Tarea Mensual: What middle school homework looks like this year

The short version of this post:

Here's a copy of my monthly homework options for middle school Spanish students! Tarea Mensual: Differentiated Spanish Homework Options (It's my first resource posted on Teachers Pay Teachers, and it's free!)

And for those of you who want to hear about how and why I put together this resource...

I spent a lot of time over the summer thinking about homework in middle school Spanish. (I rambled a bit about this over here.) At EdCamp this year I had the chance to hash(tag) this out at a great discussion with Alice Keeler. I don't feel as a language teacher I can give up on homework if I really want kids to be proficient - class time just isn't sufficient for learning a language. However, I do need to make sure homework is manageable and meaningful.

As a teacher, "dream homework" would do all of the following:

• Homework should get kids to use Spanish outside the classroom - including reading, writing, listening, and reading, at appropriate levels. (That's the tricky part!)
• Homework needs to be accessible for all my levels of students - from beginners to native speakers.
• Homework needs to be engaging, relevant, and enjoyable (so that kids wantto do it.)
• Homework shouldn't rely on internet access. We are using Google Classroom this year, which makes assignments so much simpler from my point of view - and for most of my students. However, not all my students have internet access. 
• Homework shouldn't make or break a grade. Kids have wildly varying home situations and access to support. It's not fair for me to rest an entire grade on something I can't help students with.
• Homework should not take over anyone's life. This applies to both students and teachers! Even in middle school, homework can start to take over - especially for the students who care about their grades and care about completing their homework, who in many cases are also the ones involved in extracurricular activities. I also can't let homework take over mylife - I have so many students, and I want to spend my time planning and assessing projects, not homework!

With all this in mind, and inspired by the homework choices over at Musicuentos,I started the year with weekly homework options to choose from. Students were to choose one or a combination of activities from a list, and turn in a report at the end of the week via Google Classroom. Those first two weeks were a little chaotic. Remember how homework shouldn't take over anyone's life? Homework took over my life. Students were confused about the report format (a normal learning curve, perhaps) and most of them just emailed me screenshots or questions, swamping my email inbox with emails. With the option of choosing a variety of 1 pt, 3 pt, and 5 pt activities, students all wanted to do the harder 5 point activities for more points - though these were often too hard for them. (Lead Us Not Into Google Translate Temptation.) I made some necessary adjustments that I think were important. 

• Students get a grade based on whether they complete a variety of activities and submit proof. Activities are not assigned individual point values. I don't assign point values to any particular activity (since kids were tempted to go for the more "valuable" activities, when often these were not appropriate for their level.)
• Students turn in one report at the end of the month, describing what activities they did that month. Weekly reports were just too much, for me and my students. Students need 4 activities for the month, but they can complete those at their leisure.
• Students have some class time near the end of the month to complete the reports via Google Classroom. This makes the assignments more accessible to students who lack computer access at home, or who are less tech savvy... or who just aren't going to remember to turn in their report on their own.

Here's the final product: Tarea Mensual: Differentiated Spanish Homework Options 

So far I've gotten positive feedback from students. They've enjoyed picking activities themselves, and some have found resources they really enjoy. (Lyrics Training and Free Rice are some favorites.) So far I've rolled out this homework with 7th and 8th graders (3 classes in all) and I have found it fairly manageable as far as grading goes - using Goobric and Doctopus* for my workflow, I've been able to grade the homework for one class in 45 minutes (including individual comments.) That's not too bad for monthly homework!

We'll see how this evolves! I'd love any feedback and suggestions if you've done something similar with your students, or if you find this useful for yourself!

*Please do let me know if you'd like to know more about how I've streamlined my grading process with these tools!

Día de los Muertos - Resources you can use tomorrow

I'm finishing up some sub plans for upcoming absences, and let's be honest - this is the time of year where many teachers need some sub plans even if they aren't going to be absent. By that I mean: you're so swamped by parent emails, test administration, professional learning, and preparing for parent conferences that planning time is limited. (Also, Halloween is coming up this weekend, so kids are going to be a little distracted.)

I feel fortunate because as a Spanish teacher, I can use this time of year for some cultural lessons connected to Day of the Dead - something that's meaningful and engaging, even for burned out teachers and sugared up students.

