Last year, I began to implement leveled readers and novels in some of my novice/intermediate low classes. I had always used stories in my classes, but I saved a lot of reading for upper level classes. One of my colleagues and I were able to get my supervisor to order some novels from Fluency Matters (which used to be called TPRStoryingtelling). We chose ‘Esperanza’ and 'Felipe Alou Desde las valles a las montañas’ by Carol Gaab and started out with a class set of books for each novel and shared them with each other (passing small plastic bins between classes). At that point we did not have the Teacher’s Resource Guide (which I highly recommend you buy before teaching one of these novels). We scoured the internet for some ideas. Some of our favorite blogs/sites for ideas are The Comprehensible Classroom, Mis Clases Locas and El mundo de Birch. Along with the ideas from those sites, we created some of our own resources, such as Kahoots, and really focused on getting the students to enjoy reading the novel. The fact that both of these novels tell the true stories of the struggles of different people who immigrated to the U.S. made them compelling reads. Since they were comprehensible, my students were able to get through the novels with relative ease. They were so proud to have read an ‘entire book’ in Spanish, something that they had never done before. I enjoyed having meaningful conversations with my students about topics that were relevant, including immigration and discrimination. I think they even surprised themselves with what they were able to talk about. The novel gave them the vocabulary to be able to talk about these issues. Because they were written with language acquisition in mind, they would see new vocabulary often enough to actually acquire it. The fact that they were able to use these words months after we finished reading proves that. Many times, long vocabulary lists are memorized for the 'quiz' and then quickly forgotten. We were so happy with using the novels, that we asked to buy more of them for the next school year. We chose novels for a variety of different courses that we offer and had our supervisor purchase the Teacher’s Guides. Upon some reflection, I think we went a bit too quickly finishing each novel in roughly two weeks the first time we taught them. This year, having the Teacher’s Guides (which are full of links to additional resources in addition to readings that are comprehensible for students), I am spending more time when reading a novel as a class. This year, rather than start the school year with a 'review' unit, my ninth graders began with 'Esperanza'. We worked with the novel (and it's resource rich Teacher's Guide) from mid-September through early November. My students are interested and more importantly, they are acquiring language without even realizing it. What is the most striking about this is that most students don’t even see it as ‘learning Spanish’. Yet, they are using structures and tenses that would not be used until much later in a traditional textbook curriculum. If they were used to just being taught about language, this is very different than what they were used to. But the gains, in terms of acquisition speak for themselves. I highly recommend trying these novels out. I feel like they have transformed my teaching. ***All images in this post used with permission from copyright holder, Fluency Matters.***
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Book Club Friday’s This is my fourth year teaching AP Spanish Language & Culture. The first year was mostly just survival and trying to figure out how to approach teaching the course. I was reluctant to take too many chances or try new ideas right away. I have often heard teachers say that you really become comfortable once you teach a course three times. Since I started teaching, I have taught almost every Spanish course my school offers from Spanish 1 to AP. And, I would agree that experience definitely improves teaching. Looking at my teacher self in 2001, I was young, enthusiastic and eager to teach, but I feel I am a much more effective teacher now. So, now that I had some experience (and some solid AP scores) under my belt, I decided it was time to take some risks. The AP Spanish Language & Culture course is not a literature course, but it does address interpretive skills, both listening and reading). And, research shows that reading is an effective way to facilitate language acquisition. Here is a nice article on the topic. With that in mind, I wanted to read more than short stories and non-fiction articles with my AP students. I had just finished participating in a virtual book club for the book ‘Ditch that Textbook’ by Matt Miller. I thought it would be great to have an actual book club weekly with my students. While beginning to do some planning for the school year over the summer, I was trying to figure out how to incorporate a book club within the limited amount of time we have in AP (especially prior to the exam). The model I came up with was what I call ‘Book Club