Category: Interpretive - Talia Block

Top Tips for Implementing Stations

12/12/2017

After ACTFL this year in Nashville, I was very inspired to delve into the use of stations. I used them sparsely before but they were always more work than they were worth. My stations were rushed as I tried to squeeze too many rotations into my 30 minute class period; the instructions often took longer than the activity itself. During this years’ ACTFL conference, however, I had the pleasure of attending a session by Heather Sherrow and one by Joseph Pearson. My version of using stations pulls pieces of each of these presentations with my own personal spin. So here it goes!

Groupings
Work with classroom teachers, who spend all day with their students, to create strong heterogeneous groups. Since station work includes writing, reading, speaking, and listening, it is important to mix students that have various strengths. Along with the mix of academic strengths, you also want to consider social-emotional strengths. A group made completely of outwardly strong leaders can be as much of a disaster as one with all students that struggle with the target language.

I created a Google presentation with the groups so that it was easy to get them up for the class every day. The groups are assigned to a symbol or color that rotates each day. As a result, the groups don’t need to change, just the basket they find and the leader.

Can You Guess Who?

6/1/2017

It’s always interesting to see how well students know each other. I have the privilege of seeing (most) of my students for three years and many have known each other since kindergarten. We spend so much time in language classes having students talk about themselves, that I love to use activities to see how much they know about one another.

In 3rd grade, we spend time at the end of the year doing adjectives. During one class period, students move from desk to desk and write an adjective about their classmates. This is a great activity for students to work on complimenting each other and to get their descriptive juices flowing. The next step is to have students create accordion people with five descriptions. Students write their names on the back and turn them in.

Keeping Current with Current Events

5/11/2017

I don’t know about your school, but with my elementary students, fidget spinners are all the rage. Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve seen these toys on the news, on social media, and in your students’ hands. What was meant to be a fidget to help certain students concentrate has become just another distraction in class. Add it to the list: putty, cubes, erasers, squishies – the list goes on.

Instead of droning on to the students about who might need the spinners and who doesn’t, I decided to let them use information to decide for themselves. A colleague of mine shared an article from BBC Mundo with an easy to understand title for our novice level students. While she decided to share only the title with her students, I decided to take it one step further.

To help acclimate the students to the conversation, I created a word cloud from the article using Tagul.com. As an aside, I love this site as it allows you to change the shape of your cloud (and upload your own image) and to save the clouds you make for later use.

Students easily understood the topic of conversation, and were then able to pull a large number of familiar words and cognates. After working individually to highlight all of these words, students worked in groups to brainstorm a list of vocabulary from the word cloud. Each student then took a turn writing a word on the board to create a larger vocabulary list. In doing this, they also created a second word cloud of sorts with words they knew.

Using their brainstormed words, I asked them to make a prediction about the article’s take on fidget spinners. Not only did they have to give an opinion (good, bad, toy, tool, etc.) but also give me the words that supported this claim.

Day two meant diving deeper into the article. I created a t-chart for students to place evidence in the categories of tool or toy.

I pulled various sentences from the article that supported both sides of the argument. In groups, students read through the sentences and chose the correct category for each. I made sure to choose sentences that had enough cognates or familiar words that students could work through them without the use of a translator and without too much frustration. We did the first two together: I asked students to tell me all the words they understood.

Originally, I did not have students complete this step, and despite doing the first few together, they struggled to work through the sentences. By breaking down each sentences into doable words and phrases, students were less anxious and more able to see the sentence in pieces.

After assigning each sentence to a category, we switched into English. Based on the evidence, we had a short conversation about whether fidget spinners were tools or toys and whether they should be allowed in school. It was important to me to have the end conversation - just a few minutes long - in English to ensure that we were all on the same page and that they heard themselves and each other give the answers. In each of my five classes, students concluded that the spinners were ok for kids who need it but that they had become just another toy that was a distraction to themselves as well as their peers and teachers.

In having students do the “research” and come to the conclusion themselves, I’m hoping this conversation will have an impact on their choices. This was an incredible opportunity to address a current issue in a positive and engaging way while using the target language and pushing students to think and engage in that language.

This, of course, works for any current event. What was a big thing in your school that you could find an article for?

Word Clouds

5/31/2016

Over the years, I’ve gone back and forth on whether I like word clouds or not. After attending Amy Lenord’s session on Liberation from the List at Central States, I decided to give them another try. Over the past few weeks, I’ve worked with the clouds in various capacities to get the most out of their use. Here are a few of the activities:

1. Introduction of vocabulary
Copy and past the content of a website into the word cloud site and create! Once the word cloud is complete, students can begin by searching for cognates and words they know. I also encourage them to make educated guesses about words based on what they already know about the language. Students can share all the words with the class, and this becomes their vocabulary list. Once students have found these words (which usually ends up being WAY more than they could imagine), have them write a short summary of what they think the website might be about. For novice mid students, you may just have them write the most important words from the cloud. Now that you’ve activated some prior knowledge, students can read through the text and do various interpretive activities.

