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Cortometraje Activities

7/2/2016

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​Videos have gotten an undeservedly bad rap in education land.  They are largely viewed as time wasters by parents, students, and administrators.  It's too bad really as videos can be a great source of comprehensible input in second language classrooms - but parents, students, and administrators don't likely know what comprehensible input even is.  Enter the cortometraje...

Cortometrajes ("shorts" in English) are short movies that tell big stories, some of them even without words.  The best ones are creative, interesting, and teach great lessons.  When used in the world language classroom, they can provide us with a common story around which we can develop listening, reading, writing, and speaking skills.  Best of all, they don't need to "fit" with your unit because the focus is not on the content, it is on the skills that students sharpen while using the content.  Since they are typically less than 10 minutes in length, they can be watched in a fraction of a class period with plenty of time left over to engage in communicative activities based on what was seen.

Take a peek at my 5 favorite cortometrajes to use in the classroom.  Click on the title of each to check out listening, reading, writing, and speaking activities for each cortometraje.

1.  "El Regalo"
2.  "El Vendedor de Humo"
3.  "Ratón en Venta"
4.  "La Nube y la Cigüeña"
​5.  "Jinxy Jenkins & Lucky Lou"
You can find more cortometraje titles and activities by visiting our store.
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El Tiempo Unit (Week 2)

2/6/2016

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We ended our unit on weather today so I thought I would share some of the activities that we did during the week.  

Our goal for the end of this week was to be able to write a brief weather report, in Spanish, expressing the current temperature and weather conditions as well as future temperature and weather conditions.

This will feed directly into my next unit on making plans and accepting/rejecting invitations.  Since the weather often dictates what types of leisure activities we may do and when/where we might do them, we will be recycling a lot of these ideas during the next lesson.  But for now, we are starting with a written weather report.


Day 1:  Our main activity was an interpersonal speaking/information gap style activity taken from my Integrated Performance Assessment on the Weather.  Since I knew I was not going to be assessing that mode this time around, but I still wanted to practice it, I just used it as a class activity.  Here is a portion of the activity so that you can see the general idea:

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Day 2:  I wanted students to practice answering questions about weather in both written and spoken form.  I grouped my kids by threes and gave each group a set of 15 weather speaking prompts.  Each student took on the role of either the interviewer (asks the questions), interviewee (answers the questions), or the reporter (writes down the interviewee's responses to each question).  They switch roles every 5 questions so that they get to practice listening, speaking, and writing.  This is actually a concept that can be applied to most worksheets if you are looking for ways to differentiate.  Here are some of the questions we worked with of varying difficulty:
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Day 3:  We spent some time on Google Classroom looking up the weather for various cities and writing weather reports based on the information given on the English site www.weather.com.  

Day 4:  We listened to the song "Hasta Que Salga el Sol" by Don Omar and practiced changing the lyrics based on the vocabulary and verb structures we had worked with during the week.
Here is a portion of one of the activities that we did so that you can see how we applied our new found vocabulary to existing grammatical structures:
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Day 5:  ​Today was assessment day!  After two weeks of working with weather (one week of listening/reading activities and one of speaking/writing activities) it was time to see if they met their goal of being able to write a brief weather forecast.  The assessment was a simple enough concept but really gave them a wide range of things they could have said.  I will grade it using the ACTFL presentational rubric for novice level.  Download your own copy of the assessment here:
weather_writing_assessment.pdf
File Size: 680 kb
File Type: pdf
Download File

So how did they do?  It's becoming clearer and clearer with every assessment that most of them are at or soon will be at the Novice-High level, which is our goal for the end of the year.  Here are some examples of their writing:
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You will notice that there are some mistakes that are being made pretty consistently which shows me what I need to continue to focus on with them.  Overall though, I am very pleased with the increase in complexity and detail that they show over a level 1 student dealing with the same topic.  The growth is evident by the more sophisticated use of vocabulary and the ability to talk about future weather conditions (rather than only current conditions).  They are getting more and more consistent with using complete sentences, which is encouraging knowing how hard we have worked at this.  At the beginning of the year, many of them didn't really understand what the term "complete sentence" and "verb" meant.

Many of the lessons used during this week are up in my store.  Look for the links to find the specific products or just look at the information here - I hope it inspires a new lesson for you!
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10 Ways to Use Speaking Prompts

1/19/2016

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As my regular readers know, a HUGE goal of mine for this school year has been to increase the amount of Spanish my students speak during class.  I ditched the grammar kill and drill activities and replaced them with speaking activities (among other things).  I am glad to report that it is definitely working, but as with any skill that you need to practice over a period of time, mixing up these activities is definitely necessary to keep things fresh and keep students engaged.  So, I took some time and created tiered task card speaking prompts for many of our major themes.

