More Spanish

Hello (again...)

It has been a looong time!  I have been busy (like all of you) with the start of the new school year.  I have a fabulous group of Spanish 3 students this year, and I just wish I had a few more hours to my day so I could share all the great stuff my students are up to...

I continue to use my homework system.  I really love it & I think my students benefit from it. This year it feels like MORE of my students are doing MORE meaningful things with the vocabulary assignments.  I had a student who follows politics do a political spoof on Goanimate using vocabulary from our lesson.  I had another student write a short story about the Mario video game, using the vocabulary in a very imaginative way. I have two (good) rappers that amaze me with their songs, usually performed live in the classroom (I'll try & tape one soon).  Today I want to feature one special student (Matt R) who is taking photos of the vocabulary and creating a story with them.  Here is the link to the photos he took, using vocabulary from 4A of Realidades 2 text.  I hope to use this photo-story to explain and practice imperfect & then compare preterit vs imperfect. 

How is your year going?  I would love to hear from you if you have tried this vocabulary homework in class.  

 

Ser vs Estar mnemonic poster

I am going to be spending a little more time reviewing and practicing Ser vs Estar at the start of the school year with my level 3 students. I created a poster with DOCTOR ELF as a mnemonic device. I did not know about this device until I saw it on Easiest Spanish blog post. Thanks!  I also want to thank all the people who contribute quality photos over at Morguefile.com for commercial free usage. My Elf photo came from their files :)

Download Ser vs Estar

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? 

 

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

 

Student created board games

I have several different posts I'm working on right now, but I wanted to brag on my students until the other pieces are written & posted.  Friday was Homecoming, Class Color Day & Game day for us.  My students created all the beautiful board games in the photos.  I am amazed by their creativity and their effort. What you see here is just a sample of some of the games that my kids developed for the Realidades 2, 3B lesson.  My students designed the boards and the questions as part of their homework.  I really, really think this is working very well.  Feedback from my students has been positive, and my students are actively generating products and using the lesson vocabulary for an audience of their peers. I hope to post the second part of my Favorite Tech Tools soon...  

Vocabulary practice in action

Every year I have at least one good idea.  Sometimes it is a lesson, sometimes it is a way of doing things more effectively.  My good idea has come kind of late this year, but I am very excited about it :)

A few week ago I blogged about a brainstorming session my department had on what kind of vocabulary homework to give our students. I was having problems with my Tic-Tac-Toe idea, so I opted for this assignment.  It allows students to select from a variety of activities.  I think there is a balance between the kind of work they do and the points they earn from it, and I believe that the point value also reflects the time each activity will take to complete.  My students will also have some flexibility with what is due when. If a student has a lot of homework in other classes on Tuesday, maybe she does an activity that is not as time consuming Tuesday night, and does the activity that requires more time Thursday. The important thing is that she is at least doing something with the vocabulary outside of class for at least 3 nights out of the week.  

Anyway... I rolled out the homework plan this week, and I am very pleased with the results.  Here is a link to our class wiki where I put some of the digital products.  Everything under 8B is student produced... and those are just the digital products.  I'm going to try and post or figure out a way to showcase some of the non-digital work.  I have had 3 rap songs created, numerous drawings and crossword puzzles, 5 short stories, and tons of kids practicing pronunciation and spelling with traditional vocabulary activities. 

I have positive feedback so far from the students.  I'm going to have them take a survey after we have done a couple of vocabulary units to get "official" feedback.  As far as grading goes... I am working on a system to make it more efficient.  Looking over the work is no more time consuming than traditional paper/pencil homework.  What I find myself doing is trying to incorporate the outstanding products into my class as a warm up or for those last 5 minutes of class, and that is taking some additional planning time. 

Vocabulary practice

My students are not retaining vocabulary this year.  I like our textbook, and I think it does a nice job of recycling vocabulary, but a large number of my students do not spend enough contact time with the vocabulary outside of class.  The traditional workbook and worksheets are not helping at all.  I think many kids just write down words to be done with the assignment or copy from a peer. So I have been brainstorming what kind of homework I can give that will be more useful for them.  At this level, I believe practice with vocabulary is what they really need, so during our March inservice our Foreign Language department got together to brainstorm activities that students can create to practice vocabulary.  We wanted a list of activities that would appeal to a variety of students and intelligences, and most important, I wanted activities that were tangible and student produced.  This is what we have come up with so far.  After our spring break, I plan on rolling out the options.  I will pick 9 activities & put them on a Tic-Tac-Toe grid & have students select 3 activities in a row to complete per week.  That will be their homework.  Since I teach 5 sections of the same level, I will stagger the due dates to make it manageable to grade.  Most of these activities will be a completion grade, but I will provide my students with 5-10 minutes every other day to use the activities they created in class with their partner(s) or co-operative groups.  Any additional ideas or suggestions are always welcomed :)

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. 

Netbook Journal

 Earlier this year our school district offered high school teachers an opportunity to submit a proposal to “Re-imagine the 21st Century Classroom” . I, along with two English teachers - Tricia Buck and David Lunn - were awarded 30 netbooks and an opportunity to introduce technology driven activities to our curriculum. We are being supported by our district’s Instructional Technology Specialist, Cary Harrod. I am thrilled to discover what my Spanish students can achieve when they augment their studies with technology on a daily basis. 

 Our first activities started at the end of this past week, after a bout with a stupid cold. On Thursday and Friday I combined traditional instruction and self-paced work online to help students learn how to use the present perfect and review verbs that use indirect object pronouns. I gave students a quick explanation of how the present perfect works in Spanish, and then assigned a couple of workbook activities for practice. No questions. The students then moved on to a self-paced game on www. quia.com over the same material. The interactive activity tells them immediately when they make a mistake. Most of the kids figured out their mistake, but a few needed my help figuring out how to use the reflexive pronouns with this tense. These same kids must have made the same mistakes on the workbook activity, but either didn’t notice their mistakes or didn’t ask for clarification. I really like how quia practice gives kids that direct feedback, and doesn’t let them complete the activity till they correct the mistake.

 After the grammar practice the students moved on to a listened activity. Thanks to Zachary Jones’ site, they were able to view and listen to an Argentinean pop song that used the verb gustar over and over. They filled out a clozed activity and answered some comprehension questions about the song. The kids were able to go at their own pace when they used the netbooks and headphones. Some students understood most of the lyrics the first time around, and others needed to pause and rewind the song a few times to understand what was being said. When we get back on Monday, my students will work with their partner in Spanish to talk about what they liked or disliked about this pop song, and that will transition into other verbs that follow the same pattern as gustar. I like how my students can work at their own pace, and all students were actively engaged when they were online. Some students finished very quickly, so I am brainstorming open-ended activities that these kids can work on while their peers complete the original lesson plans. Any suggestions are very welcomed.