2. Info gap activities
There are a few different ways to do info gaps with word clouds. For my 3rd graders, I created a word cloud with adjectives and asked students to highlight the words that describe themselves. Once they did that, students paired up and asked each other about the various adjectives, highlighting with a different color on the word cloud. Students finished by creating a Venn Diagram to compare themselves with their friends. This could work with any set of vocabulary in terms of likes and dislikes.

In the 5th grade, I used word clouds to condense an “All About Me” page from a blog post. I created two clouds – one for each post. Students answered questions about their post based on the cloud and then partnered up to ask and answer questions based on their cloud.

3. All About Me
Word clouds are also a great way to present information. They can be used to start the year as a way to introduce students to one another or at the end of the year to sum up the various vocabulary pieces the students learned. I find that providing a brainstorm document of some sort helps students organize their thoughts and put more information into the cloud.

4. Guess Who
A word cloud is a great way to play Guess Who? in class. Students create their cloud without their name and their classmates try to guess who it is. The other day, I had students move from cloud to cloud. Not only did they guess the name of the person, but also wrote palabras claves, key words that helped them determine to whom the cloud belonged. Some were obvious, such as the student obsessed with the Cleveland Cavaliers and Lebron James, and others were much trickier as multiple students participate in the same activities.

There are various sites you can use to create your world cloud. Here are a few that I’ve used in the past:

-Wordle: This is one of the original sites and provides you the ability to change fonts, colors, and word direction. The more times you write a word, the larger it becomes. You can copy text from websites, song lyrics, etc. It requires flash, so it cannot be used on a iPad. It often asks for updates and seems to work best on Firefox rather than Chrome or Safari.
-Tagxedo: This site is similar to Wordle, but also allows you to create the word clouds in various shapes. It also requires a plugin, but once downloaded, works just fine. It also works best on Firefox or Safari.
-Tagul: My favorite of the three at this point, Tagul works on any browser and also on the iPads. It gives more freedom than the others in that colors, fonts, and word directions can be changed for individual words or the word cloud as a whole. Tagul does require a login, but if students have Google accounts through the school, they can use them here. The benefit of logging in, however, is that the site saves your work and you can return to it later.

How do you use word clouds in class?

Lip Sync Battle

5/9/2016

Who doesn’t love a good lip sync? It takes me back to my days at summer camp, but lately, lip sync battles are all the rage. So why not bring it into the classroom. Not only is it a great way to introduce students to popular music in Spanish, but also a chance for me to catch up on the latest and greatest while throwing in some of my favorites! (Plus it was a chance to watch Jimmy Fallon’s lip sync battles gratuitously.)

Students have access to the set of music videos they can choose from before we begin the battle. At home, they listen to as many of the songs as they like and come to class with an idea of their top video. Based on their video choice, they are put in groups. If there are multiple groups that choose the same video, it is up to the group to make their performance standout.

Once in groups, students get to work on the studying the song lyrics, and especially the chorus. As this is 5th grade, students are only responsible for truly lip syncing the chorus. In order to impress the judges (a few teachers I roped in and me), they can learn more. Students get to practicing the lyrics while they listen and dividing the work amongst the group. Students perform no more than 2 minutes of the song for the sake of time (we only have a 30 minute class).

Next comes the dance moves. No one wants to watch you standing still for 2 minutes! Students choreograph a dance to the part on which they will focus. It’s really fun to watch the students get into their dance moves. You never know who’s been hiding their talents all year!

Groups go against each other in pairs. The winner of each pair advances to the next round. Students are judged on their creativity, the clarity of the lip sync during the chorus, and group dynamics.

While this is a great way to wind down the school year, it is also a fun way to introduce new music to the students. It opens their eyes to culturally appropriate artists and genres, as well as provides input in the target language. Hearing different accents and voices broadens students’ ability to interpret the target language and make use of it. This activity can also be connected to their music classes, adding another layer to its’ purpose.

Next year, I’d love to pair the songs for our lip sync battle with a Music Madness tournament in March, a la Carrie Toth and @Spanishplans. I would introduce these songs/videos in March and get the students geared up and listening. By May, they wouldn’t even need the lyrics to study!

