A quick translation project and a long reflection

At my school we've been working hard on Project Based Learning (PBL) and how to implement it effectively in our school. There are plenty of school-wide challenges, like constructing quality projects within the constraints of fairly traditional schedules and staffing, and a national educational climate that still requires focus on specific national standards measured by high-stakes tests.

As a language teacher, I've been struggling with PBL and how that fits with what I know about developing language proficiency. Within the constraints of my schedule (two 40-60 periods per week, depending on grade level) I feel like I constantly have to choose my focus:

• Teaching entirely in the target language or creating student-driven, inquiry-based lessons
• Project based learning vs. language immersion
• Creating decent lessons for 6 different grade levels vs. creating a few great lessons

I know I'll get better at this with time, and it helps to be collaborating on PBL with others. I think for now I need to accept slow progress - which is hard for me. I've been averaging 60 hours per week just inside the school building (plus more at home) just planning and grading work that I know is subpar, from a language proficiency perspective. Compromising professional work quality for any kind of work-life balance is nothing new, but I do feel fortunate that I work with administrators who understand our constraints (rather than just creating more) and who are willing to give teachers space to grow within those constraints - there are definitely places where that is not the case. 

All of that to say: I've been thinking a lot about meaningful projects, and getting discouraged because they seem beyond my grasp.

However, one quick project I did with 7th and 8th grade this month was a bright spot... especially because it was the product of a spark of an idea while driving home one night and a few frantic hours of preparations in order to start the next morning!

This year some parents and staff at my school collaborated with a local charitable organization to collect donations of socks and toiletries for those in need in our community. Ideal projects address a real need in the community - which is tricky when it comes to unit planning, since sometimes real community needs don't fit into curriculum maps. I figured that an opportunity to create something real world and authentic was more worthwhile than spending our last class periods wrapping up weather review and holiday-related cultural lessons. So I threw together a translation project that could fit into two class periods. I'm pretty happy with the results - more so than some projects that have taken far more planning and class time.

This is what we did, how I would change this for the future, and maybe even some ideas for you.

Crossover vs. Computer (Spanish Teacher vs. Online Translators)

At my school middle school students have Google accounts through the school, and access to chromebooks. Although I consider myself to be pretty tech savvy, this is the first time I've been at a Google school and the first time my students have really had reliable access to technology. Overall that's a huge benefit - there are so many amazing digital tools available for both teachers and students. However, learning to use them productively and responsibly has been a learning curve for all of us. As a language teacher, I've had to balance the benefits of these digital tools with the strong temptation of one tool in particular - Google Translate. When beginning students hit the wall of their language limitations, it's easier to take the easy way out. Last year I dealt with many individual cases of students using online translators, and I realized I needed to be more proactive this year.

This year I made sure I included a note about online translators on my syllabus, and explained that for language learners this is a form of academic dishonesty.

However, I wanted to go deeper than that. Beginning language learners turn to easy shortcuts like Google Translate because it's quick, but because it seems like a viable solution when they can't produce the language they want. To all appearances the computer knows more language than they do. However, even a beginning learner will make different errors than a computer. I wanted to show students the awkwardness of computer translation, and why it's pretty easy to spot.

To do this, I found songs that had been released in English and in Spanish - Perdón by Enrique Iglesias & Nicky Jam and Tengo tu Love by Sie7e. (Links are to PDFs that I used.)I gave students a side by side comparison of some of the verses: the Spanish version, the English version, and a Google translation of the Spanish into English.

I asked students to examine each set of lyrics and think about which lines were translated awkwardly by Google Translate, and what changes the artist made so the lyrics worked better in a new language (or new culture.) Songs are a great way to highlight why exact translation sounds clunky. "Ricky Martin's got the looks" is catchier than the literal "Ricky has cute face," and sometimes crossover artists leave some simple lines untranslated - because eso no me gusta, eso no me gusta just sounds better!

The students had fun with this activity and it was a great way to talk about translation with them. As they were working on their pen pal letters over the following days, I overheard several encouraging comments.

"No, don't use Google Translate! Dude, we just did a whole activity about this!"

Any other fun examples of awkward translations? Here's an interesting news article about a Spanish town's reliance on Google Translate that got very awkward (though I'm not quite ready to go into that vocabulary realm with my middle school students.)

Side note: I had the chance last week to go to ACTFL here in San Diego, which was great.. but even after a whole week of break I haven't managed to finish processing the massive amount of ideas, notes, questions, resources and professional connections from the conference. More on that later!

El Carnaval: A resource pile

President's Day, the Lunar New Year, and Carnival were all jumbled together at the beginning of this week.

El Carnaval en Alicante, España.

My middle school classes have been working hard on other projects, so I wanted to create a somewhat independant exploration for students who were done with their projects, or for extra credit in some classes. Our schedule is a little messy right now after a 4 day weekend, so this was a fun "filler" to help get all the classes caught up.

Carnival/Carnaval/Mardis Gras is a truly multicultural topic of exploration, and there are so many great examples of colonized cultures combining (or disguising) their beliefs with newer Catholic traditions. It's also a good example of some traditions that are fun enough on their own, even without the complex historical background behind them!

This might be belated for this year, but I wanted to share some of the resources I used this year related to El Carnaval! Here is a leveled list separated by learning style, with resources in both English and Spanish.



I gave this list to my students directly, along with this paper. They could choose which resources they used to find the answers to the questions, according to their language level, learning style, and interests.

(I went paperless with some classes by creating a Google Form of these questions, too - I can share the template with you if you wish. Feel free to contact me!)

Do you have any more great resources related to Carnival? I am especially interested in expanding my knowledge of celebrations in Latin America - my only personal experience is from Spain and my own Catholic childhood.

Recordatorios Musicales: Music Cues

I've been trying to use music a lot more in my classes, especially with middle school. I've been structuring lessons, reviews, and assignments around music, as well as incorporating it into classroom management.

I was inspired by one of my coworkers, who is using music cues for math class. She uses popular theme music from television shows, played through this app. The app is nice because its designed for the classroom. (It doesn't automatically play the next song on a playlist, and you can set a specific time for the cue to begin.)

Here are the musical cues I've been using in my middle school classes, including links to the songs and the specific clips: Musical Cue Playlist. Most of these are from songs that students turned in as part of a project this past quarter, which helps with student buy-in.

• La Vida es un carnaval - Celia Cruz
•  Transition to groups. (20 seconds.)
•  Te extraño - Xtreme.
• End of class: Write down homework, get ready to be dismissed. (51 seconds.)
• La Tortura - Shakira.
• Get out homework, staple as needed, turn in to the correct folder. (1 minute, 22 seconds.)
• Pa' Bailar - Bajofondo y Julieta Venegas.
• Shut down computers and put away laptops according to our class procedure. (3 minutes, 36 seconds.)

Most of the lyrics are pretty carefully chosen, mostly because I think I'm hilarious. (Por supuesto, la tortura es la tarea... y no de excusas vivo yo.)

On that note, if anyone can rewrite La Totura to specifically be about lost homework, they will be my personal hero. (Fue una tortura.... perderte.) If I can get one of my students to take this on as a project, I will consider the year a success.

Technical tips:

I use Youtube and Dirpy to create clips from specific bits of the songs, but there are plenty of other similar tools out there, for all platforms. If you do use Dirpy, make sure you use the correct buttons. It is a free and ad-supported site, so it's easy to accidentally click ads.

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.)