I figured I'd reshare one of my favorite and most versatile Día de los Muertos resources - this brief digital short that's touching, really encompasses a lot of traditions, and is engaging for all ages. (I've used it successfully from everyone K-8.)

Some things you can do with this video:

1. Focus on listening and reading! Learn more about Movie Talk here (including a demo by Martina Bex.) See some slides with stills that I put together to talk through the story (it was just clearer than pausing the video for me.) I also use a written text with vocabulary questions at the end. (I started with Dustin Williamson's as an example, but changed it to present tense and edited it to make it fit with my students' needs.) 
2. Cultural focus: Show the video as an intro to the traditions involved in Día de los Muertos and have students compare and contrast it with traditions in their own families. Here is a packet of information I've used.
3. Follow up: Depending on how much time you want to spend and the grade level of your students, follow up with one of these resources or a simple calavera mask using one of HappyThought's free templates or the one from AZ Central's teacher packet.

¡Buena suerte!

A mask using AZ Central's template.

Middle school Spanish grades: Big picture musings and small scale plans

It's August! Not only that... it's the end of August! Teacher week starts tomorrow. I meant to post more during the summer. I have been doing a lot of planning and reflection this summer, but none of that translated into blogging. We've also been moving into our brand new building, which is very exciting (and very time-consuming!)

I've been meeting with the middle school team this summer to plan for the year. We have several new teachers on the team, a brand new building, and a lot of new changes to plan for. We've been talking about grades, and I've been trying to figure out how to align our school-wide policies with my Spanish class policies.

My big-picture grading philosophy can be narrowed down to the following:

Grades should show students, teachers, and parents what students have learned and what they need help on.

That's it! Despite our educational system today which is very focused on numbers and scores, I don't believe students should be narrowed down to static numbers. My teaching shouldn't be narrowed down to numbers. And yet so much of my time is spent on numbers. During those marathons of final grades, I lose myself as a teacher and even as a human, and become GradeBot - typing numbers into little boxes. I want to make sure those numbers are at least meaningful.

GradeBot is usually fueled by coffee. So much coffee.

Here are a few of the big-picture grading questions I've been asking myself:

• How can I make sure my grades allow for and show growth across all language levels in my classes? My classes include a wide range of students - bilingual students who are also biliterate, native speakers with little exposure to the written word, students from immersion schools, students who I had last year, students who are brand new to Spanish, students who are pulled from half or all of my classes due to IEPs, and everything in between. I want my students to grow from wherever they are at, and I want my grades to reflect that. 
• How can I make sure my grades reflect what students know and can do in Spanish, not just completion and effort? Participation, effort, and work completion are all very important in language learning. I think it's important that students are rewarded for hard work. However, when students earn points based just on whether they've attempted, it doesn't give anyone (teachers, students, or parents) a very clear idea of exactly what skills they have mastered. Last year I was doing a lot of research and thinking about Standards Based Grading. I think it's important for grades to show what students can do in Spanish, and SBG seems like a logical way to do that. I also would love to see a shift away from letter grades and percentages to grades that show how well students have mastered specific objectives. (Our elementary grades use the Common Core 1-4 grading scale, for instance.) However, as a team we aren't quite ready to make that jump, at least not this year among all the other big-picture changes that are happening. So in middle school, we'll be using a more traditional point system again.
• How do I make sure assignments are meaningful and not just empty points? Homework in particular is tricky in this sense. I want students to practice outside the classroom, but it's hard to regulate that. If homework or classwork is not meaningful, only the students motivated by those points will do it - and might not be learning much from it anyway.
• How can I make sure grades are easily understand by both students and parents? At the end of last school year a disappointed parent was unhappy that her daughter did not get perfect grades in Spanish. She commented that she thought I must be giving the good grades to "all the Hispanic kids." I'm trying to use my gut-punch feeling as impetus - I want to have a very clear vision and justification for my grading system, that I can share with parents and students. (In reality, as a general group my native speakers had a wildly varying range of grades.)
• How do I best use my grading time? I'll be teaching eleven different classes this year, across grades 3 through 8. We've increased Spanish time in all grades - which is wonderful! - but that means that my schedule is pretty packed. I need to use my grading time wisely. I don't need to grade every single thing my students do. How do I plan out exactly what I will be grading in a smart way that lets us all (teacher, parents, students) know what students can do?
• How do I teach from a textbook in a meaningful way? This is a little bigger than just a grading question. This year is the first year I will be teaching with a textbook in middle school. We just got Avancemos (Level 1) for middle schoolers. I'm excited about the structure and resources it offers - after seven years of making everything from scratch, from curriculum maps to daily lessons to assessments, K-12! However, I want to use the textbook as a tool, not as a crutch.

