Tata's Gift: ¡Culturazo!

Another lesson for Día de Muertos... or other times, since this is pretty versatile. Show this 7 minute short video from Los Cenzontles (which I discovered via the ever-amazing Zachary Jones!)

Connections:

• Cultural identity
• Traditional visuals & music
• Día de Muertos
• My favorite - adding -azo to the end of words in Spanish!

I've used this to kick off leveled writing prompts:

1. Beginner: Write a list of symbolic articles that someone might give you.
   Un libro, una foto, una guitarra...
2. Intermediate: Write a list of symbolic articles that someone might give you, and why.
   Un libro, porque tenemos muchos libros.
3. Advanced: Write a few paragraphs about symbolic articles that someone might give you, and why. (Using conditional or other targeted grammar patterns.)
   Mi familia me daría un libro, porque en nuestra casa siempre tuvimos muchos libros. Todavía recuerdo cuando mi mamá me enseño a leer y la primera vez que podía leer una frase entera en un libro.

Here's the sheet I used with my high school elective class, which has mixed levels (and could probably be left as sub plans.)

La Misma Luna: Resources for the Spanish Classroom

Oh hey! Remember me?

I fell off the blogging bandwagon because I got too devoured by teaching to do much reflecting or sharing. (I still have managed to reflect on the end of my teaching at the end of each year, however... year 10 is in the bag!)

After teaching Spanish for years, I've transitioned into a new role at a new school, so this blog may adapt with me.

For now, however, I wanted to share some resources for the movie La Misma Luna, since some teachers were asking for resources on Facebook.

I love this movie. A student recommended it to me years ago in Detroit and ever since I've watched it with a wide range of 5th-8th grade students. I haven't had a single student not like it. Even the grumpy ones. More than that, it personally has held up to many, many viewings. I still enjoy watching it with my students and still cry every time. It's become even more meaningful since moving to a border community, with border and immigration issues prominent in the news.

Bonus: Want some easy sub plans that would work for almost any grade level and language level? Use this movie. If you need a last minute solution, here's a pretty generic packet that should last two class periods... because we've all been there. If you are not in the desperation stage of throwing together sub plans while deathly ill, keep reading and customize this for your particular students and program.

(Not quite) Spoiler Alert: This scene elicits screams every single time.
It's also at a perfect cliffhanger spot to stop. Soy cruel. ;)

Stats:

1 hour and 49 minutes. If you have hour long classes you can squeeze it into two. I almost always use 3 or 4 class periods. so we have time to talk about the movie, do follow up with vocab, and so on.

Access to the movie:

This movie was on Netflix for a while but as of this post it is not. You can buy the DVD on Amazon (if you use that link, I'll get a few cents) or borrow it from your library. Personally I think it's worth having a copy. I've used that DVD more than any other over the years. I strongly suggest not buying the video streaming via Amazon, as you don't have the same language controls. 

(If Amazon fixes this or you know of a way to adjust language settings on Amazon streaming, let me know!)

Parental concerns:

The movie is rated PG-13. For students younger than 13 I send home something like this. I've only had one parent ever not want their kid watching the movie. (I have a collection of alternative materials, in case.) Here's more info from Common Sense Media.

Activities:

In the olden days I used to have students answer comprehension questions, but eventually I found that I didn't need comprehension questions to keep students focused on the movie. I preferred to target language and culture, so switched to doing activities that connected to specific language objectives and needs for each class. Here's a bunch of activities that I've used. Usually I just print out relevant pages for a packet, or print out a variety of combinations for less homogenous levels. (For example, for a description of scenes and characters have several different versions for different levels, marked by chili peppers depending on how "spicy" they are.) Use whatever works for you!

The alternate endings is the newest addition to this collection of activities and has been the most fun, because it allowed students to use the energy and outrage that is always generated by the ending of the movie (no spoilers!) Even the most beginner students could use the language to get creepy and weird. (¡Carlitos y Rosario se casan! Rosario trabaja para la migra!) You could definitely adapt this to grammar structures your students are using.

