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.

Back from a (too) short trip

I just got back from visiting my dad in Bogotá, Colombia.  I wanted to take as many photos as I could in the short time that I was there to use in the classroom for short cultural mini-lessons.  As I write the content on my classroom blog I will share it here.  I hope you enjoy these Foto Cultura articles.  

The first Foto Cultura article is about La Ciclovía in Bogotá.  Every Sunday and holidays major streets, avenues and roads are closed from 7 am to 2 pm so that cyclists and runners can practice their sport. 

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: 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. 

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!

Center work

I know that center work is not new in a classroom setting, but it was new to my classroom last school year. My students had done an outstanding job on a comic/cartoon project using the subjunctive, and I wanted them to spend some time reading and viewing each other’s work. The problem was I had too many students per class to do this in an effective manner, so during a brainstorming session at lunch & through email several colleagues (thanks again Charlie, Andrea, Gail, MaryAnn & Rod) helped me flesh out a plan. The most visually creative pieces were placed on a bulletin board for students to read and enjoy. Rod gave me some ideas on how to structure a student centered evaluation for the students to use with the pieces. In order to practice listening skills, I had former students record a mini-podcast of another comic strip, and my students did a cloze activity with it. A third comic was used as pronunciation practice in a station using dropboxes from CLEAR. Students selected a part and performed the script with each other. All of the Animoto and ToonDoo cartoons were viewed online. The rest of the comics were stapled in a booklet for small groups to read at a 5th station. The last station had students working on grammar and sentence structure with translation work. They had about 7-8 minutes at each station, and not all students made it through the six centers. 

The key to making the centers successful is having all the stations clearly marked and establishing how the rotation works before the groups start moving. The group members had roles, and students had to complete an activity at each location. Three students per group is ideal and five students were one student too many. The student feedback was extremely positive. They wanted to finish the centers they didn’t get to the next day, and several asked me when we would do center work again. I plan on incorporating more of this kind of work next school year. It does take a bit of prep time, and my biggest problem, because I share my room with two other teachers, was the setting & re-setting up of the centers during the school day.

Some thoughts on reading and writing online

My reading methods class best prepared me to teach. I learned some students needed to be coached on how to vary their reading style depending on the medium. Last weekend, I was talking to a friend who is a very thorough reader about all the wonderful resources for teachers in the form of blogs, and she was frustrated she couldn’t keep up with the reading.  Later on, I realized, although she is a good reader, she is applying  the same type of reading skills she used during graduate school to the blogs on her RSS feed. She hadn’t adapted her reading skills for the skimming and scanning  necessary on some internet pages. The opposite holds true for some of my students. Many are expert scanners, but don’t read information for detail. They are used to skimming, picking up key words and moving on to the next link. 

In an interview with Wired magazine, Maggie Jackson, author of Distracted: The Erosion of Attention and the Coming Dark Age, talks about how the digital world is changing our brain.  Jackson says there are studies that show how the environment shapes brain development in kids. The kind of reading material my students have been exposed to largely determines the kind of reader they are.  As a teacher I need to be aware of two things.  First, I do not have the same kind of reader in my classroom I had ten years ago. Second, my methods class on reading is even more important now, because there is a wider variety of written media out there for kids to sort through, and they may not naturally know how to vary their reading style to fit the medium.

I see some of the same issues with their writing.  They write a lot. They text, and journal, and post to Face Book, but many of my students don’t naturally go back to edit or revise.  Because of the multitasking environment they live in, they chose not to go back and look over their work. In an informal medium like a social network site, that is quite appropriate, however, in a more formal medium like a blog or wiki, editing and proofreading is needed. 

In the last couple of days, my students made me realize I need to be more proactive in my approach to the quality of reading and writing my students do.  The class was working on two separate tasks. One group was reading what is quickly becoming one of my favorite blogs for class, while the second group recorded a Voicethread presentation.  Many students approached the blog as a scan and skim activity, to the point they didn’t read the follow up questions, and neglected to respond fully to them.  Some of the students read the blog, and answered the follow up questions quite thoroughly, but they published their reply without editing.  Today I pointed out the different types of reading, giving them examples of when scanning is the best way to approach a web page, and when a closer reading would be a better tactic.   We also talked about quick writing and polished writing.  I’m going to encourage and provide my students the opportunity to read and respond to blogs and discussion threads, but for the next few weeks, I will ask them to be mindful of the kind of reading and writing they are doing.  My hope is this practice will help them discern the appropriate reading and writing skills they need to use.

Reading & Listening Blog "treasure"

I am thrilled to share a wonderful site directed toward Spanish language learners. Spanish News Bites is a blog that posts short readings for all levels, but in addition to the readings, there is a listening component and an interactive exercise over the reading.  Your students can even download the mp3 file, if they so desire.  I can't wait for the next lesson in Realidades (6B) that covers movie vocabulary to have my kids read this article about the Goya awards. Enjoy!