I decided to focus on 4 "categories" of questions or prompts so that I could easily differentiate for students of varying ability levels AND continue to push all students to increase their fluency by gradually increasing the difficulty of the questions and prompts.

Here are some examples from a larger set of prompts dealing with the topic of School:

Category A Prompts - Yes/No and Either/Or Questions



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Category B Prompts - Who, What, Where, When, How, How Much Questions
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Category C Prompts - Questions that require reasons and opinions
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Category D Prompts - Situational Prompts and Extended Response Questions
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Whether you decide to create your own prompts or you want to check out the sets I have already created, here are some ideas of how to use speaking prompts with your students:

1.  Have students work in pairs or small groups and have a conversation in Spanish based on a series of prompts.

2.  Have one student play the role of a celebrity or other famous person while the students ask the prompted questions during a mock celebrity interview.

3.  Invite a guest speaker or native speaking student to your classroom and have students select questions from the prompts to ask during a Q&A session.

4.  Have students write their own prompts or variations of the existing prompts on blank note cards.

5.  Pull 3 questions at the beginning of class each day and answer them as a model for your students.  Have the students write down what they learned about you in English to demonstrate their understanding.

6.  Pull 1 prompt from each category for a challenging oral proficiency assessment on the unit

7.  Have students develop conversations or role plays based on situational prompts

8.  When you have extra time at the end of class or need to get kids focused, pull a few questions and ask away!

9.  Show a prompt at the end of class and use it as an exit ticket activity.

10. Put students in groups and give them a set of prompts.  You respond to any one of the questions in Spanish and they have to guess which one you are responding to based on your answer.


If you want to save yourself some work and time, check out the speaking prompts that I have already developed.  There are over 40 prompts to choose from for each topic as well as a discounted set of all of them!
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What other ways can you think of for using speaking prompt task cards in your classroom?  Let us know in the comments below!
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Teaching Students Conversation Skills

9/30/2015

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Some would argue that in these days of text messaging, tweeting, video games and the like, our students are exposed to less face to face conversation than in generations past.  Yet foreign language teachers are charged with getting students to a point where they can converse in a second language.

Since my full switch to a proficiency-based classroom, interpersonal speaking has always seemed like the most difficult skill to teach.  That is just what I had to do with my Spanish 2 students this week.  We had worked on reviewing many of the key concepts about family that with which they should have left Spanish 1.

ACTFL says that Novice-Mid learners should be able to:
  • Identify family words on a family tree
  • List family members, their ages, and what they like to do
  • Say what family members look like
  • Say what family members are like

ACTFL says that Novice-High learners should have the added skill of being able to:
  • Understand questions or statements about family
  • Ask and talk about family members and their characteristics
  • Describe family members

To me, this seems like something best assessed by a conversation.  We started by modeling a conversation about family in English.  I chose 3 students at random to participate in the conversation with me and the rest of the class was told to make observations related to to the questions "What is a conversation?  What does it look like?  What doesn't it look like?"

Here were some of there observations which definitely made them more conscious of what we were trying to achieve.
  • unrehearsed, not pre-planned
  • tend to follow a common theme or topic
  • wide variety of back and forth questions, answers and comments
  • reaction statements like "that's interesting", "that's terrible", "that's cool"
  • shared responsibility to keep the conversation going and involve all members
  • no rules as to who talks when
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We talked next about how our ability to hold a conversation in our first language (English) was obviously more advanced than our ability to do the same in Spanish.  Therefore, to make the goal attainable, we would have to control some factors that we may not have to in English.

Here were the goals we identified for our first Spanish conversation:
  • Partial pre-planning and rehearsing
  • Family theme
  • Identify 4 common questions and answers
  • Learn some positive and negative reaction statements
  • All group members take part in conversation equally
  • Q & A Tag Format

Based on our goals, I split students up into groups of 3-4 and developed this conversation cheat sheet which was given to each person in the class.

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On the reverse side, I out some common positive and negative reaction statements that we could use when the conversation started to lag or to break the silence.
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We also looked at the ACTFL rubric for interpersonal speaking (novice) and talked about how the conversation would be graded.
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Now to practice...

We practiced our conversations the first 4 days of the week.  Each day we varied the practice and increased the difficulty to build our memories and abilities with the identified questions.

Day 1:  Practice the questions in order with full use of conversation cheat sheet
Day 2:  Practice the questions in random order and remove English supports/translations
Day 3:  Practice the questions in random order and remove the Spanish Answer models
Day 4:  Practice the questions in random order and remove all support materials

On each of these days I would take turns sitting with my different groups giving them feedback and making sure that they took part in the practice rounds.  For further reinforcements, we practiced the same questions in writing as well. 