As I've been pondering these things, I've had some great insight from other language teachers:

• Creative Language Class - How many grades?
• Musicuentos - Meaningful homework incorporating student choice

So how is this going to play out this year?

In middle school, we've agreed on three weighted grade categories:

• Homework/Classwork (30%)
• Assessments (20%)
• Projects (50%)

For me, this is what that will look like in my middle school grade book:

• Homework/Classwork: Participation is so important in a language class - and a tricky thing to keep track of! This year I'm trying to focus my participation grades in two ways:
• Objective Stamp sheet: For each unit I'll have a stamp sheet (again, thanks to the Creative Language Class.) Here's the one I've created for Lección Preliminar in Avancemos. I'll collect it at the end of the unit - I'm not sure yet how long that will take, since the curriculum is new to me.
• Weekly Homework: Inspired by the choice-driven homework at Musicuentos, students will choose from list of options for homework. Here's what that list of options looks like currently.  Edit: Here's how our homework has evolved!
• Assessments: I like that Avancemos has a variety of differentiated assessments for their units. I'm not sure how many of these I'll actually have - I'm still waiting on the curriculum materials. I like that this is only 20% of the grade - I prefer to see what students can do through projects, but it's nice to be able to hone in on specific skills too. This is a good category for students and parents to see a breakdown of specific skills.
• Projects:We are a project based school, though this is definitely an area of growth, especially in middle school. We are still trying to figure out how to create meaningful cross-curricular projects, and I think we'll be spending a lot of our professional development time on this. (We have half days every Wednesday to leave PD time in the afternoon.) I have ideas that I'm excited about, but I'm not sure how much planning time I'll get with other teachers this year. Within middle school Spanish classes, however, I will have a variety of projects. Because this is 50% of their grade, a lot of things will fit under this umbrella:
• Planning activities
• Project check ins (to check student progress throughout the project)
• Final project grades (with a rubric connecting the project to our objectives)
• Presentations
• Reflections

Now... how to put this into a syllabus in a condensed way...

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.)

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?

A Personal Language Toolbox: Learning Styles and Vocabulary Practice

One of my big goals as a language teacher is to teach students how to be language learners. I want to differentiate my own lessons to a wide range of language levels, student interests, and learning styles, but I also want to teach students how to adapt information in a way that will make it connect with their own personal learning styles and language goals.

A coworker directed me to the Birmingham Grid for Learning, which is a 40-question online survey using Gardner's eight multiple intelligences. Especially for visual  learners like myself, it was fun to see everything mapped out on a colorful wheel. Each person's results produce a code (you can see mine below), and the results page allows you to post a whole list of codes so you can view the averages of the whole class, and averages by gender.

I had my students take this test online and either print the results or give me the code via Edmodo. Next week in class I will show them the class averages, and talk about ways we can adapt our class practice to fit the learning styles we have in the class.

This year, I also created the following chart for my students. They can check off their strengths to see what kind of a learner they are, and then see some ideas to practice vocabulary that might work best with their personal learning style. (The actual google doc is here, if this embedded document looks wonky on your screen.)



Thanks to my Edmodo colleagues who already gave me some input on strategies to include for each learning style. Does anyone else have contributions? I am especially looking for more ideas for Logical/Mathematical learners (which is not my strength) and for Naturalistic learners, a relatively new addition to Gardner's theory. (Turns out that this has been part of the theory since the 90's, but even a decade ago all the multiple intelligence tests I was using as a peer tutor were apparently from slightly older materials.)