More resources:

• Superman es ilegal - Follow up activity with a song by Los Hermanos Ortiz from the movie. 
• A las tres - Activity with another song by Los Enanitos Verdes (with a related theme of family and immigration.) 
• A few different Quizlet sets related to the movie (I like playing a quick Quizlet Live as a way to review or preview vocabulary. 
• Practice test for the questions asked in a naturalization interview. Can you and your students pass?
• If you have PearDeck, use it for students to describe characters.

We're loving @PearDeck pro features that let us draw favorite scenes of La Misma Luna (along with character descriptions!)🍐🌛@UrbanDiscoveryA pic.twitter.com/HEUzZV5URc

— Sara Kennedy (@profe_sara) April 5, 2017

La Señora toca el ukulele: PBL and language learning outside the clasroom

If I've learned anything in almost a decade of teaching, it's that I'll never stop learning... and although I don't think I've ever lost track of how to be a language learner, it's still easy to lose hold of what it feels like to be a beginning language learner. As we are deep into conjugation practice in 8th grade, I see novice students and native speakers alike baffled by the mysterious jumbles of pronouns and verbs. After approximately 15 years of pounding those verbs into my head, it's easy to forget how confusing they first were.

One of the things I've been pushing myself to do this year is to learn new things. This is part of my ongoing and often futile quest for work/life balance, but also pretty crucial as an educator. It's harder to empathize with my students and give them the support they need if I forget what it is like to be a learner.

Here's what I'm learning and what I'm re-learning about about being a learner:

Arabic: I began learning Arabic a few years ago. In reality it's been about a decade... but with nothing more consistent than a year or so of (supposedly) weekly language lessons, which were more like monthly or semi-monthly. I tended to switch into Spanish as my default L2 mode. I used the strategies and tricks I taught my Spanish students - I labeled items in my house, made flash cards, came up with mnemonic devices, and drew things on whiteboards. During my year teaching English in Spain, I found a Spanish/English/Arabic exchange in order to rediscover my language-learning self as I was embarking on the new adventure of teaching my native language.

I learned what my students (hopefully) have learned - if you don't put in time to practice and study, you won't be able to use the language. Some words stuck - the word for thank you (because I drew a picture to go with it, and because I could actually use it in the real world) and the word for worm (because of the little worm dude/dood I drew.) (Okay. That is totally a caterpillar. Apparently I have a lot to learn.) By the time I actually traveled to Morocco, the only full sentence I could remember was "She drinks coffee." Not super functional.

Now I'd like to pick Arabic up again, especially in our current country's situation, where I am trying to engage with and fight for those who are oppressed and under-represented. (That's another story.) I know the drill - I need to practice every day. I need to learn phrases I can actually use, and find places to use them. I know how to be a language learner. (Now let's see if I can carve time for being a language learner out of the massive amount of time it takes to be a language teacher.)

Maybe I'll set myself the same monthly homework requirements I give my students, and they can grade me.



I'm also trying to learn the ukulele. A few months ago I somewhat impulsively bought a ukulele. Now I've been muddling my way through learning how to play it, usually on sunny Saturday mornings. I have limited musical experience, and only with melodies on very linear instruments (Celtic harp, mountain dulcimer, piano) so there's a steep learning curve! I am starting by trying to learn Limón y Sal by Julieta Venegas, starting with this tutorial.

I'm learning from a Spanish tutorial, and learning a new skill in my 2nd language is great in the context of project based learning. It's made me realize a few things about a second language + PBL. To learn to play the ukelele, I obviously needed to understand enough of the tutorial to follow along. I needed a basic level of language in order to learn a new skill in that language. That allowed me to follow along, and learn more specific new vocabulary in an authentic way. (Acordes and traste I could understand from the context. Rasgueo I could understand, and looked up to learn the new verb rasguear.) Chord charts are confusing to me because I have trouble conceptualizing spatial information. I watched the beginning of the tutorial several times and drew out charts of the fingering, but couldn't get all the chords to sound right. I re-tuned the ukelele a few times, downloaded a app for chords, watched the video a few times. I eventually realized I was holding the ukulele in the wrong hand. I needed to grab the white-out and start over several times. I needed to be okay with making mistakes and reassessing what I thought I knew in order to keep going. Once I fixed my hold on the ukulele I could correct my diagrams and actually practice the cords correctly, trying to cement those abstract diagrams into muscle memory.