Taking it to the Next level - Connecting Students to Content

3/26/2016

I don’t know about you, but as long as I’ve been a Spanish teacher, I’ve always taught some iteration of activities students like to do. Sometimes it’s sports focused while other times it’s plans for the summer. No matter what, kids like to share what they do. Over the years, like many others, I’ve tried to find different ways to incorporate this into larger themes or ideas – no more me gusta without a purpose or intent. I’ve been toying with the idea of creating a thematic unit around world sports for the past few years, but it never seemed to gel. With the help of some great ideas from #CSCTFL16, I think I’ve finally started to pull it together. With the summer Olympics just around the corner, I figured this was the perfect time to get my butt in gear!

Part of the push to focus on the Olympics, or anything other than just sports, was that many of my students had no interest in sports. Ask them what they like, and they say “I don’t know”. If the goal is to have interpersonal conversation, that obviously isn't going to work. With the Olympics, however, there are something like 42 events to choose from. There has to be at least one that interests everyone! (Or at least I hope!) While still a work in progress, the unit is starting to take shape. Here are the current essential questions:

As a way to introduce the unit, I shared the official Olympic events symbols. Without any information, I asked students to match a set of vocabulary words to the pictures.

After attending Amy Lenord’s Central State’s session on List Liberation I went back and forth on whether to provide any vocabulary at all. After some internal debate, however, I decided a set of core vocabulary was necessary to get my 4th graders started, but to let them go from there. The personal vocabulary piece is essential to maintain their interest, but at this age, I believe they still need a starting point. Once students matched the vocabulary I gave them (mostly cognates or words they needed to think about but could guess), they were tasked with finding 3 extra words which they shared in groups.

Once we matched the vocabulary, we began the conversation about the Olympics with this great infographic:

Using interpretive reading strategies from ACTFL’s Implementing Integrated Performance Assessments, students worked in groups to see what they could figure out. There is a lot of language here for a 4th grade novice mid, so I made sure to focus their attention. Students already saw the pictures in a previous activity, which helped bring down their affective filter. This map gave us the opportunity to talk geography (Where is Brazil? What is the capital?) and language, since many students don’t realize that Brazil is not a Spanish-speaking country. I also made sure to focus a question on the transportation available, to give students an opportunity to add these words to their vocabulary. We used the map to practice our interpersonal skills with questions about what activities are available and the similarities and differences in the offerings at each stadium. By breaking students into 4 groups (one per stadium), they needed their classmates to answer questions about event availability before they decided which stadium location they might choose to attend.

Sadly, neither my 4th graders nor I will be attending the Olympics this year. And even if we were, the students certainly would not be planning the trip. Keeping this in mind, I decided to focus on what students might watch with their friends instead of what they might attend. In 4th grade, they may not be planning travel, but they are deciding what to watch on TV and with whom to hang out.

Using the schedule of events, we did some more exploring of what was available when. Central States keynote, John De Mado, discussed the need for students to “guess” effectively in order to continue their language growth. Acting on this principal, I focused my questions on sports that students had possibly come across, but would not necessarily know. For example, they know correr is to run, but could they figure out Track and Field based on the picture and previously hearing the information in conversation? If they know nadar is to swim, can the determine that nado sincronizado is synchronized swimming? It seemed easy enough, but for some of my 9 year olds, it was a push. Not only did the schedule allow me to bring in more vocabulary, but also to have the conversation about the date in Spanish. Despite having this conversation before, the students ALWAYS seem to get tripped up! Another crack at a cultural difference (and numbers practice) is always a plus!

The schedule was also a great way to talk about student interests around the sports. Since each word has a picture associated, there is less stress in choosing activities that might not be so popular or easy to decipher. If I like archery and you like fencing, it doesn’t really matter that they aren’t cognates. I have the pictures and Spanish there to assist me! As students started talking about which events interest them – moving away from me gusta and introducing me interesa – we also added in some adjectives to describe why. Yet another chance for guided interpersonal practice (woohoo!). Using a simple chart, students tracked their friends’ answers and talked about who had similar interests. (I use this structure a lot for interpersonal practice so students can clearly see the questions they are working with and also keep track of the information.)

As we move forward in the unit, we will look at medal counts as a way to further practice numbers in context. Lord knows we need the practice! Eventually, students will predict what country might win the most of each medal and why. Students will take on the identity of an Olympian in a sport they enjoy and will do a presentational activities with personal information as well as information about their sport, which will lead to a final interpersonal.

Bringing the Olympics into the classroom is so much more than just activities. We’re making connections to geography, math, culture, and beyond! Using authentic resources to guide the conversation makes the language more real and gives it a purpose beyond the classroom walls. So many of my students play sports that are involved in the Olympics, and now they have a chance to share about themselves in a cultural and language context.

