More Spanish

Future student blog project

I like the blog feature that comes with our class Ning. However, I don’t feel that I use the student blogs in a meaningful way. Yet.  Previously my students have used their blogs to post written assignments, and I would pair them up & ask them to read & comment on each other’s work.  I found that it would take me longer to read and give students meaningful feedback on their blogs than if they turned it in on paper or dropped the document into a network folder in school. 

I wanted my students’ blogs to be a place where they could write, read and comment on things that were meaningful to them, but that didn’t really happen.  They didn’t have an interest in writing about the topics that I suggested, and really didn’t care about commenting on each other’s work unless it was “for a grade”.  I thought that I could use their blogs to connect with Spanish speaking students, but that virtual exchange has had its own set of issues. Sooo...

I’m thinking of how to make the writing and blogging meaningful.  I’m in the brainstorming stage of a project I want to roll out second semester.  I would like for each of my students to pick a topic of interest to them, and then I would like them to write short blog entries (8-10 sentences) about this topic on a weekly basis.  I’ll probably try it out for 4-6 weeks, and evaluate the project at that time. 

At this time I’m thinking I will assign “blog buddies” so that every blog has at least an audience of one or two students, but my hope is the kids that share a similar interest will visit each other’s blog.  They will need to gloss new vocabulary words for their readers. I also will have them tag each entry by topic so that the posts can be easily found within the class Ning. I will give them class time to work on the draft, re-write and post to the blog.  If they need to gather images or take photos, they will need to do that at home.  

I will have to come up with a quick weekly check list to keep the grading manageable, and a very focused rubric to be used at the end of the project.  I’m concerned that it may become overwhelming to grade, so the final grade will be an assessment of the overarching project rather than grading each individual blog post for each student on a weekly basis.  

So far these are the topics I will suggest to my students: fashion/clothing, sports, movie, music or TV reviews, video game tips, easy craft how-to, food, humor posts like Dear Blank, Please Blank... I hope that once I show them some examples, they will also suggest their own topics.  I think the key is to keep the posts short and encourage topics with vocabulary that is familiar to them or have high cognate usage. 

Sara Conttrell wrote about how her students blog for homework , and she has some great suggestions.  I know that her class size is different from mine, so not all that she does will be feasible for me, but the post is a good resource for anyone else who is interested in having their students blog.

I would love to hear from you if you have successfully done something like this in your class.  Any suggestions are welcomed.

 

Standards poster to use in Spanish class

One of my goals for this year is to have my students understand the curriculum standards, and see how the work we do in class relates to them.  I have created a handout/poster/slide to use at the start of the year in Spanish.  The language has been simplified and summarizes the standards.  Feel free to use & happy start to the new school year!

Download PDF StandardsPoster

Voicethread: Education in China

Another great opportunity I had with EF on my China trip was to earn graduate level credit by taking some classes offered through University of the Pacific.  One of the assignments for this class was to create a Voicethread on a topic of interest that I was able to explore while I was on tour.  My Voicethread will give you my take on what I observed and learned about Chinese education.  Please feel free to leave feedback on the blog or on the Voicethread. 

EF Language School Visit in China

I just got back from an incredible Educators’ Tour in China with EF.  Our group was very pleased with the experience, and although I am not usually fond of traveling with a tour group for leisure, I wouldn’t visit China any other way.   I’ve traveled with students various times with EF, but this expedition was specifically designed for teachers and professors.  We were not able to tour a Chinese school because students were on summer break when we visited, so EF graciously included a visit to EF’s Language Schools in Shanghai.  (I was not aware that EF has so many different businesses, including language schools and IB programs.) 

On a later post I’ll share some thoughts and insights I have on Chinese education in general, but for now I want to address English as a Foreign Language in China.  Chinese students start taking English classes around year 4 or 5 in their primary schools. EF Language Schools and other language schools like this supplement the learning students do in their regular school day.  According to our teacher tour guide, Natasha, tuition to a language school can be as much as 6-10% of a family’s annual income for bi-weekly sessions.  One of the reasons families are willing to spend this kind of money on a supplemental language learning is because the Chinese schools teach a grammar based curriculum that requires memorization and a “formulaic” approach to learning English, but provide very little authentic practice or language usage.  