How does this apply to my teaching?

Students need to have some basic language skills before collaborating and using those skills for a project. This is why this year I'm making sure I focus on skills and proficiency and not sacrificing all of our limited class time for projects - as much as I believe in project based learning as the best way for students to learn, students need proficiency. Especially as we develop and increase our K-5 language program, by middle school students will have both the language skills and the confidence needed to complete real-world projects in the language classroom. Focusing on authentic, engaging language tasks is a way to incorporate the concepts and values of PBL without sacrificing proficiency.

Teaching students a growth mindset and not to be afraid of making mistakes is crucial. Building a safe, supportive environment where students feel safe making mistakes allows them to show up and actually begin the hard work of language learning. For me, a big part of letting kids be vulnerable is letting them see me as a learner as well. From the perspective of a Spanish learner now teaching Spanish, I'm able to share with students my own struggles with the language, and strategies I used to study and remember. As a gringa guiri language learner turned teacher, acknowledging my status as a learner is important - especially in a community that includes native speakers. I often ask native speakers for regional variations or obscure words, and we look up words together frequently. Taking a descriptive rather than prescriptive view of language (lo siento, Real Academia) is also important, since I want students to recognize and respect regional variations as it is used - not just language from a book or the variations I happened to encounter in Spain. Finding the best way to support and challenge my native speakers is an ongoing area of growth for me, but the importance of beginning with a respectful and supportive relationship is one thing I'm already sure of.

Un Año Nuevo

Today was our first day back at school after our holiday break.

On New Year's Day, a friend asked me 3 questions that she uses for reflection on her birthday.

1. What are you proud of in the past year?
2. What do you want to leave behind you?
3. What do you want to do in the coming year?

I liked these as an end-of-the-year reflection. Rather than just listing accomplishments, I drew some little trophies to go along with them... because I'm a big nerd.

Today I brought that reflection into my middle school Spanish classes. (Here is the google doc I used, with a word bank. Feel free to use as it is helpful. Clip art is just free clip art from online.)

We put a lot of things into our ¡Fuera, 2016! boxes. 

Negatividad

Odio

Racismo

Amigos Falsos

Muerte

Tristeza

Miedo

Xenofobia*

Trucos con botellas de agua**

Many students put the name of a certain president elect in their box of things to leave behind in 2016. Putting politics aside, standing together against hatred and bigotry felt pretty important. 

Students had the option to share what they wrote, or to keep things to themselves. They also had the option to rip up their papers covered with the things we want to leave behind. 

It was good to give learners at all levels a chance to use Spanish, especially for self reflection.

It was good to talk to students who had trouble thinking of things to be proud of.

It was good see all those little goals shuffled into small stockpiles of hope.

It was good to tear up hatred and racism together.

It was a good way to start our year.

*An eighth grader included this one and told me about Dictionary.com's designation as word of the year. Hmmm. 

**Water bottle flipping? Soooo last year. Tell your friends. Please? (I can try, right?)


Edit: I created an interactive bulletin board so other students/staff/families can add their own contributions. Materials are included at the end of the doc I shared (including some fun word clouds I made with Tagul.)

P.S. - Sorry, the dab might no longer be cool.

Soy Yo

At this year's most recent middle school dance, I asked the DJ to play this song. When it came on, the kids screamed and started flailing around. (As much or even more so than for the previous Whip/Nae Nae, if I might say with a fair amount of pride.) Seeing the kids dance and sing along in Spanish was one of my high points as a middle school teacher. 