Friday’s’. I still teach my AP curriculum Monday-Thursday. Each week students are assigned to read a chapter of our book club selection outside of class. On Friday’s, the class is broken up into small groups for book club conversation. Then I came across an amazing resource from Sara-Elizabeth Cottrell of Musicuentos. She has created eBook guides for two novels that work in intermediate and upper level classes. One is for the novel ‘Cajas de cartón’ by Francisco Jiménez and the other is for ‘La ciudad de las bestias’ by Isabel Allende. ‘Cajas’ tells the story of a young child who immigrated illegally with his family from Mexico to California. He struggles through the many challenges of growing up as a migrant child laborer in the agriculture industry in the 1950’s. My students could not get enough of Panchito (the protagonist’s story). Jiménez wrote two sequels to ‘Cajas’ (‘Senderos fronterizos’ and ‘Más allá de mí’.) Some of my students started to read these books on their own, outside of class to continue Panchito’s story. We use the eBook guide in class, discussing the questions in groups, and then look at the vocabulary and conversation activities included for the chapter that will be read for the following week. After reading the first novel, my students acquired some new vocabulary and were able to see authentic Spanish writing and comprehend it. I am hoping to have time this summer to create some resources for the two sequels to ‘Cajas de cartón’. It took us about three months (of Book Club Friday’s) to get through the twelve chapters of ‘Cajas de cartón’. Once we were done, my students were begging for more Book Club Friday’s. After returning from winter break in January, we started our next selection. This time we are reading ‘La Ciudad de las Bestias’ and using Sara-Elizabeth’s eBook guide for this book. I’ve made some changes to the format of ‘Book Club Friday’s’ and am assigning some different tasks outside of class, among them using SnapChat for students to share their reactions to what they are reading. I continue to receive positive feedback from students. This book is a bit more challenging, but they are engaged, talking about it with friends outside of class and look forward to class on Friday’s. Many of my students read ahead and several are already talking about reading the other two Allende books in this trilogy - ‘El reino del dragón de oro’ and ‘El bosque de los pigmeos’. I am hoping to try a simpler book, perhaps something like ‘La casa en Mango Street’ with my ninth graders later on this year. I plan on creating and sharing any supplemental materials I come up with for that here. Feel free to comment with any ideas or successful strategies you have used to incorporate Book Clubs or similar activities in your classes. YouTube has revolutionized my teaching. It is hard to believe I started teaching before YouTube. (And, that YouTube came out in 2005 is simply mind-blowing!) When I began teaching, showing any kind of video was a hassle (to say the least). Now, I cannot picture my classroom without it. I use it almost daily for a myriad of different reasons - cultural videos, funny videos, content specific videos. Two years ago one of my AP classes (post-AP exam) created a funny video explaining the use of the subjunctive mood in Spanish. I suggest this as a resource for students once they have been exposed to the subjunctive and just want a quick explanation of what exactly it is. As a Spanish teacher, I believe there are few better ways to teach culture than authentic video. Today we are very fortunate to live in a time where video is readily accessible to us via YouTube. It gives my students a chance to hear various accents and see first hand a variety of cultural similarities and differences. Whenever possible, I show film clips, television shows or complete films that are in Spanish when they are relevant to my curriculum. First, one of my favorite YouTube videos is ‘Oh how hard it is to speak Spanish’ (I only share this with upper level high school seniors as it addresses a few mature topics.) This video highlights some of the many linguistic differences throughout the Spanish speaking world in a humorous way. I use it at the start of my AP Spanish Language & Culture course, to remind my students of the challenges (and sometimes funny aspects) of learning such a widely spoken language. Second, I love showing the yearly ads for the ‘El Gordo’ Christmas Lottery in Spain. The first one I had ever come across was the 2014 ad. I tied this in with my teaching of the story El décimo by Emilia Pardo Bazán about the love and marriage of a couple who were initially brought together by a ticket for the ‘El Gordo’ lottery. The 2015 ad is my personal favorite. It is hard not to fall in love with the main character, the charming Justino, who works nights as a security guard at a mannequin factory. Here is an activity from Martina Bex that goes along with the 2015 ad. So many of her awesome resources can be found in her Teachers Pay Teachers store. I have yet to purchase one of