Our tour started out in the EF headquarters. We had four speakers address the EFL program that EF markets & promotes. Currently EF has over 100,000 students in China alone!  The school’s philosophy can be summarized with the goals of their Life Club program.  EF wants to expose their students to authentic tasks, encourage autonomous learning, incorporate motivation, promote mixed ability learning and use language in a meaningful way.  

Currently they are launching Trailblazers, a multimedia textbook series, written and created by EF.  The manga inspired textbook follows the adventures of some teens as they battle aliens who are trying to cause havoc.  The target audience is 11-15 year olds, but I think it may appeal more to the 9-12 crowd.  I like the concept of having a plot based textbook (rather than a grammar-based), but I have to question how “authentic” scenarios with aliens will be.  I understand how the cartoon videos that come with the series may engage a young language learner, but I have reservations about how well they will work for listening comprehension exercises. It is important to keep in mind how drastically different this curriculum is compared to rote memorization that comes with the language classes in a traditional Chinese school.  EF is trying hard to create a product that will keep students motivated.  EF also has several iPad apps and computer games that supplement their program. 

After the presentation our group of 35 teachers & friends broke up into four groups and each group was assigned one specific Shanghai EF language school.  Our group had the best experience.  Our school was located in an affluent area with beautiful high-rise residential buildings all around it. We had personal student tour guides for our school visit: Sabrina & Jenny.  Sabrina, 12, was a fluent English speaker and ballerina, with more poise and personality than I ever will have.  Jenny, also 12, was a little shyer, and sometimes required a little help from Sabrina. Our students ranged in ages from 5-16.  We visited the youngest language learners’ classroom first just to say “Hi” and “What’s your name?”. Another classroom was testing.  The third classroom had presentations going on.  After presenting their dialogs, we sat in a big circle and had a Q & A.  The students had prepared questions for us, but they felt awkward & self-conscious trying to have a conversation with such a big group listening on, so instead, we turned to the kids sitting next to us and tried to engage them with one-on-one conversation... much more effective.  The next activity was a group game using a smartboard.  Although classes ended at 4 pm, most of our students stayed on to talk to us in the school’s lobby.  A few of the students had traveled to English speaking countries and were pretty close to being fluent English speakers.  Most students I talked to wanted to go to the US, England or Australia for university (one of the advertising billboards tag line was “From EF to Harvard”).  We found out the school’s director had had a two days to prepare for our visit. We appreciate their time, and I was very impressed with what I saw.

I understand that our experience was not shared by the other 3 groups.  One group only had a few minutes of contact time with the students, and another group’s visit was not as organized as our visit was.  

Most of our tour guides during the trip spoke English well, even if a couple had some problems with pronunciation at times.  I was surprised that most of the staff at the hotels did not speak English at all.  Several times during our trip we had young language learners come up to our group to practice English. Obviously the Chinese value speaking English quite a bit, and as tourism in China grows, I believe conversational English will be more prevalent. 

Sorry to say, I only picked up a little bit of Chinese during my visit.  How do Chinese programs in the US compare? Here is a 2010 article from the New York Times that summaries Chinese language learning.  

 

Some thoughts on digital natives in my classroom

Thanks to Ant McNeill for photo via Flicker.com

Many believe Generation Z children seamlessly manage technology for a variety of purposes.  The kids who grew up with the Web, MP3 players and cell phones have been exposed at a much younger age to technological tools that have drastically changed the way we complete tasks.  These same technologies have also added a plethora of entertainment options.  Despite the exposure these children have had to these digital tools, they still compartmentalize entertainment, their social life and “formal learning”.  I believe that students will develop skills that will allow them to navigate more fluidly between each of these compartments, but I have to continually remind myself to be patient about the process. 