Here are some resources I have used with this song:

• Reading Activity (adapted from this article about Sarai, the girl in the video)
• Lyrics Training activity using Soy Yo (to sing karaoke or do a listening activity)
• Lyrics activity from Zachary Jones from his ebook, Cancionero 2015 - I use many of his activities (both free and purchased) and any of his ebooks have been well worth the money.
• Speaking of Zachary Jones, he has a great series of interviews called ¿Cómo eres? None with little Sarai yet, but one can hope. I used these as a somewhat independent listening activity and students liked them so much that I added it as an option to our monthly homework options.
• Another related song was Como soy by Manu Manzo, who does have a ¿Cómo eres? interview.

7th grade in particular has been a little obsessed with this song (I've caught kids singing it in the halls, and heard rumors that kids brought it up during some recent restorative circles in morning meetings.) I'm using some of that energy to kick off our 2nd trimester project about language & identity, connected with a skills unit on descriptions. More to come on that, hopefully.

Related resources bumping around in my files:

• Eres by Café Tacvba is another song I've used to introduce or review the conjugation of ser. Not quite as catchy as this one, but the kids still mention "that creepy black and white song.") 
• A few years ago (in my first dabblings in PBL) I had students find a song of their choice and use the lyrics to search for targeted grammatical structures. Here's my first attempt at that mini-project, which I may revisit.

Big Picture: Grammar & music

I'm still struggling to balance PBL and proficiency, especially when it comes to grammar & conjugation, but using music is one thing that has been consistent through my evolution as a teacher. Songs were what kept our heads above water during my early years of treading water in Detroit, as I gathered a collection of songs that drove my K-2 curriculum and used music (including the only alphabet song I can stomach) to engage some of my most challenging middle school classes. As I learn more about project based learning and how to let students learn by doing, music has been a great resource for experiencing verbs in their natural habitat. If a song is catchy enough the grammar structures will stick in students' heads, and if it is repetitive enough it can allow for some "DIY" grammar rules based on observations of repeated patterns in a song.

Finally, anything that makes students spontaneously yell things in Spanish I'll count as a success in the complicated, often-grumpy land of middle school language teaching.

Zines: ¿Por Qué Aprender Idiomas?

I haven't kept up with blogging this year. Even though my schedule is a lot more reasonable (I'm only teaching 5th-8th!) somehow there still isn't time for much other than just teaching. However, we just began our 2 week holiday break, and before jetting off to the Midwest I took some time today to gather some student zines to donate to a local zine library. That was a reminder of a project I've been meaning to share here - our zine project in September!

Why educate? Why innovate?

What do you see as the purpose of education?  Why might innovation be crucial in education?

Asking myself why at the beginning of the school year feels pretty important. To begin the school year this year, our new administrative team asked us to share some #whyiteach moments. The why question has been an underlying thread in these first few weeks of school, as I establish routines and big-picture plans with my students. I'm asking students why, too - middle school students are starting the year by creating zines to answer the question "Why Learn Languages?" Before we can learn we need to know why we are doing this, and before I can teach I need to know why it is important.

There are so many reasons education is important, and why I've decided to make a career out if it. Today it's hard to ignore the reasons looming in the headlines and my newsfeed. It's easy to feel powerless in the face of the violence, hatred, and injustice both far away and uncomfortably close to home. At its worst, education can prop up and strengthen structures of injustice, but at its best it can dismantle them. Education is a way to help fix what's broken in the world, and to create a better future. It is not the only way to fight injustice and heal wounds, but for me personally education is the way I can be invested and involved in a better future. I have the next generation in my classroom, and the skills, ideas, and the abilities for empathy and critical thinking that they learn with me can help shape their future.

