Chromebooks in the Spanish Classroom for Native Speaker Rotations

This has been the longest week and it's only Thursday. I wrote an article about my Spanish III class' use of Chromebooks for native speaker rotations: http://edtechreview.in/trends-insights/insights/2658-chromebooks-in-the-spanish-classroom Also, on Tuesday I was evaluated in that class. I will get my results this afternoon; hopefully they will be good. One thing I can say is that they were talking more Spanish during those 70 minutes than ever. I have had that class only since January, so I feel that we are certainly on the right track as far as speaking abilities are concerned. The native speaker rotations are working fabulously. But we will see what the observer thought is this. So, today we are doing Genius Hour. I had the students give short updates this morning and I am very excited about what they are doing. So many ideas: an art gallery, a coffee shop, a Mexican fast food place, a goat breeding operation, various websites that sell items, trips to Spanish-speaking countries, fishing tours, under the ocean habitats, dresses and furniture designed based on Hispanic themes and much more. Each student in my classes is doing a different project that is based on personal interest as long as it has to do with the Spanish language and culture. Next week we will set the project deadlines. Updates to come later. Update: Evaluation results were wonderful. The observer really appreciated my efforts to include the native speakers in my lesson the way I do with the rotations.

A five-day weekend

We came back from a four-day weekend yesterday, just to be sent home for a five-day one due to illness in the school system with numerous teachers also being affected. My first reaction was disappointment because my evaluation was supposed to happen today in fourth period. Now is it scheduled for Valentine's Day. I suppose it will be ok anyway. It's just very difficult to keep the momentum going when you are out this much. We practiced a little bit for it and now actually have a chance to practice some more on Monday. It's mainly a matter of practicing the routine. I especially love our native speaker group rotations, where students speak to three Hispanics in Spanish about the assigned topic, in this case sports. I am also going to catch up on grading my online South College course today. Lesson plans? I can just use this week's plans, so I believe we do not make out new ones. What to do over the long weekend? I will think about it and let you know.

End of 30 days of blogging challenge

I just found out that today is the end of the 30 days of blogging challenge posted by A.J. Juliani. I was surprised as I had completely forgotten when we started the challenge. A lot has happened in one month since I began with my new students in January. Blogging is a great activity to reflect on what is going well and what needs changing in our professional lives. For the most part it has been a great experience. There was only one day last month that I would rather have not experienced the way it happened, but that's not bad in the great scheme of things. Today I gave my first chapter test and it was very typical. There were some 100's, a lot of down the middle and a few failures. I still need to re-teach the whole subject-verb agreement deal until they finally get this. I am not quite sure if they actually didn't know the conjugations or if they still do not understand how it works in Spanish. But I will find out. Monday will be subject-verb agreement day. Update: There will be no school until Tuesday due to sickness. I guess I will get a four-day mini vacation. How nice! Buncee rocks. I took their webinar yesterday.

Keeping them Guessing with Varying Presentation Tools

I am happy to report that the EdTech Review just published my second article this year, actually this month. I was inspired over the weekend and wrote about presentation tools. http://edtechreview.in/trends-insights/trends/2645-online-presentation-websites-tools I try to vary my way of presenting material to my students because invariably they get tired of the same types of presentations. Also, I love it when the students use some of the newer presentation tools on the Internet rather than creating simple PowerPoints. On another topic, my Spanish III students enjoyed a collaboration with a college class in the Dominican Republic yesterday. We communicated via the WhatsApp app and sent audio messages back and forth providing feedback concerning each other's pronunciation. My students enjoyed this tremendously and we are following up on a few more voice messages in class this afternoon. After that, we will review the present subjunctive for the chapter test on Friday. Hopefully, they will come through and perform excellently as expected.

Disappointed

I went to sign my contract for my Fall Semester Spanish 1020 at our local college last night, but to my chagrin they now pay by the student if one has less than seven students in a class. I had only two enrolled, so this amounted to only $500.00, which I obviously declined. It's so depressing to think what they are doing this to the adjunct instructors there, who obviously must make a living from the money they make there and at other colleges. In fact, I find this to be a cruel policy. I worked there for eight years and had plenty of classes with under seven students and was never paid by the student. This is a disappointment, but Thank God I have my high school full-time Spanish job as well as my adjunct classes at South College in Knoxville, who will give me two classes next quarter. One will be online and the other one on site. I really did not see this coming, but life is full of surprises I suppose. On the bright side, I love my high school classes and especially the Genius Hour Project we do each Friday. The students are such an inspiration to me as they work on their project ideas, building businesses and acting on their creativity. In fact, it makes me think about building an online tutoring service website. I will need to work on how to get this started, but it definitely has potential. Let's just roll with the punches as they say.

TGIF- a long week

This has been the busiest week so far this semester. I gave my Spanish II students a quiz every day of the week. We still need to take two more quizzes before taking the chapter test. My most successful activity this week was actually the daily native speaker group activity. My Spanish III students now rotate daily through three stations headed by native speakers who talk to them about different topics, such as famous sites in their home countries, popular foods they like, and sports activities. This has really worked well and the students have steadily gained more confidence each day. They feel proud that they can now understand what the native speakers are saying and really attempt to ask them questions related to the assigned topics. In addition, we have been doing a "news flash" or noticia de la última hora in Spanish III class as the "hook" question. As we work on the subjunctive mood, these two daily components plus the genius hour project have made my Spanish III class extremely enjoyable to teach this semester.

Article in the EdTech Review

I am happy to report that my article, "Providing a Bigger Purpose with a Genius Project" was published this morning in the EdTech Review, a publication that originates out of India. http://edtechreview.in/trends-insights/insights/2638-genius-hour-project-ideas I had not sent them any articles since last year, so this is perhaps a new beginning of sorts for me. This week has been hard work, quizzes every day and grammar lessons with the Spanish II classes. I am trying new approaches in Spanish III class to make it more and more conversational. We now have the Noticia del día in place, where students begin each class with a news flash of some sort. We then have a group activity, led by native speakers who question the students on different topics each day. The students had very positive reactions to this and I can't wait to see how this works out today.