting resources for the classroom wiki mentioned in the lesson plan, and I will be happy to post when I have a variety of links to share.  If you have any interesting links that would work well with this project, I would appreciate learning about them.  

Thanks for stopping by!

Summer learning: Bacilos y Mi primer millón

Cover of Caraluna by Bacilos

How are your students using their language skills over the summer?  The end of the year is always bitter-sweet to me because I’m so proud of how far my students have come in a year with their communication skills, but I worry about how much they will forget over the summer.  

My son took Spanish in a formal classroom setting for the first time this year.  I was very pleased with his progress.  His teacher did a fine job of including all aspects of the language learning while maintaining a rigorous and manageable pace.  My son was able to talk directly to his step-mother in Spanish for the first time this spring, and uses the language with humor and creativity often.  I want him to retain the vocabulary and language structures until next school year, so I’m working with him informally over the summer to practice and use his skills.  

He loves music, plays several instruments, listens to all kind of genres, and blogs about his passion. So music is my gateway. I hope to share lessons that worked well with him, in hopes that you might use with your students. 

Primera lección

Mi primer millon: Bacilos

I printed the lyrics to the song, and asked Nathan to read and get a general idea of what the song is about.  I felt it was important to explain what “pegar en la radio” meant since it is idiomatic (maybe slang?), but holds the key to the song’s theme.  Other than that I told him not to worry about the tenses or words he did not recognize and just get the gist of the story.

On the way to get ice cream later on that day, we heard the song in the car.  He recognized the music because he’s heard me play it off and on for the last couple years.  We went over the song lyrics together over a milkshake & sorbet (sound like bribery?). I let him explain what he understood from his reading, and I filled in the gaps.  I explained some of the grammar he hasn’t formally learned but has heard (the nosotros command vámonos para Miami and the future tense in será mi primer millón).  I also pointed out formal grammar that he learned this school year like ir+a+infinitive  (Me van a escuchar en la radio) and direct object pronouns in comprarte una casa grande.  

I could tell most of the humor of the song had been lost to him in his first reading, so I wanted to move up from translation to interpretation. I asked him some open ended questions.  

Was the narrator a reliable narrator?

Did he really want to become rich & famous to buy his girlfriend a house or was he motivated by other things as well? What else motivated him?

Why would he feel the need to explain that Paulia Rubio is “sólo una amiga”?

Why does he feel he has to go to Miami to become rich & famous?

I asked Nathan to point out lyrics in the song to support his opinion as we talked about it.  On the way home we listened to the song again, and I asked Nathan if he was better able to make out the lyrics this time around.  He could.

His follow up assignment was to write a paragraph telling me what he is going to do with his first million dollars.  We talked about using the “formulas” his teacher taught him like ir+a+infinitive and pensar+infinitive. 

This morning I read a paragraph about a monkey he was going to buy... Hmmm...

Segunda lección: ¿Quiénes son Paulina Rubio, Alejandro Sanz y “Emilio”?

 

Student created storytelling prompts

I love any kind of story, and I enjoy using stories in my classroom.  This year I wanted to move the storytelling responsibility to my students.  One of my homework options is for kids to create a cartoon using the lesson’s vocabulary.  They can use an online site like Goanimate or they can draw it on unlined paper.  Initially I only had a couple of students who would turn these in, but the more we use cartoons in class, the more students are doing as a homework option.

As cute as the Goanimate cartoons turn out, my favorite are still the paper ones.  I find they are very versatile.  My favorite way to use them is for partner storytelling.  I will set the timer to 5-8 minutes and have partners take turns narrating the events in the cartoon.  Sometimes, I will turn that activity into an assessment by having them call into GoogleVoice after a quick run through with their peer, and re-tell the story individually.  Sometimes I will use the cartoons to practice asking and answering questions.  For our semester exam this year, I used different cartoons as writing prompts for the written preterit vs imperfect assessment.

I have purchased several storytelling cartoon books, but none have been as effective as what my students are producing.  The vocabulary in their cartoons is specific to what they have learned or are currently learning, and even the kids who draw stick figures come up with some creative stories that are perfect to use in a partner conversation.  The students who are drawing the cartoons are also reinforcing their vocabulary knowledge.  Many label items or provide a basic dialogue in the target language.   My students like seeing their cartoon used in class, and their classmates provide an authentic audience for their drawing & storytelling.

Here are a couple of examples:

Dana S - Realidades 2: 5B Accident & Injury & Body parts topic

Paige W - Realidades 2 6A: Sporting event vocabulary

 

Por vs Para partner Tic-Tac-Toe

We have started comparing the two prepositions POR vs PARA in our Spanish 3 class. I use mnemonic devices whenever possible, and I will be using ATTRACTED to remember POR usage again this year.

A - around a time or place

T - through a place/location

T - transportation or means of communication

R - reason (porque/ por eso)

A - going After something

C - cost

T - thanks for..