As some of you have read before I am fortunate to have a classroom set of netbooks. Many, many things have changed about the way I run my classroom since we have had access to them, but I am surprised every year by the time we spend in class learning or reviewing some very basic digital skills.  These are a few things I took for granted my students knew how to do:

-Email a document to themselves

-Trouble shoot a frozen screen

-Set up a user name and password that they could remember easily the rest of the school year

-Retrieve the password and/or user name if they forgot it

-Find and use a web site’s help center/support

-Embed a link

-Load an image online

-Use a web site’s navigation menu to find specific information if it is not the first thing that pops up on a site

You get the idea... To be fair, many of my students negotiate these tasks and are a huge help in class as they troubleshoot issues with their peers. However many students who successfully use Facebook, do not transfer over the skills they use on that site to similar tasks needed to do work for Spanish class.  This is one example of compartmentalizing.

Here is another example of compartmentalizing outside interests with educational goals. Toward the end of the school year my students had an option to self-select a topic of interest to them and work on it over the course of two weeks.  (I’ll describe the project in more detail in a later post.)  When given the opportunity to select any topic of interest to them and use it Spanish class, many kids really didn’t know what to pick.  Several wanted to do fall back on a traditional report & posterboard.  Not only did they have problems considering their hobbies and outside interests as a viable topic, but some still wanted to print out and paste images to card-stock despite having experience and exposure to several multimedia tools. 

This was not the highlight of my week.  Thankfully I talked to my colleague and Art teacher Rod Vesper (you can read his blog here). He had just visited some students in our district that were part of a 7th grade pilot program that allows students to bring their laptops to school. He was very impressed with the learning and the manner that these kids used digital tools to learn.  Seamlessly.  He also had experienced some of the same issues that I had been working through.  And he reminded me to be patient.  

Our students revert to what is comfortable to them.  They are well acquainted with reports and posterboard visuals.  They are accustomed to teacher-directed activities.  It will take some time to shift this mindset.  Student need to be exposed to digital tools that can be used for learning as well as personal enjoyment.   They need to have the opportunities to develop digital skills to perform tasks for learning.   They need to understand that digital skills and tools are not exclusive to entertainment and chatting with their friends.  These tools can also be used in the classroom effectively. I look forward to having those 7th graders in my classroom in the next couple of years. Until then I will remind myself that I am doing my part to shift that mindset in my classroom. 

If you use digital tools in your classroom, how do you work in the learning curve into your lesson plans? 

 

Goya’s Caprichos at the Taft Museum

If you live close to Cincinnati, you might want to visit the Taft Art Museum in January.  Thru the 30th, the Taft has all 80 Caprichos by  renown Spanish artist Francisco Goya.   I was familiar with several of the etchings, and I knew before I visited the museum that this exhibit would be dark. However, I was not prepared for how disturbing the entire collection of images would be.  I believe the exhibit is very well curated and quite impressive, but before you send younger students to view, you need to be aware that Goya criticizes all facets of Spanish society and culture, and some prints contain mature themes. 

I offered my students an optional assignment to take advantage of this traveling exhibit.  They needed to view the collection, and they could select one of three follow up activities using the art pieces as a point of inspiration.  

1. The student could create an original piece of art and explain what artistic elements found in the etchings inspired their art work.  
2. The student could also take one specific print and write a short story about it using the past tense.  
3. The third option was a traditional research paper on Goya and his life, also written in the past tense. 

I am currently in the process of grading the written work, but I wanted to share some of the best pieces of art work with you.  This type of activity is certainly not new or innovative to the Spanish classroom, but every time I offer this type of assignment choice, I am impressed by the artistic talent in my classroom.  A couple of these kids are not the best Spanish students when it comes to grammar, but I believe they gleaned important historical and cultural information from the art they viewed, and that is certainly worth giving them this type of project. 

The links below will take you to photos of the student's art work.

Kelsey D worked on a scratch board and mirrored Goyas' views on marriage. 

Dana S worked in ink and provided a commentary of the legal system.

