¡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?

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.

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: