It has been way longer than I'd like between blog posts. I am working on getting back to sharing on a regular basis. A campaign for local office (unfortunately, I was not successful in obtaining the position I sought) which took up a lot of my time, kept me away from blogging. But, it was also one of the most rewarding experiences of my life. Something I never would have considered, even a couple of years ago, turned into such a great opportunity for learning how to step out of my comfort zone. In a way, it also was a reminder of what it is like to be a student, since I was a bit intimidated to start with and had a lot to learn. If you are considering running for office in the future, or doing something else that you never thought you were capable of, I highly recommend you go for it. I made many new friends, even while being exhausted for the better part of a few months, as a full time teacher, political candidate, wife and mom of two children.
Now, back to our regularly scheduled programming. In my 9th grade (intermediate low) honors classes, we just worked with the novel Vidas impactantes from Fluency Matters. It is written by the awesome Kristy Placido and includes six biographies of people (three of them women) under one cover. My colleagues and I approached it by starting with talking about Luis Urzúa (the shift supervisor of the Chilean miners trapped for 69 days in a mine in 2010). We shared some headlines and news stories about the event as we realized our 9th graders were born in 2004 and didn't have much memory of the story. Then, as a class, we read the Urzúa biography from Vidas impactantes. The Teacher's Guide had several extension activities which we used. Then we showed the film "The 33". The students were captivated by the story and very much struck by the portrayal of Urzúa in the film compared to what we had read in the book. That brought out some really engaging conversations, comparing the two and looking at how Hollywood films that are based on a true story are often quite different from what actually happened (another example of this that you might show in your Spanish classes is "McFarland, USA"). Then, we decided to do a jigsaw style reading of the remaining five biographies (Celia Cruz, Roberto Clemente, Julio Iglesias, Azucena Villaflor and María Reiche). Students were assigned to work with one of the biographies and then had to share what they found most interesting about the biography they had read. I would like to experiment with ways to do the sharing for next year. I am thinking of trying something more along the lines of a gallery walk or speed dating to give the task a more interpersonal feel. As a culminating activity, I created a digital escape game on the BreakoutEDU platform (I just invested in the subscription and am very happy with it). Here is a link to the game if you would like to try it out with your students. I am presenting on Digital Escape Room Games at FLENJ 2019 (on April 5, 2019), so I will be talking about creating them for language classes. On Saturday, April 6, I will be sharing my mini-grant project on Book Clubs in AP Spanish and presenting a session with the brilliant Arianne Dowd called "Building a Bridge to AP with CI". Hope to see some of you there!
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The start of school is fast approaching for me (I realize that many of you might already be back to school). I wrote about how I wanted to try out using a digital breakout game with my AP classes as a team-building/icebreaker type of experience at the start of the year, likely during one of the first days of class. So I created the "Atrapada" breakout that I shared on here. I decided to also create one for my 9th graders. Most have been taking Spanish weekly in elementary school and then as a regular class in 6th through 8th grade. The proficiency target for that group is Intermediate Low.
I wanted to have something light and fun to work through while they got to know their classmates (we have two middle schools that send students to my high school, plus some upperclassmen can end up in the class if they had transferred in from somewhere else). I love Gente de Zona & Marc Anthony, so I decided to make a breakout based on the song "La Gozadera" because it is so catchy and mentions the countries of Latin America. So, here is a link to the site to play the game. Let me know what you think. I hope you can use it with your classes! I have written before about creating digital breakouts. You can check out my post on creating digital breakouts here. (One small edit to that post - Google has changed the name of “data validation” to “response validation”.) I recently attended a session in my district by Jen Fischer & Kristen Tsaoys about BreakoutEDU. Even though I consider myself fairly proficient in creating breakout games (thank you for that, Jen), I am always looking for new ideas. We played the “Trapped in the Classroom” digital breakout from the BreakoutEDU digital sandbox during the session which helped inspire me to create a new Spanish breakout with a similar concept. While on the Digital Breakouts page, I also noticed the “Stuck in the 80’s” game. As a bit of a lover of all things 80’s, I decided to play that one myself when I got home from the session. It took me longer than I would like to admit to figure out the “date lock”, but that game introduced me to Snotes which is a great tool for creating clues for breakout games, especially digital games. Snotes are a web-based, fun, creative and colorful way to deliver a secret message. In our session, we discussed the idea of using a breakout game at the beginning of the year to help students get to know each other and practice cooperation and problem solving. As a teacher, they can also give you insight into your the personalities and strengths of your students. This insight can help with forming groups early in the school year as you get to know your students. So, armed with a new idea, I set out to create new breakout games that could be used at the start of the school year (or anytime, really). I will be teaching two levels this school year - AP Spanish Language & Culture and an honors class of mostly 9th graders who have taken Spanish for several years, with a proficiency target of intermediate low. I am hoping to collaborate with some of my colleagues (I’m looking at you Sí Señora) to create one for the 9th graders. I am the only AP teacher in my building, so creating a breakout to start the year in AP was something I was willing to do on my own. After attending the session, I also decided to go to Dollar Tree to purchase some toolboxes and locks to create hybrid games. My idea for this digital game is to give a key to the students who solve all of the puzzles and have them open one of the toolboxes. Inside I will have “Lo hicimos” (we did it) cards that they can take pictures with & some chupa chups lollipops. Without further ado, I present “Atrapada en la clase de español”, a digital breakout game. I made it with AP in mind, but I think it could work in any upper level class. Let me know what you think of the game and feel free to comment or contact me if you would like a hint.
Happy breaking out! BreakoutEDU is becoming hugely popular in classrooms. Who doesn’t enjoy a good puzzle or game? I am sure there is something special about having a physical box with a variety of locks to open. BreakoutEdu sells a lock kit, though there is a wait to obtain one. You can also opt to put your own kit together with items from sites like Amazon. There is another option. BreakoutEDU’s site has a section for digital games. You can try one out there to see what it is like. There aren’t too many digital options for Spanish class available yet, though. On Teachers Pay Teachers, Martina Bex has four free Breakout activities. I used this one about the 2016 ad for the Christmas Lottery in Spain without a box and locks. I do work in a 1:1 district, so all of my students have MacBooks and access to the G-Suite for Education. I created a ‘locked’ Google Form so my students could play the game and printed Martina's materials. It might be easiest to start out with a game that has been created. But, if you want to create your own clues based on your content, a digital game has no limitations as far as the numbers or letters you can use for a 'lock'. If you are creating your own game, you probably want to create a new Google Site for the game. You can give it a title, and use it as a place to put your clues, pictures, videos, etc, that are needed to play your game. I like Google Sites because it is very simple to 'drag and drop', and you can easily add anything from your Google Drive or YouTube to the page. You can also put your 'locked' Form on the site. Most of my clues are done on Slides, Docs, Drawings or Sheets. The trick with sharing these types of clues is to make sure they cannot be edited by those playing the game. I like to use Slides to make a 'story map' type clue for a directional lock. Docs are good for simple question type clues. When using Slides or Docs, I make sure that I change the share settings to 'anyone with the link can view'. (See below) If you want to create a clue using Google Drawings (this is a great way to make sequencing clues or or for clues that involve unscrambling sentences/questions) or Sheets (conditional formatting makes for a cool 'color lock' - if you put in a few content related questions, the cells will change color when the correct answer is typed in) - there is a way to share these on a Google site that forces the person with the link to 'make a copy'. This way, students can re-arrange words in Drawings or type in answers to questions on Sheets without editing your original clue. To do this, you need to allow anyone with the link to edit the Drawing or Sheet. (I know, this sounds crazy, just stay with me.) Then, copy and paste the shareable link into your browser. This last step is the most important. Change where it says 'edit?usp=sharing' at the end of the link to 'copy'. This forces anyone with the link to make a copy. Then, they can answer questions on Sheets, manipulate items in Drawings, yet not change what you originally created. (Special shout-out to my awesome tech coach Jen Fischer for sharing this 'hack' with me. Her blog is also awesome & you should check it out!) You put the link with 'copy' at the end right onto your Google Site. Or, get even more fancy and have the link hidden by a picture on the site. When someone clicks on the picture, they will go to the page that has them make a copy that they can edit. Once you find a Breakout game to use or have created your own clues and put them on your Google site, you will need to make a new Google Form. Each question on your form is one of your locks. You want to create 'short answer questions' and make sure they are 'required'. To lock your form you need to use 'data validation' to require the correct answer. If an incorrect answer is typed, they will see an error message of your choosing. Data validation can be found by clicking the three dots at the bottom of your question (see below). You can use data validation to make sure you have an exact number for a number lock and specific text for a word, directional or color lock. Here is a great YouTube video that explains how to make a 'locked Google Form. The last step, before putting your form on your Google Site (or sending it out to students), is to click on settings (the little gear at the top of your Form), click on 'Presentation' and add a confirmation message. This way, students can show you they 'unlocked' the form. I hope this is helpful. Feel free to ask questions or share your ideas in the comments. You can also contact me on Twitter )@kkeefe_hassan - I will get back to you!
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AuthorHigh school Spanish teacher in NJ. Proficiency-oriented teacher. Always looking to try new things in my classes. Foreign Language Educators of New Jersey 2019 Teacher of the Year. Archives
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