Summer Time

So what's a teacher to do in the summer? The first few nights after school was over I had terrible school nightmares, but apparently that phase has now passed. My principal has posted the schedule for next year and I will have one section of Spanish I and the rest all Spanish II's. First thing I did was to clone the Spanish II syllabus and adjust it to Spanish I, changing the topics of course. My super cool friend Tony Vincent is keeping me busy trying out his suggestions for teachers. I already learned how to create personalized printed sticky notes for my students and now mastered Google Classroom. I set up classrooms for each of my classes for next year, with syllabus, a couple assignments, and all of the Quizlet vocabulary sets for all chapters I plan to cover with them on the Spanish I and II levels. I also created a Google Classroom for our Monroe County Teacher Summer Splash and added topics for each of the seven presenters to post their presentations and resources. This morning it occurred to me to create another Google Classroom, this one for our Global Collaborations with Athalo and Alexis. So now I will turn my focus to the Upward Bound German class coming up next Wednesday. Fortunately all is ready for them with pre- and post-tests, syllabus, project rubric, vocabulary lists, and group activity instruction handouts. Think my brain is running in overdrive? Perhaps, but I need to take advantage of this time of the year, when my brain is still on school. Ah, and the ISTE17 coming up, now that's another story for later.

Great Global Project Challenge Award

Last week I found out that our project "Why Should I Study a Foreign Language?" was selected as one of the grant winners. It came as a big surprise, but I am so happy about it. My co-project leaders Athalo and Alexis will be presenting it with me at the next Global Education Conference. This is so exciting. Last week was the most hectic all year, with a webinar, a Quizlet teacher PD, a videoconference with Athalo's school, Senior Awards night, and then graduation last night. But now it will be smooth sailing to the end of the school year with exams on Thursday and Friday. I am so proud of my 1st period class who has been my pilot Classcraft class and helped me learn to play this with my classes next school year. Next Monday I will give them each an award for their effort to participate and learn to play it after the senior left.

Global Day of Design- May 2, 2017

Summary of our Global Day of Design Activities We had our Global Day of Design in Spanish II and III classes. We began the morning by creating colorful key chains in 1st period class. One of my students had a lot of experience with this and taught the others in the class. The results were great and all were able to come up with nice products. Then in 2nd period class we created friendship bracelets. One of the students, a Cuban girl, taught the others in the class including myself how to create the bracelets. This proved to be a lot harder than the key chains because you had to use 6 strands instead of just two. We also created Cuban sandwiches in that class and had Cuban coffee, delicious.Finally we concluded the Global Day of Design in 4th period class and created Origami objects. My students made hearts, umbrellas and flowers. All in all it was a fun day and greatly enjoyed by all. Ruth Valle