Category: Resources - Talia Block

5 Top Tips For Picking Professional Development

9/17/2018

We all know that professional development (PD) is important to our practice and that without it, we cannot continue to grow and learn. Picking the right PD, however, can be daunting and a bit frustrating. No one wants to spend money on a session that doesn’t spark ideas or build knowledge. No one wants to write sub plans only to find out the PD wasn’t worth the time. But how do you determine what PD is worthwhile?

Set goals
What is your professional goal for the year? What do you want to bring to your students and what do you want them to leave with at the end of the year? It is always important to set goals to help guide your practice, but these goals can also help guide your choice of professional development. Many of us have what my friend, Pauline (@PaulineZD) would dub “Shiny Object Syndrome”. We hear about new theories and/or practices and we throw ourselves into them without a thought as to whether they really help us meet our goals or not. Think about deepening your knowledge in one area as opposed to knowing a little bit about everything.

Attending a conference? Pick sessions that are directly connected to your goal. Plan your time to maximize the PD potential from the sessions. Even better, team up with a friend to double the amount of sessions you can attend.

Culture Around Every Corner

9/19/2017

I didn’t grow up speaking Spanish. I didn’t grow up hearing the lullabies or playing the hand games. As a generally bilingual person, this is not necessarily an issue, but as a Spanish teacher (and bilingual parent), I sometimes struggle. I want to provide my students with the most culturally authentic class I can but I don’t always have the resources to do so. It isn’t the larger cultural ideas that are tough, but rather the little things, such as how a game is played or how turns are taken, that can be difficult to find. It is these things, however, that can add a little extra flair and fun to the world language class.

Keep an eye (and ear) out while watching TL content.
I was watching a video for a game, and as I was watching, I realized the kids in the video had various ways of picking whose turn it was to play. I did a quick search for each of the games and added it to my repertoire. Sometimes it’s simply a phrase or a hand gesture that comes out of watching other content, but by simply adding these little bits to our classroom, we create a more authentic experience for our students.

Find ways to match culture to content.
What are you teaching and what practices can you think of to match that content? What do we do in our country that may or may not be different in another country? Each year in Spanish we talk about food, which is a huge cultural lesson in and of itself. Our 4th grade unit focuses on food and celebrations starting with birthdays. As part of the unit, I’ve decided to teach the first few stanzas of Las mañanitas, the traditional birthday song. For each student’s birthday, we’ll sing Las mañanitas. It takes such a short amount of time but has a much greater impact than just talking about the song. Finding ways to bring in traditional poems, rhymes, hand games and songs can take a unit to the next level.

Travel (or bug someone who does).
If we had our way, many of us would travel all over the world learning and gathering knowledge. Sadly, this is not always reality. When we are fortunate enough to travel to countries where the TL is spoken, take the opportunity to speak with residents, browse the bookstore or music store, watch local TV or just observe people interacting with one another. In those time you aren’t able to travel, try and connect with a friend or family member who is. Ask them to bring back a book, video, CD, etc. that might be helpful. Giving a specific topic or general theme might be helpful to ensure they bring back what you are looking for.

Use social media.
I feel like I come back to this a lot. Social media provides a window to the world without leaving the comfort of you home (or school). By following relevant accounts, (for example: Zoo Madrid for animal), you get real-world resources at your fingertips. Within these resources I almost always find idioms or games that are more authentic than what I was using.

Here are a few fun things I picked up recently:

Disparejo – for picking turns.
This can be played with as many people as necessary. After saying “dis-pa-re-jo”, every person gives a thumbs up or thumbs down. The person who ends up without a pair (disparejo) is it. Originally, this game was played with coins, but has been adapted to using thumbs.

If you’d like to take this game a step further, here is a fun sheet for working on probability.

**Disclaimer: I would not suggest hitting anyone with a bottle, but this is the best video I could find to show you!**

Piedra, Papel y Tijeras
I always learned this game as yan ken po, which is also how it is called in Japan. This is a great example of regional and country differences. Here are some other ways to play rock, paper, scissors in Spanish (From Wikipedia): Piedra, papel o tijera, cachipún, jankenpón, dum-kin-voy,yan ken po, pin pon papas, chis bun papas, hakembó, chin-chan-pu, How-are-you-speak o kokepon.

Of course, these bits and pieces look different across the Spanish-speaking world, but I do my best to ensure my resources are authentic. What fun cultural tidbits do you use in your class? I’d love to add them to my bag of tricks!

Testing TakeOver - Tips for Teaching During Testing

4/28/2017

Spring is in the air… Which means it's time for testing! As a Spanish teacher, testing technically doesn't affect me at all. But with PARCC and MAP testing back to back, testing can feel overwhelming for both students and teachers. Not only are students’ brains a bit friend, but also, I miss classes due to the testing schedule.

Testing, however, does not need to keep you from teaching. In fact, this is a great opportunity to try a new idea you had or to play with the way in which you and your students interact with the curriculum. Here are just a few tips for keeping the learning alive during testing:

1. Turn everyday games into live action. Games are a great way to work with content without students thinking it’s work. Even better, live action games get students moving and expending energy as they think. Whether you want to focus on vocabulary or practice asking and answering questions there’s a game for you.

