Numbers in Spanish: Some ready-to-use activities

I feel that I am always trying to sneak Spanish numbers into my curriculum. Numbers on their own are not very exciting, and I try to build my lessons on communicative (and hopefully engaging) objectives. If there is not an established and well articulated language curriculum, I often encounter students who are tired of going through several years of repetitive lessons: greetings, numbers, colors. The challenge is always finding interactive and quick ways to refine and review these skills, while still offering structure for the students who are starting with limited experience.

Uno was always my review card game of choice - until I discovered the magic and ease of ¡Pesca!

Out of everything I have tried over the years, here are a few resources and activities that have been successful to review and practice the numbers in Spanish. These are ready-to-go activities that you can use this week if you'd like... or today in the next class period, if you are quick on your feet. (You probably are, if you are a teacher.) These are things I have used successfully in classes with a wide range of levels and experience: from students fluent in Spanish to students who are in the first Spanish class of their life.

Día de los Muertos: Resources

This is one of my favorite seasons with my students, and I have a feeling that this year I will be learning even more than I teach. As a newcomer to San Diego, I am excited to see some local celebrations, and to get input from my students who have celebrated this holiday with their families.

Here are some of the things I have done with my students in the past, and some things that will be included in my lesson plans for this week.

Let students explore some of the sights and sounds of the holiday.



I love the opportunity to hook students with something mysterious. As a traveling elementary teacher, in past years I have put together a mini portable altar in a wooden cigar box, with a picture of Frida Kahlo (a favorite figure that most of my students learn about at some point in their time with me.) I light the "altar" with battery operated candles, and the flicker of yellow light from inside a closed box gets everyone's attention. Usually I extend the suspense and leave the box closed until we have explored some resources together, and then I will invite students to gather around and look at what is inside the box (photos, candles, flowers, sugar skulls... all things they just saw in a book or video.)

Digital Tools for the Language Classroom

It's Saturday morning, which is generally pretty predictable in a few ways. I was up fairly early, partially because I passed out early (sometimes on the couch, if I was pretending I could stay up past 8 on a Friday.)

Today I want to share two digital resources that I have found to be very useful in my teaching. These are not big-picture resources (like social networking platforms, file systems, or grading platforms) but just a few digital tricks to have up your sleeve - or perhaps new ideas to use resources you are already familiar with.

Screenshots 

My teaching is pretty image-heavy, and I frequently use screenshots as a very fast way to capture what I need and integrate it into what I'm creating, whether that is a lesson plan, a student assignment, or an example of an assignment on the board.

I've been using Jing for this purpose. One of several products from TechSmith*, Jing allows you to quickly capture and share what's on your screen, both images and videos. I like to structure my lessons in middle school through a powerpoint each day, and it's helpful to take quick snapshots of an assignment we are doing in class and put it right into a powerpoint, rather than switching between files or switching to the document camera.

(You can also take a quick example snapshot of your example snapshot, and then blog about it!)

I have also used the video capture feature to record and share quick how-to videos with my students (via screencast.com, another TechSmith product that is automatically available and linked to Jing.) Especially as I am using Edmodo more with middle school, it is an easy way to model exactly how to sign up, turn in assignments, or do other digital tasks. This means I don't need to spend as much class time walking students through the steps, and I have a quick tutorial to use in my responses to parent and student emails.

 Learn more about Jing and get the free download here.

Word Clouds

I use word clouds a lot in my teaching,  I often give word banks to students to help with spelling new Spanish words that we have mostly practiced orally, but I almost always use word clouds instead of lists. They look prettier and also force students to sift through words a bit, looking for the correct one.

They are also great for reading or listening activities. Before giving students a written text in Spanish, I give them a word cloud created by copying and pasting the entire text into a word cloud generator. This is handy for a few types of pre-reading and post-reading activities:

1. See if students can recognize any of the words out of context. Have them circle well-known words and underline slightly familiar words. After reading, return to the word cloud and see if they can recognize any more after seeing the words in context.
2. Ask students to predict the main ideas or themes of the text. Many word cloud engines change the size of words in the cloud based on frequency, and some give you the option to screen out specific high-frequency words.
3. For more well-known vocabulary, give students a few minutes to sort words from the cloud into specific categories: nouns, verbs, adjectives sorted by gender and number, etc.

Until recently I always used the Wordle website to make word clouds. However, the website does require Java. Since my current school laptop is running an outdated and unsupported operating system, I am trying to take safety precautions, which includes avoiding Java.