her activities and not been completely satisfied. With the 2016 ad, I had my students use this Breakout activity also by Martina Bex. My students had an amazing time with this activity. I didn’t have a Breakout box/kit available so I used a locked Google Form. Here is a video explaining how to make a Google Form to use for a Breakout type activity. Lastly, as teacher of world language, I would be remiss not to mention Movie Talk (this link has a detailed explanation). Essentially, it is a way to have students acquire language with comprehensible input and the short film/video clip is the subject of the conversation. Some of my favorite clips to ‘Movie Talk’ are linked below. Even if you are not interested in using Movie Talk in your classroom, you will really enjoy these animated shorts. Día de los Muertos Oktapodi El Regalo The initial #BLOGAMONTH challenge was to suggest one or two videos you have used in the school setting and explain how they can be used in the classroom. I might have gotten carried away here, but I can’t say enough about using YouTube and other videos in the classroom! I truly enjoyed participating in the Ditch Summit put on by Matt Miller. One of my favorite presentations came from Noah Geisel. It was called ‘Don’t Get Ready, Get Started’. You can watch a preview of Noah’s presentation on YouTube. Noah talked about being ‘audacious’. That was one of the inspirations I had in starting this blog. I had been thinking of blogging for awhile, but I was being a bit stifled by my ‘perfectionist’ nature. Now, here I am sharing my thoughts and experiences with the world. Special thanks to my technology coach/guru, Jennifer Fischer - you can check out her blog here. I had been following the Ditch That Textbook site for awhile, but I had the chance to participate in an online book club led by Jennifer Fischer about the book Ditch That Textbook which is where I heard about the Ditch Summit. I had been keeping a lot of these to myself, so there may be an onslaught of posts coming from me in the weeks and months ahead. Special ‘shout outs’ to some of my favorite language teacher blogs: http://musicuentos.com/ http://www.path2proficiency.com/ https://martinabex.com/ http://www.pblinthetl.com/ http://misclaseslocas.blogspot.com/ https://marishawkins.wordpress.com/ http://www.lamaestraloca.com/ I have been thinking a lot about homework. My school has a policy of ‘lucky 13’ in that there is to be no homework or projects assigned on the 13th of every month. This includes no tests on the 14th. That also means that if the 13th falls over the weekend, that weekend is homework free. I know not everyone loves the 13th no homework policy. I am more and more in the camp that most homework does not improve learning. I think this is a sharp change for me, considering one of my mantras when I began teaching was "I need to give homework every night because it is the only Spanish most of my students will get outside of my class." That might have been true 16 years ago when I began teaching, but now students have constant access to the Internet, with YouTube, Netflix, etc. They can find plenty of Spanish outside of class. I played around with homework choice boards for a bit, but I am moving away from that, too. I am more excited when my 9th graders tell me they shared music or a video that we watched in class with their parents, than I am to have them complete a worksheet. I know some people think that by giving less or no homework we aren't being demanding enough or teaching kids responsibility. I just had the chance to watch an Alice Keeler talk on homework from the 'Ditch that Textbook Digital Summit and it made so much sense. Here is a short clip from her presentation. Some of my AP kids are up doing homework at all hours - some of that is poor time management, but sometimes they are drowning in homework. With a recent assignment I gave to my AP students, they had a week to read a chapter of our 'Book Club Friday' novel and they were tasked with choosing something that stood out to them and reflect on it in a sentence or two on a collaborative Google Slides Presentation - but with a twist - they were to create a 'BookSnap' using SnapChat to share their thoughts (I am writing a separate blog post about this task, but I'm including just one example below) . One thing I noticed, was that even though it was a pretty short task, some of my students were doing this at 1, 2 and 3am! I don't even know how they can function on such little sleep. As educators, I think we need to reflect on the homework we choose to assign (if we choose to assign any at all), homework that is assigned needs to be meaningful. Welcome to my new blog where I will be sharing some of my favorite resources for teaching Spanish, both digital and low tech. I also will be talking about my journey during the first 15 years of my teaching career and where I am looking to go.
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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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