Haley C used pencil in her piece that expresses how times haven't changed that much from the 1800s to our current time.

Antony P also used pencil to depict Goya's distaste for mankind. 

 

 

Working toward 10,000 hours

My student are not retaining vocabulary this year.  If they hope to become competent Spanish speakers, they will need to spend time outside of class working on it. Our 55 minute class will not be enough for them to internalize the material, and allow them to develop fluency.  If each student would spend 12 minutes a night reviewing and studying vocabulary, I would see a huge improvement.  The problem is that most don’t.  What most of my students do is spend 15-20 minutes the day before the quiz cramming 30-40 vocabulary words into their short term memory. This is enough for them to do OK on that quiz, but a few weeks later, they have forgotten many of the words they crammed.  

The text I use in class does a nice job of recycling material, and this is how I know they don’t retain what they worked on three weeks or three months ago. Kids will look up a word on WordReference.com that we used in the previous lesson.  Our text uses the vocabulary in context, and the material that they learn is useful for daily communication. I also ask my students to use Spanish to express themselves in a personal and meaningful way on a regular basis through project based assessments. However, it is still not enough for them to retain the material. 

I keep thinking of Gladwell’s 10,000 hour rule.  In his book Outliers, Gladwell tells us that one indicator of success is practice, and 10,000 hours of practice leads to mastery of just about any skill.  This is very applicable in a foreign language class.  Anyone can become proficient in a language if enough time is spent immersed in it. If my students would spend 12 minutes a day, five days a week that would be another whole hour towards fluency. 

I want to brainstorm ways that will promote this extra hour a week outside of class with vocabulary practice.  I want my students to be able to select the manner in which they  study the vocabulary, and I also want to see tangible evidence of the studying.  If you have some activities or ideas that have worked for you, I would love to hear about them. 

New school year, new goals

My students and I have jumped into the new school year full force.  I have provided my students with much wider variety of assignments and assessments than in previous years, and they seem to be responding well so far.  This is the first time since I started teaching that I did not know the bulk of my students.  Since I have been teaching Spanish III for three years, this means I did not have any of them in class last year or year before last. Although it is October, I still feel like I am getting to know them and they are getting to know me.  I feel like I had to be very diligent about getting feedback to them very quickly so that they would understand my expectations, so I have been doing a lot of short assessments and tons of grading.  

I have been including more cooperative learning into my lessons.  Jon Orech was kind enough to suggest some readings on cooperative learning, and I am using some of the methods and techniques in Spencer Kagan’s  Cooperative Learning to get started.  Although I have always done a lot of partner and small group work, how to assess group work has always been tricky for me, so I hope to work on that this year.   Hopefully I will have the time to document what is working and not working on my blog.

Another goal for this school year is to get to a point where kids can self select some of their assignments. I have been brainstorming with other teachers in my department effective methods of having our students work with vocabulary outside of the classroom.  If this is the only homework my students do, I will be thrilled.  The problem is that many don’t do it.  So I am trying to figure out a way (other than quizzing them to death) to hold them accountable for learning their vocabulary in a manner that is meaningful to them.

Please feel free to share any tips on either subject.  As always your comments are helpful and appreciated!

Collaborations & connections

I want my students to collaborate with other students who speak Spanish.  I would like to give them the opportunity to learn first hand about the countries that are mentioned in sidebar of their textbooks.  The more examples I see from other disciplines about project based learning, the more convinced I am that at the core of whatever project we work on, we must make meaningful connections with others in the target language.

I have been working toward this goal since October 2008.  For one reason or another, some of the collaborations have fallen through.  I set up an account on epals, and was thrilled to have a response with in the first two days. “Please respond as quickly as possible.  We are very interested in starting a correspondence.”  Unfortunately, I did not hear back from this gentleman for another two weeks. I’m still waiting to hear back from him about timelines, and goals for the email exchange.  Another teacher from Central America wrote with very clear expectations in mind.  She wanted to communicate twice a month.  She explained how she evaluated her students’ email.  I was thrilled with her commitment, but let her know that our school year ends in early June, and wondered if that would work out for her classroom (her school year is just starting).  I haven’t heard back from her.