Luckily, there are lots of other options. Here are a few that I have used, with examples using text from this blog. (Most of the sites offer various options for saving and sharing the word clouds, but I usually just capture them with a Jing screenshot. It's quicker and more straightforward.)

• Worditout is pretty straightforward and visually simple. It highlights frequent words by increasing their size. You can customize the range of word sizes, the colors, the margins, and more.

• Tagcrowd is simpler and doesn't offer much in the way of visual tweaking, but does offer the option to set the number of words shown, and the minimum frequency for words to appear in a text.

• Tagul is very visually appealing, with lots of custom shapes and color options . It does require a login, though registration is free. You have to type in each word individually, but you can manually set the size for each word. It could be used for short vocabulary lists or to highlight certain terms, but doesn't have the same appeal as other sites where you can dump in a block of text.

*I am not receiving any compensation from any of the websites mentioned for the promotion of their products. (Then again, I haven't been offered any.)

Have you been to Edcamp yet?

Yesterday I spent the day at Edcamp San Diego. I went to my first Edcamp this past Spring, in Detroit, and loved it. I have been to my share of conferences, and I almost always find something useful - even if it's just the time and space to brainstorm, rather than trying to come up with stellar ideas in between the daily logistics of teaching. I've attended several MiWLA conferences back in Michigan, and I always come home inspired (and refreshed by the chance to collaborate with other teachers.) However, the Edcamp model is by far my favorite.

• It's free. (A teacher's favorite four-letter word.) You still sign up, but it's completely free, with no need to plead for district funds. Edcamps are free and run by volunteers, with venues and other resources donated by local districts and businesses. 
• It's run by educators. The schedule is formed on the day of the conference, based on participant's needs. You can sign up to lead a session on a specific topic, or put up a question or a request for something you would like to learn about. The organizers shuffle these topics around into the available rooms and share the schedule.
• The format is clearly designed for educators. There's an hour lunch break and ten minute passing periods. (Teachers are way chattier than middle schoolers.) Nobody cares if you are multitasking wildly during every session. (I was drafting emails to my administration and sketching out unit plans on the spot, based on ideas shared.)
• You only attend what works for you. Organizers stress the "Two Feet" principle - if a session isn't what you were looking for, you leave and find another.
• It's the perfect format for a digital age. Participants view the schedule and updates through a specific Edcamp app. During sessions, many of the participants share resources live via twitter, using session-specific hashtags. Yesterday a group of other language teachers and I brainstormed and shared resources using padlet. 

I am already trying to brainstorm how I can use a similar model for in-class brainstorming. (The power of people learning about what they are passionate about is always incredible.)

Find an edcamp near you!

Columbus Day Alternatives: Jigsaw Reading Activity

Yes, Stephen Colbert, you called me out. Columbus Day is under attack. Seattle has decided to celebrate Indigenous People instead, and many schools (including my own) don't even have tomorrow off.

I'm one of the teachers who would rather use this as an educational opportunity, rather than mark this day with a day off. It's a positive step to shift the focus - to celebrate Native Peoples Day, Explorers Day, Día de la Raza, and beyond - but as a language teacher I feel the obligation to directly address some of the myths and traditions attached to Columbus, that even when innocuous are connected to much bigger issues.

Several years ago I put together a jigsaw reading activity for my middle school students related to this theme. I collected a variety of articles and resources and had students work in groups to read, discuss, and share opinions.

Because of limited time this week and the need to play catch-up with nearly half my class (we've had lots of absences recently) I am going to select just a few of the resources and use this as an extension activity for the students who are already finished with our other assignments. I have adjusted it a bit to include some resources in Spanish and some current articles, and I thought I would share it in case it could be useful to anyone else.  All the materials are in this shared Dropbox Folder, with some more details below.

Use this List of Resources for grouping and planning.

I summarized the resources I found in this chart, categorized by topic, format, learning style, and reading level (including some appropriate for heritage Spanish speakers, and ELL.) I am hoping to give each group a laptop and a folder of printed materials so that they can select the information that fits with their level and learning style. I wanted an easy "database" of resources to find exactly what my students need, or to help them to choose resources for themselves. (Click the preview below for the entire list as a PDF.)

Share links to digital resources, or print out appropriate texts for your students.

Brainpop videos listed above do require a subscription. For the other articles and resources, I have a few PDFs that I put together to print. 

