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.

Teacher PD today

Today we will have another teacher PD in our series of professional development we are offering at the local middle school. This one will cover a review of the Excel program. Yesterday we had another genius hour and I was amazed at the level of commitment my students are showing. They worked so peacefully on their projects that I was able to create an article for the EdTech Review during my last period of the day. I am having my English teacher friend look it over before submitting it, but it basically covers the genius hour project idea in the classroom. Last night we had a nail biter basketball game. Our team lost after a very tough fight. It was sad. The star players are in my Spanish III class and I am so proud of their efforts. Not only are they great players but they actually try to learn Spanish in my class. What else could a teacher ask for? Next week we will get into testing with quizzes every day, and the week after that I will be giving my first chapter test to my students this semester. Hopefully, they will test well and all of our effort will have paid off.

Give the students credit for their bright ideas

Today I was amazed by my students' ideas in their daily reflections once again. I absolutely love it that they take responsibility for their own learning and share their bright ideas with me. Today a student told me that we should look at learning as a computer with temporary and permanent memory and that for obvious reasons we should try to commit the new vocabulary words to long term memory by really trying to learn the pronunciation. In my first period class, we did the usual after group practice of the vocabulary words on Quizlet and played the match and Quizlet live games. This was a lot of fun and enjoyed by all. But, in second period the class decided to have the students pronounce the words individually and I put a native speaker in front of the class. Interestingly, she didn't accept anything instead of perfection and some students ended up having to pronounce the words numerous times. This actually took up the entire class period, but toward the end the students' pronunciation had improved dramatically as had their confidence in their speaking abilities. Quite amazing actually. In their reflections they expressed this as well and most said they wanted to do this again next time. Of course this will have to hold until next week, since tomorrow is our designated Genius Hour, during which the students work on their extended Spanish projects. Power to the students!!!

An ordinary Wednesday

So, the 39 day blogging challenge continues. I was able to form the Academic Festival teams to create a Spanish video with the theme of "Social Media." The Spanish II class participants came up with some good ideas concerning bullying possibly. The Spanish III class has not discussed this yet but I am sure it will come out great. They are very creative. I sent out the survey forms for my Great Global Project Challenge, "Why Should I Study a Foreign Language?" but unfortunately I only received three back so far from the 23 registered participants. I do hope I will get them to complete the forms before the end of the week, though this will probably not happen. My classes are getting more into the work now that we are back from snow days and MLK day. Today I am getting more positive responses for the reflection component of the lesson. So I think we should settle in before too long. Hopefully, there will not be a bunch of snow days to throw us off course again. Did I just say that?