More Spanish

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.

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.

 

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

 

Literati game for Spanish vocabulary

Happy New Year!!! I hope you had a refreshing break and are ready to get back to your classrooms.

Our family spent several nights this holiday season on board game marathon sessions.  My in-laws gave my son Literati, and as we played I thought I could adapt it for my classroom.  The object of the game is to use 5 vocabulary words  from the stack to write a short story before the timer runs out.  Now the words in the English game are very challenging at times, but I thought I would use previous vocabulary words that my students studied in our Spanish 3 class.  I will make my own cards out of 3 x 5 notecards, and I will assign the cards points based on the level of difficulty of the vocabulary word.   I also want to include a spinner with my game to chose the tense the students need to use when writing the story. Using the  tense correctly will result in bonus points. My students could work in groups of 3 or 4.  This means I would need to create 2-3 sets of this game, and I could use them in conjunction with a couple of other board games like Bananagrams and a story dice game I picked up at Border's last month.  I figure I could set the games up in stations and the groups could rotate from one game to the other every 15 minutes.  I'll post again when my cards are done & to let you know how the game went over.  If you have suggestions on where to purchase inexpensive timers (90 seconds -2 minutes) or spinners that I can adapt for this game please let me know. :)

My cousin wins Whitley Fund for Nature award

I received an email from my very proud uncle last Friday.  My cousin was one of eight people who won the British Whitley award.  Here is the video that explains his work.  As luck would have it, we are doing an environmental unit in my Spanish 3 class.  I am going to enjoy showing this short little video as a starting point for conversation on endangered animals. 

Another site my students have been using is this Spanish environmental blog.  The articles are short, easy to read and full of cognates.  This site lends itself to choice.  On Friday, my students selected an article they were interested in reading and wrote a short response to it on our class Ning. I'm looking forward to reading their responses.

Update:  After sending my cousin a congratulation email, I heard back that he needs the video script translated into Spanish for fundraising/information purposes.  He asked for my students' help.  How cool is that?  New lesson plans for next week :)

Netbook Journal: California Dreaming Pt 3

California Dreaming Pt 3

Leigh Murrell and I have organized a cross-country collaborative project between two of our Spanish 3 classes.  You can read more about this project here and here.

Our students finished working on their collaborative Voicethread a couple weeks ago, and all classes have taken a survey on the project so we have some very specific feedback for future collaborative efforts.  

My thoughts

I really enjoyed working with another teacher, and Leigh was the icing on the cake.  She is very organized, creative and willing to explore all possibilities.  I appreciated hearing and seeing student work from California mirror what I see in my classes in Ohio.  Most projects tuned out very well, but some were exceptional.  You can tell so much about a student’s interest and motivation from something like this, even if they are not in your class.  Although the project was time consuming,  our students used language in context with a purpose, and picked up some information about the culture on the way.  I believe that was well worth the time and energy spent. 

Next time we do something like this, I would liked to monitor the collaborative efforts better.  Some groups did a very nice job working together throughout the project, however other students interacted with each other, but they really didn’t work cohesively as a group.  These are skills that need to be practiced, and don’t come naturally even when the kids are sitting next to each other.  Next year, we will set up smaller exchanges between the kids leading up to a collaborative project.  I also want to encourage more peer editing between the students, so we will put an activity in place that will require the students to look at each other’s work and give/get feedback before a final copy is produced. 

Student feedback

Most students used Google Docs to communicate despite having a Ning forum.  This surprised me because this is the “Facebook generation”.  I thought that type of communication would come naturally to them. Many wanted to text with each other, but based on the survey it doesn’t seem like any did. Only one kid used email. 

Although most students rated their work as excellent or good, and most thought they should get an A, 64 % of the students spent “just enough time/effort” to get the assignment done as was necessary.  37% did not go back and listen the group Voicethread when the project was finished.   I find discordance in these results. Why would a student think they deserve a ‘A” if all they did was the minimum work possible?

My students’ favorite part of the assignment was working and talking to the California students.  Several enjoyed learning about new music.  Rachel said “I thought it was really cool that we were working on a project with kids on the other side of the country that we've never met, especially on the Googledoc when we were all 3 editing it. I also really enjoyed reading about Spanish music.”

The most challenging part according to my students was communicating with the California students.  Ian said “Dealing with expectations of homework, especially at night with the time change, because a good time for them to start their homework is time for me to go to bed.”  I think the best work came from the students who got a chance to work together in real time.  I assumed my students would use the Ning when they couldn’t work in real time.  Next time, we will provide an activity that allows the students to feel comfortable using the forum to communicate with each other. 

Here are some of my favorite Voicethreads: 

Flamenco, Pop en Español, Bachata, Merengue. 

Thanks again to Leigh & her Spanish 3 classes! 

Netbook Journal: California Dreaming Pt 2

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.

Leigh Murrell and I have organized a cross-country collaborative project between two of our Spanish 3 classes.  You can read more about this project here and here.

My students were very excited to meet their group-mates on Skype Monday morning.  This is the first time I have used Skype with these classes, so the novelty created much excitement and nervousness.  Typically my students revert to the most basic Spanish  when they are nervous, and this was no exception.  Each group of 2-4 students introduced themselves and made Spanish 1 chitchat for 2-4 minutes, and then they went to the Google Docs Leigh had set up for the written portion of the collaboration.

You can read the directions for the second part of this assignment here.  

The students have been working on this portion of the assignment off and on all week.  By the end of this weekend they should have a draft of the written section complete.  My hope is that the groups will peer edit and proofread their work, and by the middle of next week, will start work on the Voicethread. 

The highs:

• My students’ excitement when they met their California group mates was fun to experience.
• Some of Leigh’s students are very good writers, and a few of my students want to rise to the occasion and do a nice job on their end.
• My more proficient writers are using multiple tenses correctly to express themselves without any prompting, and doing some fabulous work.
• Collaborating with Leigh has energized me professionally.

The lows:

• Some of the kids are not getting to meet their California partners via Skype because of the time difference.  
• Most kids still feel awkward using Spanish, and want revert to English for the planning process.  Maybe I just need to accept this at this level?
• I think the assignment would be easier to complete if the kids had more time to collaborate in real time, but due to schedules it is hard to do, so most of their work needs to get done using Google Docs, email and Ning. 
• Most of my kids are only using class time to work on the project and not spending much time outside of class on it.  

 

Netbook Journal: California Dreaming Pt 1

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.

My Twitter friend and colleague, Leigh Murrell (who lives & teaches in sunny California) and I are very excited about our first student collaborative project. Two of our Spanish III classes are working together to learn about different music genres heard in Spanish speaking countries. We started planning our hispanic music collaboration in January. We talked about mutual goals we had for our classes, and came up with a three part assignment.

This week marks the end of the first part.  Our students self-selected a music genre that interested them and researched the genre’s history and artists that represent it.  They summarized their findings and linked two sample songs to our Ning. Although I am a huge music fan, my students taught me a lot about online music sources.  They started sampling music from Internet radio sites like Pandora, Jango, and Blip.fm. They found specific songs to link or embed to the Ning on sites like Last.fm, Rhapsody, Lala and Actualidades.  Unlike California, Cincinnati does not have a radio station that plays hispanic music, so my students have been exposed to a significant amount of hispanic music just doing research for this project. 

I am very impressed with the depth and quality of writing coming from Leigh’s students, and seeing such good work from other Spanish students has been great for my kids.  I have some very strong writers, but many students wrote their summary directly on the Ning without any peer editing or revising. My students were very impressed with their California peers, when they read what they had posted on the discussion threads.  I took the opportunity to talk about the importance of editing and taking pride in what was published.  I hope this will encourage them to proofread their work before posting it next time. (Here is the rubric for part one.)

I love how some of my more reluctant Spanish students are so engaged in this project because of the music content, and I think it is safe to say that after this project Ricky Martin will not be the only singer that pops into my students’ head when Hispanic singers are brought up. 

Monday, we Skype!  The kids are very excited to meet their partners, as we embark on the second leg of this project.  I bet that my students will ask them about their sunny California weather, as they complain about our snowy winter days.  Several have already requested a field trip. Please read what Leigh has to say about our collaboration.

Netbook Journal: Tic-Tac-Toe Choice

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.

I have been trying to figure out a way to give those students who finish their work quickly and well some challenges that will also meet our curricular goals, and I think I figured out how the netbooks will allow me to give my high achieving students enrichment opportunities. 

I modified an alternative assessment tool, based on a Tic-Tac-Toe gird, to fit my class.  My students will be challenged to complete three out of nine web based activities in a row.  Since I want to make sure that my students practice listening, speaking and writing skills, I made sure that with the exception of one row, all rows will include a listening/speaking/written activity.  I want the specific topic within each activity to be open ended, so that the individual student can self- select the theme and apply the language skills/practice in that manner. 

I still haven’t rolled this out with my classes, but I hope to do so soon. I am curious to see how it is received by my students, and I’m interested to see the quality of work that is produced.  I have rubrics in mind for the activities, but I would like to have the student co-write the rubric if possible. We’ll see how this all comes together.