On Day 5 (Friday) I shadowed each groups full conversation without any guidance or interjection and assessed each member of the group using the same rubric that they saw in class.  Since I needed to convert this rubric into an actual grade, I assigned percentages to each column of the rubric.  There are 5 areas of assessment in each column (language function, text type, communication strategies, comprehensibility and language control).

Here is an example of a completed rubric and how I converted it to a grade.

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To check out my full integrated performance assessments for the areas of reading, listening, speaking, and writing on family and other topics, click here.

Interested in having your students do a presentation project on the topic of family?  Check this one out!


How do you assess interpersonal speaking in your class?  Feel free to share some ideas and methods in the comments below!
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Giving Basic Personal Information in Spanish

9/14/2015

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This week in Spanish 2 we are working on being able to fill out basic forms in Spanish.  Luckily, most of our personal information is not written that much differently in Spanish than it is in English.  However, there are definitely some new vocabulary we need to learn as well as a few differences in the way that personal information is presented.


First, we started by introducing some vocabulary that would be important to know if you were filling out a form of any kind.
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We also identified some essential questions that we will focus on for our speaking rounds this week.
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Since this is the second week that we have worked with this material, we are working with the skills of presentational writing, presentational speaking, and interpersonal speaking this week.  Last week we worked with the skills of interpretive listening and reading and students heard and read many examples of other people presenting basic information about themselves. So, this week it is their turn to to take over.


By the end of the week, my students will need to fill out this basic form in Spanish with their personal information.  
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They will also need to be able to provide basic information over the phone.  We have chosen to have our speaking assessment be focused on their school e-mail addresses which they must be able to tell me in Spanish.  This will require them to use their previous knowledge of numbers and letters in Spanish and incorporate our newly learned vocabulary for @ (arroba) and .com (punto com).


Click on any of the pictures to download your own copy of these files!  Also, don't forget to check out our Integrated Performance Assessment on Giving Basic Personal Information.
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Speaking Rocks!

4/25/2014

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Something I always struggled with was how to encourage students to stay in the target language when I wasn't hovering immediately over their shoulders.  When we would have class discussions in Spanish, side conversations would break out in English.  My less motivated students would zone out while others were speaking and miss the benefit of the listening experience they could get from listening to their classmates and attempting to understand.  When my students spoke Spanish in partner activities, only the groups nearest to me would speak Spanish.  As I moved away to visit other parts of the room I could almost hear the sigh of relief as they awaited to return to English.  My experience with speaking had been so frustrating that many times I avoided speaking activities.  I felt guilty about that - after all, wasn't that was I was there to do?  Teach them to speak?  To communicate? 

I knew something had to change...

I needed to do the following:
1.  Make the speaking topics something that teenagers WANTED to talk about.
2.  Find a way to encourage them to stay in the target language when I was not right next to them.
3.  Find a way to quantify their participation that was fair and gave credit not just for speaking, but for listening to others as well.

It was easy to increase the interest level of my speaking topics.  After all, I knew exactly what teenagers liked to talk about in English - themselves (and the more than occasional gossip about others).  Including a social element, where my students became the topic of conversation, was vital.  They didn't want to talk about what "Marcos", some anonymous textbook boy from Costa Rica likes to do, they wanted to find out about each other.

I found a solution for the other two problems on my fireplace mantel.  I had a vase with those decorative glass pebbles in it.  I dumped the pebbles out and took them to school.  I instructed the students to take 2 pebbles from the jar as they walked into the classroom.  I explained to them that these pebbles were their points and that by the end of class they needed to have 5.  They could earn their additional pebbles by contributing to the conversation.  They could also lose pebbles by failing to remain in the target language.  They kept their pebbles visible on their desks and as we spoke, I was able to give and take pebbles without losing a beat in the conversation.  I did not have to give any verbal reminders to refrain from speaking English - I would just happen by their desk and remove a rock.  I was absolutely amazed at how much this changed the focus and environment.  The next day in class, the kids returned asking if we were "going to play the rock game" again.  The rock GAME?  They thought it was FUN? 

I am not even sure I can tell you exactly why this works, but it does.  At least in part I think it works because the control over the activity has shifted to the student.  They can control those rocks and how many they have, speak when they have something to say, and listen when they don't.  They are tangible, visible reminders of the expectations. 

The system isn't perfect but it has allowed me to get kids speaking and listening and having fun while doing it.  I will still have the occasional kid that would rather take his two rocks and sit happily with his/her 60% and never utter a word.  The rocks help me as well though.  As I circulate, I too can see how many rocks each student has and I invite the kids with fewer rocks into the conversation with direct questions.  It doesn't always work, but it works A LOT better than what I was doing before.     

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     I have been teaching Spanish for the past 15 years in a large Suburban School District.

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