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October freebie!- Activities, Games and Assessment Strategies for the World Language Classroom10/11/2015
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My students are 6 classes into the school year (we meet every other day) and I am excited about the progress they have made. I am sticking to the go slow and when you think you are going slow enough, go slower! One thing I love including in class is music. I try and create a presentation to introduce a singer about every other song that I do, depending upon the resources I have available. I just created one to go with the song Escapar by Enrique Iglesias. I was careful to try use very simple language and use lots of images to illustrate the text. I also try and bring in geography and a bit of culture beyond just who the singer is into the presentations. What saved me a lot of time in making this presentation was using the image search feature that is build right into Google Presentation. The presentation was designed to go with the first CI unit I start with here called El pez dorado y el gato gris. Resources for that unit are here. Another presentation I have created is for the song Color Esperanza. One area I have noticed that some kids struggle in the language learning process is consistent review and practice of vocabulary outside of class. This year (or at least for sure this trimester) I decided to make helping students establish that habit as my main purpose for homework for beginning students. I decided to simplify and gamify homework for my beginning Spanish students with that purpose in mind by using Memrise. I want students to develop study habits of regularly reviewing vocabulary outside of class and see how those efforts pay off. These are my observations 2 weeks in to the school year after students have begun using Memrise. Memrise is a website that allows you to create a course that will help students review vocabulary in an interactive, fun way. Memrise benefits:
Other observations/logistics:
Students have begun requesting that I add vocabulary for them to the Memrise course. This is very easy to do and I can be responsive to student’s requests. Since the course has modules, students can pick and choose which topics they do and when if they would like to work on a topic we are not learning in class at the time. I am using a Comprehensible Input and storytelling approach to most of my teaching this year and don't plan to introduce vocabulary topically (like teaching all of the colors and weather etc. at once). However, some of my students have asked for lists in that form. This provides a nice way to do that for them, while staying true to how I would like to introduce vocabulary in class. Teachers can create groups for classes. I had students use their real names along with something they liked doing. (ex.- Kim-Climbing) This helps me get to know them another way and gives them a safe username as well. You can track student points weekly, monthly and for all time high scores. I had told students 30 minutes a week initially for practice, but I would suggest coming up with a number of points. We are currently in discussion about that. We are also discussing if I should be looking at the leaderboard online to check in the homework or if they should log their progress and show me a sheet. Keeping track on a sheet would allow them to identify if they met their weekly goal or reflect on progress. This has been a good opportunity to give students voice in the process. Overall, I think Memrise is a great tool to help students with practicing vocabulary outside of class! If you would like to take a peek at the course I am in the process of creating you can click here. There are also lots of other existing courses on Memrise I saw an idea last year from Martina Bex about assigning seats for the first day (and couple weeks) that I really liked and used. (Read it here.) I then saw another simple idea that our social studies teacher used for labeling desks with small label dots with numbers. From those two ideas, the little bit of everything card was born. I liked the simplicity of the numbers on dots, but typical dots are too small for kids to easily see, so ended up finding 2 inch dots instead on Amazon so they would be easier to see on the desks. There was still a lot of space left on the card so from there, other functions developed:
I figured that the cards could also come in handy for a sub. Students could complete the story writing activity in pairs, and even go on to revise the draft in class. If typed, it could be collaboratively created using a Google Doc and then shared. It could also be copied and pasted to SeeSaw. If handwritten, SeeSaw allows you to take a picture of the work to upload as well. Students could also practice and record a few situations from the backs of cards in trios right in SeeSaw, or students could save it to Drive, call into Google Voice or use another preferred tool you use. The technology adds a bit more accountability to students while a sub is there, as, well as providing them a record of their work for reflection's sake, and you the ability to easily view it all in one place from wherever!