Using Instagram for INterpretive Activities

11/4/2015

Instagram is a social network platform of images and descriptions from around the world. By following people on Instagram, you receive photographs and videos in a constant stream. These visuals, posted by native speakers from around the world, offer a wealth of resources for the World Language classroom. Posts are done by native speakers, for native speakers, and make for the perfect piece for classroom activities. These images are great for activities in all three modes, but especially for the interpretive.

One of my favorite accounts is National Geographic in Spanish (@Natgeoesp). As expected, the images in this account are gorgeous, and offer stunning scenery and animal shots. The photo below is one of my favorites, and is perfect for my novice-level unit on animals and the food chain! Not only does the picture capture the food chain in motion, but the caption “¡La captura! ¡La caputra en el aire!” gives a jumping-off point for a conversation around the animals, their eating habits, and the food chain in general.

To review or not to review

8/25/2015

For many of us, the start of school is just days away. The room is (almost) ready and the excitement is building, but what are you actually going to teach on the first day? Do you dive right in, or do you spend time reviewing and warming up your students’ brains? I’m always torn on how much time I should spend reviewing. While it seems to help ease the students back in, I’m not sure that it actually elevates their learning in any way. Every year, I feel like I go back and forth on how and what to review and how much time to spend.

In years past, I feel like I’ve tried everything. Some years, students create Facebook pages or write short books all about themselves. These activities pull in vocabulary, such as colors and activities, which we’ve learned the previous year. (See some samples below.) Other years, I skip the projects and do more interactive getting-to-know-you activities like human bingo. There is NOTHING wrong with these activities! It eases students back into school while allowing them to share about themselves and learn from others. (Truthfully, I think it also eases me back into the school year.)

Facebook Review.pdf
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Human Bingo.doc
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Top Tips for Sharpening Language Skills This Summer

6/24/2014

Once the school year has ended and students are no longer in class every day, it can be difficult for them to maintain the language skills they learned throughout the year. But practicing and working with the language can be easier than you think. The more students interact with the language, the better they are able to get back into the swing of things come September. Here are some quick tips to help students maintain and sharpen their language skills:

Use technology. Tablets and smart phones offer a wide range of applications (apps) in many languages. Even if the apps do not concentrate on vocabulary learned in the classroom, they offer the chance to continue interacting with the language in a fun way. Duolingo is one free choice.
Listen to music. An important part of maintaining language skills is to continue interacting with the language. Listening to music is a great way to pick up new vocabulary and to get to know the culture of the language as well. If local radio stations do not provide international music stations, there are various Internet radio stations that do. From Top 40 hits to more cultural music, it can all be found online.
Read a good book. Reading children’s picture books in the target language, especially one that is familiar, is a great way to continue practicing over the summer. Books, such as “The Hungry Caterpillar” or “The Cat in the Hat,” are available in a wide range of languages. When children read books with which they are familiar, there is more focus on the language and often they can pick up new words easily. Many bookstores and libraries carry picture books in multiple languages, and many books are available through online retailers as well.
Watch a favorite movie. Many of today’s movies are available in multiple languages through the movie menu. Watching a movie in the target language provides students with an incredible amount of language. In watching a well-known movie, students can concentrate on the new language and not so much the content of the movie. Animated movies are an especially good choice as they are often available with target language subtitles as well. If you cannot find movies in the language you desire, YouTube offers an incredible wealth of material.
Focus on the word of the day. By focusing on one word a day, students can easily add to their vocabulary. Use the word in as many different ways and settings as possible. Another way to use the word of the day method is to find words in the target language in and around the community. More so than with words from a dictionary or website, these vocabulary pieces are meaningful and allow students to connect their language with their surroundings.

As previously published in SmartBlogs for Education.

La Copa Mundial 2014

5/27/2014

http://tinyurl.com/copamundial2014

The World Cup is upon us! What better way to end the year than with a celebration of the most popular sport in the Spanish-speaking world?!

I am lucky to have an incredibly collaborative specials team that is willing to work with me throughout the World Cup unit. In art, students make flags and posters to represent their country, and in music they learn national anthems and chants. Best of all, in PE, students play a World Cup tournament, where they use the flags and cheers to show their national pride. All of this ties together our learning in Spanish class, where students get basic information on the World Cup and this year's host, Brazil.

At the elementary level, one of the most important pieces is keeping it fun and interactive. Students use all three modes of communication to complete their journey through the World Cup. Students interpret graphics and schedules, present information in the target language (TL) about their assigned country's team, and works with classmates to find a common game to watch during the tournament.

Not only is it important to provide students some background in football and the World Cup, but to help them feel like they are a part of the action. The cultural connections to products and practices are essential.

Here are some resources to get you started: