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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”?

 

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. 

 

 

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.

Snow day with paella & Valencia

I told my students if the rumors of the winter storm proved to be correct they would have a little enrichment activity on our class blog.  I'm very curious to see how many student will do the work.  

In December, Zachary Jones published several of my student's work on his blog.  I was saving this one for our food unit. One of my students wrote a fabulous post about a paellada she had in her home. Not only is her writing strong, but the article works very well with our current lesson. Zachary also sent me another link to a song by Josh Rouse about Valencia & eating paella.  Perfect compliment to Rachel's article!  

On our snow day, I am asking my students to read & answer comprehension questions about the posts, and listen to the song. They will be responding to both posts on their personal blog. I can't make the students do this work on a snow day. However, I am pleased that I can offer them a way to continue to practice the language even when we aren't in school, and the fact that one of the articles they are reading was written by a peer, is just the icing on the cake!

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.