E- exchange/ substitution

D - duration (how long)

As a way to introduce the material had my students look and listen to the Voicethreads last year’s Spanish 3 students put together using this mnemonic device.   Monday I had partners practice using the preposition by creating original sentences in Spanish.  They used a TicTacToe grid labeled with the corresponding mnemonic device in each block.  When the student got three in a row before their partner, he/she won.  I asked partners to play at least three games, and they were not be able to  repeat similar sentences  used in previous games.  

You can download the PDF of the grid below. 

Download Attracted to POR

 

Snowball fight in Spanish class

I am a grammar nerd.  I liked diagraming sentences in junior high, but I am well aware my students have no idea what diagramming a sentence means, nor do they need to diagram one to communicate.  I still believe I need to teach grammar in order for my students to become proficient communicators, and the longer I teach, the more I realize I need to vary the way I present grammar.  Giving notes or talking through a PowerPoint is fine sometimes, but that can not be the only way to introduce and explain language structure. 

Last November my school sent me and some colleagues to a Differentiation Assessment workshop, and I picked up Betty Holla's book. Her book has some good ideas on how to present material and informally assess students, and I modified the “Snowball” activity today during a mini-lesson on past participles.

Here is what we did:

Individually students read several sentences with past participles and answered leading questions on what they read.  They had to speculate on how the participles were formed and explain how they were used in the sentences. (The examples used participles as adjectives.)  I walked around the room praising the students who were on target & giving hints to the ones who were having problems seeing the pattern or who didn’t understand the questions. The next step in this grammar lesson was to have students share their answers with their partner.  I did my best to make sure that a peer explained the correct answer to students who were having problems understanding.  As a whole class, we went over the answers together.  I clarified concepts, put specific examples on the board, and gave them the irregular participles. 

 OK.  Here is the “snowball” part. I asked my kids to pretend they were a teacher and asked them to write three questions that would measure their “students'” understanding of past participles.  They put their name on the top right hand corner of their paper, and then wadded up their “quiz” into a paper “snowball”.  I had the kids throw their “snowball” to the  opposite side of the room from where they sat.  My students had to grab whatever snowball was close to them, and then answer the questions.  They wrote their name on the bottom right hand corner.   I collected their “quizzes” and read through the questions & answers.  It gave me a very good idea of who understood the concept.  I highlighted any “quiz questions” that didn’t make sense, and any answers that were wrong.  Tomorrow I will quickly follow up with those kids individually while the class works on a vocabulary review activity. 

A few students did not like having to figure out the grammar themselves.  Few were confident in their answers until I gave them positive feedback (and then, they glowed!). I think ALL of them loved throwing the “snowball”.  

I’m very curious to see what the retention of this grammar concept looks like tomorrow and next week.  This activity took the whole bell when you include the follow up worksheet.  I know that I could give them this information on a Power Point and it would not take this much class time.  I also figure that by the end of class today my students have been exposed to, explained, heard and/or saw this grammar point at least six times in a few different modalities. 

How do you vary grammar presentation in your class?  What are your thoughts on time spent on “discovery” learning vs. traditional presentation? 

 

A little World Cup in the middle of winter

As I look out my window at the snow falling, I realize how long ago the World Cup took place, but I still want to share a lesson plan that uses this event.  Our textbook has a thematic unit on competition and sporting events, and I wanted to pull some authentic material to practice the vocabulary.  I was very surprised that only a handful of students watched or really knew anything about the World Cup, but most were familiar with Waka Waka, the 2010 World Cup theme song by Shakira and Freshlyground. 

After explaining some key vocabulary in the lyrics that were not a part of my students’ working vocabulary, the students listened to the song in Spanish and completed a cloze exercise.  Partners then worked together to figure out what the lyrics were saying.   Together we went over some of the lyrics that were harder to figure out. For homework students  went to Zachary Jones' site to view the official video in English.  I printed out the song in English so that the students could compare it to the Spanish version as they watched the video.

In class the next day, partners discussed and described what they saw in the video. We then talked about how similar images or ideas in the song were expressed differently in each version of the song.  For example, the Spanish version said “Quítate el polvo, ponte de pie y vuelves al ruedo”, and the English version said “Pick yourself up, and dust yourself off and back in the saddle”.  The picking yourself up & dusting yourself was almost a word for word translation, but vuelves al ruedo and back in the saddle require cultural and idiomatic knowledge to make sense. I then asked my students to find other lyrics that had similar meaning, but the language used was different.  

As my students move toward intermediate language proficiency, I hope to be able to come back to some of these examples when they run into idiomatic expressions or try to translate language literally.  This kind of lesson plan is my favorite kind because there is so much going on, but it flows in a very organic manner.  My students are practicing the lesson’s vocabulary, analyzing language, listening & reading authentic materials and enjoying the music all at the same time.