• Printable resources - Reading
• Maps (hopefully to print in color)
• Comics

I'm hoping that the maps and comics will be particularly good to assign to low readers and visual learners.

Have students work together with a variety of resources to gather information. 

I have this response sheet for my students to use in groups. Depending on the level and the time constraints, you could have each group only focus on one section, or you could have groups focus on resources for different sections, and then regroup to share findings.

This is not an activity I have tested extensively yet, but I wanted to share it now since it is seasonally relevant for this week (and since I was already gathering and categorizing the resources, maybe it can save you a little time!)

Do you have any other resources I could add to my collection?

Clear Expectations

As a new teacher, I had to come to the realization that student behavior is almost always tied to my expectations and their clarity in both my mind and the minds of my students. If I'm not exactly sure what I want students to be doing, there's a good chance they won't know. If students don't know exactly what they are supposed to be doing, they will decide on something - and chaos is a popular choice, rather than intentional and structured learning. Refining my expectations and making them clear to my students has been a huge part of developing good classroom management.

At my last school we all were trained using the CHAMPS system, using this book:

There's a lot of good advice in the book related to overarching strategies for "proactive and positive" classroom management. Especially when the whole school had the same training, it helped to have consistent expectations and language. Something that I especially appreciated were the "CHAMPS" posted in each classroom, which were a way to give students very specific and clear expectations for each activity: Who students could have conversations with and at what voice level, what students should do if they needed help, what activity or objective the class was working on, what movement was appropriate, what participation should look and sound like, ultimately all adding up to success.

Most teachers had specific sets of CHAMPS for specific activities or procedures: bellwork, transitions into group time, assessments, etc. I liked this because it forced me to really clarify my directions and expectations, and was a way to have consistent and visual reminders for students.

While this is not a program in place at my new school, I have modified the CHAMPS for my own language class. (This is one of the things I did during the very long drive from Michigan to California... thanks to a husband willing to drive a moving truck, and a laptop power converter plugged into the truck's lighter.) I played around with the categories a lot and tried to make a snappy acronym, to no avail. If you are better at acronyms, maybe you have a suggestion. Snappy acronyms aside, here is what I came up with:

Stress-free assessments: Two strategies

I'm not a fan of quizzes and tests. They are boring to create, boring to take, boring to grade, and often not an ideal way to assess students' language skills. In the current American educational climate, standardized tests are very much in the spotlight. They are the measuring stick used to measure students, teachers, lessons, and schools.

I have plenty of opinions about high-stakes standardized tests... but those are rants for another time. 

Among all these tests, I try my best to teach and assess through projects and communicative practice. I do use vocabulary quizzes on occasion to check student mastery of the words we have been studying. I try to make them quick, focused, and never worth more points than communicate and project-based assessments. At the very least quizzes are an opportunity to teach kids how to take assessments, especially when it comes to managing test-taking anxiety.

I always introduce the first quiz with a short cultural snapshot. I ask kids about good-luck tricks, and show them some pictures from Salamanca, Spain.

At the Universidad de Salamanca, one of the oldest in Europe, students have a tradition of searching for la rana hidden somewhere in the intricate decorations on this building. Finding the frog is supposed to bring good luck on exams and in life. I let my students give it a try - with a slightly zoomed in picture, because trying to find it on a small version projected on a screen is even harder than in real life!

Can you find it?

Una pista: La rana está en una calavera.

We talk briefly about good luck and whether it exists, and I remind them that being relaxed and calm before a test is important - maybe even just as important as preparing and studying beforehand. We share tips and ideas for how to reduce anxiety before testing.

Any cultural lessons about good luck charms are a good opportunity for addressing anxiety with students of any age (for example, my favorite lesson on worry dolls, or the chanchitos in Chile.) Superstitions aside, feeling calmer and more confident is always beneficial.

Another strategy I've used for years is to give students something to color after they finish. My quizzes are usually only one page, so I always put something on the back. (Middle school kids sometimes love coloring even more than the little ones.) At first I did this to reduce boredom, not anxiety, but as it turns out, there has been some research on using mandalas to reduce testing anxiety.

I usually allow students to choose an image from the stack of tests, which also helps randomize my selection of quizzes a little more. I use mandalas, or sometimes images from this book of Mexican Folk Art.

(This is also something colorful to display at home, if the grade itself isn't quite fridge-worthy.)

Gracias a mis alumnos por sus colores.

Any other ideas to combat test anxiety?