Innovation in education is a relatively new concept to me. As a foreign language teacher, my focus has been on proficiency and how to get students to use language authentically. This is my 3rd year at a project based school, and I've had to shift my mindset a bit. Innovation is a huge part of PBL. I think innovation is critical because it innovation empowers students. Education is my key to improve the future, and the key to successful education is students who are empowered to take control of their own learning. If students are engaged and involved and have a voice, they will learn and they will make amazing things. I feel so grateful to be working in an environment where innovation and student curiosity is valued and prioritized. I love passing by classrooms every day where students are excited and curious and can't wait to show me what they are making. In my own classes, one big success marker is if I see that light kindled in my students' eyes. I've seen that a few times this year, while students are making zines and preparing to share them with an authentic audience.

For me, the big question I'm still wrestling with is how to encourage innovation and authentic exploration without losing sight of proficiency - or rather, how to create situations for that innovation and exploration to happen when students are not yet at an adequate level of proficiency in Spanish. I am optimistic, especially working with 5th graders this year who I have had since 3rd grade - we can do more things in Spanish, so we can talk about more things in Spanish, so hopefully we can explore stuff and make stuff in Spanish. I'm hoping that this exploration of innovation can help me find ways to make that happen.

This is the first blog prompt for #IMMOOC, a professional book club I'm taking part in with George Couros' "The Innovator's Mindset." 

I've been doing a lot of exciting things so far this school year, and I'll try to share more of them here soon! I've been a lot more active on twitter recently, so feel free to follow me @kennedyspanish

Lunes de Lectura: El Día de los Niños

I've been buried in projects so haven't been sharing much here. Recently with my 7th and 8th graders I've been trying to fit in some skill-based mini-lessons and practice alongside some of our longer projects, so each week as a warm up we've been doing Lunes de lectura and Jueves de Juegos. (Well, for half of my classes. For the others it is Martes de Lectura / Viernes de Diversión - not quite as catchy.) I've been pulling readings from Newsela (they now have articles in Spanish, adjustable by lexile!) and shorter thematic reading exercises using Zachary Jones' Twiccionario.

For tomorrow we will be reading this short article about El Día de los Niños. I thought I'd share my modified and annotated version, along with comprehension questions.





(I'm going to introduce this with watching Irene, a fantastic short by Alejandro Hiraldo. I happened upon lots more resources from Aprendemos Juntos and definitely want to expand on this later!)

Proyecto: Mi Lotería Personal

We just started a project in 6th grade that has already been a lot of fun, using La Lotería Mexicana. I already knew I wanted to use it as a way to reinforce articles and the gender of nouns in a fun and hands on way, but while muddling through the PBL project design process and trying to connect that to the expensive curriculum that was just bought for me this year I realized this could be a good way to wrap up some of the curriculum objectives from Avancemos 1 into a project - specifically, Unit 1 objectives from Avancemos 1. After beginning this project, I already know I need to connect Lotería to more lessons and projects. It's been great to see the student engagement, from both my native speakers and others who have played this game with their families. (Here in San Diego, there's even a local brewery that has Lotería nights instead of Bingo nights.)

Here's our project so far. You can also see my project overview here: tiny.cc/proyecto-loteria-6

1. We played La Lotería in class using this bilingual student version: Bilingual Bingo / Lotería Bilingue. It's nice for my mixed level class because we can read the rhyme out loud, and anyone who can understand it (usually my native speakers) can call out the word in Spanish. (¡La luna! ¡El sol!)
   
   
   
   
   
2. We looked at a selection of creative Lotería sets in class to glean examples of different types of words. Most of my students were sorting nouns by gender and by type of word (person, animal, etc.) but my native speakers were categorizing words by their stressed syllables. (We've been looking at sílabas tónicas in order to help with correct accents. It's the first time this year I've heard these kids whining that the work is too hard, so I think I've finally manged to find a task at their level!) Here are the Loterías we looked at - albeit selectively. Your use of these Loterías may depend on how comfortable you and your students are with the human body, alcohol use, and racial commentary.)
   