I still haven’t given up hope for a possible exchange with a school in Colombia that my cousin attends.  The principal loves the idea.  The technology coordinator thinks they have the computers to make it happen.  She sent me the roster for the students who may be involved.  There are 450 names.  No teacher in Colombia to help coordinate.

Just when I was ready to give up, Gerardo Lazaro a science teacher and technology coordinator in Lima, Peru, that I met through Twitter, graciously accepted my invitation to collaborate on a couple of short projects.  

So if anyone out there has any leads, sites or ideas that may help me find a set of students and teacher willing to collaborate and connect with my wonderful Spanish learners, I would really appreciate a reply :)

Me fascina Flickr, me encanta Google Docs y me gustas tú, Leigh :)

I learned and processed so much in the last couple of days I can’t get the words on the computer screen quick enough.  Let me try and explain what has gone on in class the last few days.  I apologize for the long post that may not be as cohesive as I’d like it to be.

My students, after three years of using and practicing verbs like gustar bombed what was suppose to be a grade boosting quiz.  So I asked my buddy Leigh for suggestions.  She mentioned the song Me gustas tú by Manu Chao, and sent me a couple of wonderful examples of a project her students created using a comic creator site.  I owned the song, but had been hesitant to use it in class (even the edited version) because of the refrain “Me gustas tú”. I didn’t want them to become confused with the use of the verb “gustar” in the tú form, when 99% of the time these verbs are used in the third person.  I placed a few examples from the song on the blackboard, and asked the kids to explain the grammar to me.  A few were able to explain why  “Me gustan los aviones”, and “Me gustas tú” were both grammatically correct.  Then, on their own, some other students came up with “Te gusto” =  You like me & “Les gustas” = They like you.  Bottom line, there is a lot of English interference with this type of construction, and the kids will need to continually practice and use before they stop translating from English into Spanish. 

I modified Leigh’s  gustar project from a comic book to a slide show presentation.  I wanted the kids to learn about Google Docs and Flickr.  I was shocked to find out that in a class of 24-26 students only 2-3 knew what Google Docs were. However, I was hesitant about asking the kids to create yet another account on the Internet since they already have four accounts for my Spanish class. I made it optional.  The kids could create a Powerpoint presentation on Word, or they could do it on Google Docs for a little extra credit.  Only one students chose Powerpoint.  Now that they know how easy and convenient this web 2.0 tool is to use, we can use with future projects. I stand by my theory that my students will cross a river filled with crocodiles for extra credit, but don’t really want to use notecards for 5 minutes a night to reinforce vocabulary. (I know, I know... I am enabling this behavior...)

I have also been observing what motivates certain students.  I’m going to protect the innocent by making a compilation of a few students into two.  Let’s name the first one Paco.  He may not be getting an A in my class (see notecard issue above), but he is talking in Spanish whenever and with whoever will talk back to him.  He wants to read a version of Don Quixote that is appropriate for his language skill just because he is interested. He has figured out how to put accent marks on web pages using laptops, because I asked him to help me. Extra credit never came into any of this (he also was one of the 2-3 kids who used Google Docs before).  

Now let me tell you about Dora.  She is a straight A student.  She only used Flickr because I threw a little extra credit for those who used images from that site instead of a Google image search.  I pointed out what gorgeous images Flickr had to offer her presentation, and she agreed, but still preferred a search on Google because it was quicker.  This image was fine for her instead of this one.  She said she just needed a soccer ball.  Nothing fancy.  Using a Creative Common search added an extra step she didn’t feel was necessary.  She has other classes and commitments, and her time is better spent doing that work.  A soccer ball is just a soccer ball.  

I’m not saying that Tina doesn’t deserve her A.  She does her work, and knows her stuff. She also enjoys talking in Spanish, and does it very well.  But darn it, Paco deserves that A also... I’m figuring out a way to make sure he gets it too...