EDpuzzle was a great find earlier this trimester. It allows you to keep students engaged and accountable when watching videos. It also is a great way to get more repetitions of vocabulary or present information outside of class in a more interactive way. EDpuzzle allows you to search from many video sources and gives students immediate feedback on their progress if they are answering multiple choice questions. You also can ask open ended questions, add text comments to the video, add in images to your question, link out to other resources and clip your video to show only what is essential. I have tried it for various purposes so far:
I embedded the examples listed above to save you time and just be able to directly see what I was describing. I would definitely recommend starting with something like example 1 or 2 to start with, as 3 and 4 were significantly more time consuming to create.
ResourcesThis week I am sharing a presentation Elena and I made for Chapter 6 of Agentes secretos y el mural de Picasso by Mira Canion. (I have received permission to share this resource from Mira Canion). It includes some focus vocabulary and practice activities, CI based cultural information and questions for pre and post reading use. The song included was an activity suggested by Mira in her teacher's manual which worked well to emphasize "eres." This is the link to Textivate comprehension questions for the Chapter that students were able to review as a class and independently
I am also sharing an idea for using a Google Form for extending learning about Barcelona, using varied authentic resources including a website, video, photo and park schedule. Once students complete the activity as homework or in class, you select "Responses" from the menu in the form and then select "summary of responses" to see pie charts of answers for multiple choice type responses and a listing of different responses for fill in the blank responses. I like to use the summary of responses and show them to students for discussion purposes. We will soon be reading the novel Esperanza with 8th grade. We are just beginning to do mini-units that will build up to the novel and I thought a CI cultural presentation and song would be a good transition. I love the song Color Esperanza by Diego Torres and the creative music video that goes with it and it is perfect for previewing the term Esperanza. (Lyric version here for singing along later).
I am sharing here the presentation I created. I have been trying to work backwards from a song and not just do a cloze activity, but really include lots of cultural information about the song or the singer using CI. I also embedded the stem-changing verb jugar into the cultural context of talking about soccer as well as integrated lots of opportunities for students to talk about the culture they were learning about in the presentation about as well as connect back to their own activities. After the presentation I had students complete a Google Form as an exit ticket to reinforce the learning again. You can make a copy of the form here for your use. This is the live view for students. I customized the background of the form to include another picture from Argentina. Quizlet set of song vocab here. I selected Agentes secretos as novel for my students as it historical fiction with an adventure/mystery. I love that there are so many different directions we can go with the novel. Here are a few ideas that I will return to and revisit as we progress through the novel in class. I have been using Mira Canion's teacher's guide which has been very helpful as I have worked with the novel in providing pre, during and post reading activities. I am getting a lot of great ideas from it, including helpful suggestions for assessment, not to mention all of the ready to use photos and chapter summary sketches that go with the chapters. Pre-reading Before beginning I really wanted to make some connections to Social Studies and to create the real context in which the novel was set come to life more for students. I came across a CI reading here that Jeremy Jordan let me know was written by his colleague Joe Sallen. I wanted to build background knowledge before beginning the novel so I slightly modified his original text and added images to it in this presentation. I then pulled out some key structures and created other activities. I broke the presentation up over a series of 3 class periods and had students complete some independent reading of the text as well. This is one example of a reading they did. I found this map to be a good one for reinforcing geography as well as we discussed the information in the presentation. After students completed 2/3 of the reading activities, we played the beloved Kahoot. We didn't end up with time to use the Akinator in Spanish. It asks you questions to guess the name of a famous person. I wanted to try and have it guess Franciso Franco's identity based on what students had learned. We'll give it a try tomorrow! Also, before getting into the novel, we listened to the famous Guapo, by Sr. Wooly (Youtube preview version here. (If you teach middle school, his website is a must!) The song is catchy and it helps kids easily remember lots of key vocabulary for describing in 1st and 3rd persons. I try and play at least 1 song during a class period as it helps add variety. Organization There are so many resources to organize once Elena and I start creating that we always use a Google Doc for resources and start linking videos, documents, presentations, etc. from it. This was an amazing idea on her part and has been a great time saver. Before beginning, I took a lot of time in selecting the key vocabulary I wanted to teach ahead of time. I limited the list per chapter to more than 6 words to avoid overwhelming students. When selecting the vocab I made sure to pick a mix of new vocabulary, a couple words I wanted to review and cognates. I put useful cognates on the list because in my experience those tend to be the most frequently misspelled because students tend to overlook the subtle differences between languages. I created a table of no more than 6 words per chapter and gave students the whole packet. As we work through it, students fill in the English. If you are curious, the last two columns are for practicing the words. Students can fold over the paper so they can only see the English and then write the Spanish. When finished, they can self-check and then make corrections. If any are wrong they can write it correctly one more time. This is a throw back from my days of tech-less vocabulary learning. Quizlet sets of vocab and questions have been really helpful for a quick preview or review of vocab during class and are also helpful for students at home if needed. I also use Quizlet for comprehension questions after reading. Kids can play Scatter matching the question to the answer as an in class or at home activity. The cards can also be helpful for running a quick review of the chapter as a post reading activity at the end of class or to refresh memories before beginning a new chapter.