   
1. A traditional set of Don Clemente Lotería cards from a local Mexican supermarket
2. Lotería Clemente Jacques, 1930s (México)
3. Lotería Clemente Jacques, 1960s  (México)
4. Lotería de Posada (Arte de José Guadalupe Posada, 1852-1913) 
5. Lotería Moderna de Teresa Villegas (This project was a great excuse to buy her gorgeous Loteria book.)
6. Lotería los Compadres (Moderno de México)
7. Lotería 50 nombres para la muerte (Erik de Luna, México)
8. Lotería Huasteca (Art of the Huastec people, Alec Dempster & Arturo Castillo Tristan)
9. Lotería Star Wars (Chepo Peña)
10. Lotería de Fotografías de México (Jill Hartley)
3. We'll also be reading this book, which is a sweet bilingual story. I would start the project with this book normally, but I ordered it right after beginning the project.



4. We will be creating our own Lotería cards that share something about ourselves. Students will choose objects that represent something about themselves, and the "hints" on the back will be sentences about themselves, using the language skills we have been practicing. I've created some examples, like this card that features a baby teacher with her baby cat.

I can't wait to see what my students come up with! 

(Disclaimer: Links to Amazon products are provided via Amazon's Associates program. I receive some money if you end up buying these products through the ads on this page. I'm grateful for this opportunity through Amazon, but also through their Prime shipping which allowed me to come up with this project and pretty immediately get the books and games I needed  to start it right away with my students!)

Caprichos Modernos: A cross-curricular Spanish project

One of my resolutions this year was to be more intentional about work/life balance. (Spoiler alert: I resolve this every year.) Starting in January I began using the Tracking Time app to start tracking how much time I was spending on various tasks outside of actual teaching - lesson planning, after school meetings, parent and student emails, grading, updating our gradebook, updating our school website, interpreting IEPs, etc. I don't think I've necessarily spent any less time on school, but I've been able to see where my time is going. (I love getting nerdy with data, so the ability to sort and track data actually acts as a motivator to get things done. This is the only way I convince myself to exercise, too.)

With that said, I could tell you exactly what I've been doing other than updating this blog, and it's mostly been project planning. At my school we've been digging into Project Based Learning pretty intensively during our professional learning time. I already shared my quick translation project that I did with 7th and 8th grade. Recently we've just started another bigger project that I'm pretty excited about. It's a cross curricular advertising project that 7th grade students will be working on in English, History, Spanish, and Math classes (with a heavy dose of Art thrown in as well.) After examining and analyzing messages in Spanish and English advertising campaigns, students are working in marketing teams to create publicity about something they want to change in their community or society. In Spanish class, we are also examining messages expressed through art, with examples ranging from Goya's Caprichos criticizing the corruption and chaos of Spain in the late 1700's to a Tumblr created much more recently questioning the suspicious disappearance of 43 Mexican students in 2014. We'll have a public exhibition for parents and community members at the end of this month. I've already had so much fun looking at ads and art with my students, and can't wait to see what they come up with.

Since I've spent approximately 40 hours to date planning this project (thanks, nerdy app!) I wanted to share it with as many people as possible. I'm gradually adding more links and resources and tweaking the rubric as I go along, but this is where I'm at currently.

Please feel free to use any of this in your own classes! Since this is a new project, I would appreciate any feedback you can give. I've got two other big projects either in progress or about to start (in 8th and 6th grade) so maybe I can share those soon, too.

Proyecto: Caprichos Modernos (7º)

• Project Overview: tiny.cc/caprichos-modernos
• Rubric

Paso 1: Anuncios en español



Paso 2: Mensajes por el arte



Paso 3 y 4: Mi Capricho 
This is my first time doing this particular project, but in during student teaching I used Goya in a cross-curricular unit where students also created their own modern versions. Here are some of those student Caprichos which I'll be showing as examples:

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.

2 Anuncios Navideños

I'm guessing most of you teachers in the US have one more day left before break. Here's a quick listening activity using two holiday ads from Spanish-speaking countries.

(Kids might need some hints for figuring out the country for the first video - this article listing the many names of a mysterious gift-bearing man might contain a clue!)

Enjoy!