To be continued... The research
Last spring I began researching how to best implement free reading in the classroom. And like a good researcher, I read about best practice for reading. I got most of my inspiration from the work of Stephen Krashen and Bryce Hedstrom. I also talked to many colleagues about the topic. I also purchased Lidia Barbosa's reader's response bookmarks which provided some great ideas for questions. (Great resource for ready to use response sheets in Spanish too.) The need for simplicity with accountability One thing that stuck with me was the idea that we can kill the love of reading with too many forms, comprehension questions, etc. when we try and figure out a way to hold them accountable. (Obviously, there is a time and a place for comprehension questions.) We know that reading is so important in developing vocabulary and for being a model for writing. So I resisted the urge to ask lots of questions of students after they read. In the end, I opted for simple. I needed books and a simple form for students to show they were reading. I also needed a set of meaningful questions. For books, I was able to purchase 5 copies each of 26 different TPRS novels so students have a variety of books to choose from at their level. Lastly, I needed to figure out the logistics: how much and when students would read. Preparing students Excited to have students begin reading independently, I had kids in Spanish 1B (the second half of my level one class that spans 7th and 8th grade and meets for 70 minutes 2-3 times a week) start independent reading on day 2 of class after they created a list of books they wanted to read. I collected the descriptions of the books from the covers and created a document for students to look over as homework and select their top 3-5 choices so class time would not be lost in selecting. I also gave them a copy of a place to write their list with a section for goal setting for reading to fill out with their choices. The routine Students come in and pick up their book and their response sheet which can last for 4 sessions of independent reading. Students started reading for 10 minutes. Over time the plan is to build up to longer period of time. Some students have started to request more time already. Once the time is up, students respond to the question that is posted on the board in a Google Presentation. I have a variety of questions to choose from and based on where students seem to be in the book or what type of response I am looking for I can easily change the questions. The response is in English and is 3-5 sentences long. I always offer a secondary option of providing a summary of what they read or a reaction to the reading if they can't connect well or don't have the information they need in the novel for that day. My favorite question so far has been: What is your reaction to this part of the novel? It has also given me insights into student thinking and allow for some beginning dialogue between us that I didn't expect to see in such a short response. I have been scoring the responses on a scale of 4-1, as shown below, as that is our district's grading scale. I tried hard to keep it simple. It has just been a couple weeks, but it has become the beginning part of the class routine and I love it! I am sure that it will morph as the year goes on, but it is by far one of my favorite ways to start off class. I hope to have 7th grade working on independent novels by November. I have started them out by reading to them twice a week. I pick out focus structures to tell the story of the pictures more than anything and engage them in comprehensible input. My current favorite is Buenas noches, gorila. Not a lot of text, but a lot of possibilities for narration. Other Sources for Reading Materials While I am finding that I am partial to the TPRS novels, there are other resources to consider. They could also be used for other reading stations, Kindergarten reading time, etc.
Scoring See rubric below for scoring ideas. It has been working quite well for me thus far. How do you approach "free" reading? |
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