Anuncio 1: ¿Cómo se escribe...? (Jumbo)

Anuncio 1: ¿Cómo se escribe...? (IKEA)

Quick linguistic comparison: Spanish vs. Arabic

About a year ago I shared the Ocho Kandelas song in Ladino as a quick lesson tying together Spanish history, linguistic comparisons, and Hannukah traditions. This year I'm using this song again, but am also sharing this quick video comparing Arabic and Spanish:

Here's a listening worksheet I made for with the video. (Any readers who speak and write Arabic, feel free to correct my Arabic transcriptions... I used wordreference and my dubious familiarity with the Arabic alphabet.)



This quick look at Ladino and Arabic have been a quick a chance for my students at all grade levels (3rd through 8th) to see how knowing one new language can help them with understanding others. It ties in well with our discussion of historical religious conflict in Spain, and even current events. (I've tried very hard to remain politically neutral, but when I told them about Jews and Muslims being kicked out of Spain, an entire 3rd grade class started yelling about a certain political candidate who is big in the news these days...)

I love nerding out about language learning with my students! I've been trying to learn Arabic for a few years, as my third language - not rigorously enough to gain any kind of fluency, as I learned during a trip to Morrocco where the only phrase I could consistently remember was an unhelpful "She drinks coffee." Maybe this lesson will give me the push I need to pick up my language studies again. I find it very meaningful to be a language learner along with my students.

Edit: Just read the news about Augusta Co. schools. Be careful where you teach this - yikes!

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!

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.

Calaverita - La Santa Cecilia

It's that time of year again!

Chicano Park - Día de los Muertos, 2014

I have some absences coming up due to training, jury duty, and out of town weddings, and so I'm trying to come up with sub plans that are engaging. Luckily, it's Day of the Dead season, and there are lots of resources out there! Last year I shared some of the resources I've used, and a list that I've added to since then.

I just bought the Book of Life movie, which was released last year. I'll be leaving that with my sub plans. While researching resources for the film, I stumbled across a newly released song by La Santa Cecilia from nearby Los Angeles. I'm definitely going to use this to introduce the holiday and set the stage for when I'm gone.

I love so many things about this video. It includes many traditional Día de los Muertos symbols, as well as some not-so-subtle references to current events (did you catch Zombie Trump?) Most importantly, it conveys the spirit of the holiday and the underlying attitudes toward death.

It was Kara Jacobs who pointed me to this song and compiled several great resources. I will be using a revised version of the lyrics she posted, with questions that fit with my diverse student levels.

If you'd like a copy: Google doc here, or as a PDF here.

¡Hola hola, Coca Cola!

I just survived the second week of school, and am recovering with a Saturday morning cup of coffee. I've never felt so unprepared for the school year - even two weeks in! Luckily the first weeks of the school year are a chance to incorporate simple class routines that don't necessarily rely on all the little details being in place. (Like supplies... keys to classrooms... access to printers... access to technology... access to curriculum...)

Calling the attention of the class is one of those tiny things that makes a big difference in classroom management. In the past I've tried several things:

1. Counting down in Spanish.
2. Patterns of claps or snaps.
3. "¿Clase?" and "¿Sí?"
4. A rain stick (which was fun, but quickly fell by the wayside when I became a traveling teacher again!)

Training kids to recognize these and being consistent is probably the most important part of any quiet signal, but I'm always trying to find ways to incorporate authentic language and culture into classroom routines. Halfway through last year I found this fun list of rhymes and started using those with my younger classes. They were so much fun that this year I'm using these as my attention signals with everyone. Here is the list I use, and some bigger signs that I use as cues. (They just have the first part of the rhyme and a picture, as a cue for the response.)

I love these because they are more authentic and interesting than my other methods. (My native speakers can repeat many of them the first day.) Also, I've found that "quiet signals" are universally more interesting if there is some intrinsic motivation to stay quiet - for example, waiting to see what the next rhyme may be!

Do you have any rhymes to add to this list?

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...