Human Tic-Tac-Toe: Set up a tic-tac-toe board on the ground and divide the class into two teams (X and O). Students answer a question (or ask a question about a vocabulary word) in order to move into the correct space. You can do this as a class or get multiple games going to get more students involved. Provide each group with a stack of pictures, words, definitions, etc. to work from so they can continue to play after one team wins.

Flyswatter: Everyone loves a chance to hit the target, but the way it’s traditionally played doesn’t keep the whole class involved. Change this game around by printing multiple sets of pictures of your vocabulary list and place the pictures all around the room – on the tables, floor, walls, etc. Divide the class into multiple teams (if you have 3 of each picture, make 5 teams, for example) and give each student a number. Call the number and call a word. Students with the number called find the word around the room. The students that find the pictures get a point for their team. Make sure to set some ground rules, though: walk don’t run, only one student per picture, play in silence, you have to give a sentence for each picture to get a point, etc.

2. Think Outside the Classroom. A lot of times, testing affects multiple teachers’ schedules. While it can be a pain for everyone, it also gives you the chance to do some shared activities. One great activity is a scavenger hunt. Divide the class into teams and create clues for them to find certain teachers. You can make the clues as easy or as difficult as you want. At each stop, have students ask a question. For example, students ask the librarian her favorite book or the art teacher her favorite artist. If a teacher wants to participate but won’t be around, just leave their picture hanging with the answer. J Once the clues were written, it didn’t take much to organize the clues and get the treasure hunt set up. Want to extend the activity? Have students work in groups to write different clues and create their own treasure hunt around the school.

3. Involve the students. Testing can be a perfect excuse to let loose and play some games. My students really wanted to play Quizlet Live, but I didn’t have the decks set up for them. I was able to quickly create sets to match word and picture, but I wanted something more. I created a list of as many vocabulary words as I could from the year and previous years in a Google Doc. I shared the Doc and asked students to write a description for as many of the words as they could. We wrote some sentence starters and talked about what kind of things they could write and it was off to the races! I was able to quickly create a deck of over 50 words in one class period to use with them the next day. Not only did they have a blast playing the game, but they did all the work!

4. Make them move. Right after finishing a test, it can be a lot to ask students to sit still for another 30 minutes; especially at the elementary level. To keep it Spanish focused, however, I didn’t want to take them out to the playground to run around. Instead, we moved all the tables to the side and did some kid-friendly workouts in Spanish. You can search YouTube and find some great stuff – just make sure to watch it first of course!

Música Madness - Elementary Style

3/17/2017

I’m not the first, and I won’t be the last to implement a Música Madness tournament in my class. With the help of people like Carrie Toth and @Spanishplans, I’ve been able to craft a tournament that works for my students and me. A bracket of 32 or even 16 songs seemed a bit overwhelming for my first go around with 5th graders, so I settled on 8 favorites. At the end of the year, I do a Lip Sync Off, so I chose songs that students would see again in our next competition. I figure the more contact the students have with the music, the more likely they are to connect with it.

I set up my brackets attempting to put like music together to even the playing field. I also tried for different genres of music to engage the widest audience. Once the brackets were set; we completed one bracket a week for the first round, listening to the whole song. As we move forward in the brackets, we’ll listen to just a few minutes to remind students before they vote. I’m so curious as to whether the totals will change the more they listen to the song.

#authres: 5 tips for Finding the "Perfect" resource

2/2/2017

Finding the perfect authentic resource can be challenging. Does the content match what I want to teach? Can I use the resource at an age appropriate level? There are times I spend hours trying to find the “perfect” resource. Perhaps it isn’t about finding the perfect resource, but rather a resource that can be used in the perfect way.

Base your vocabulary on the resource and not the other way around.
Finding a resource with all of the vocabulary words you hope to teach is near impossible. Instead, find the resource first and pull the vocabulary list from there. Focusing on cognates and other familiar words or phrases can also help the resource better meet your needs.

There is no resource too difficult.
As an elementary level teacher, many resources seem daunting at first, but breaking an article or infographic into pieces can help ease the anxiety. One resource can be used over a period of multiple days to attract students’ attention to certain information.

Day 1

Day 3

Day 2

Day 4

National Foreign Language Week 2017

1/5/2017

National Foreign Language Week (NFLW) is just a few months away (March 5-11,2017)! It’s a great opportunity to celebrate language and to involve the entire school community in your world language classroom and program. NFLW is all about sharing your love for language and expanding students’ horizons in regards to languages, cultures and people. Your celebration can be big or small, focused on languages taught in the school or not, and can involve just the school or the greater community. From daily announcements to all school parties, there are so many ways, big and small, to celebrate.

Not sure where to start? Here’s are some ideas from last year’s #nflw16 Twitter feed to get you started:

- Share why language learning is important through infographics and posters.

- Play games from around the world in the target language.
- Play music in the halls or in your classroom. You can play songs in all different languages or focus on one song in many languages.
- Team up with the Social Studies teacher and invite guest speakers to speak around a shared topic.
- Post a large map in the hallway and have students stick pins or post-its to represent where they and there families come from.

Need some more ideas? Check out this NFLW board on Pinterest.

How do you celebrate NFLW at your school? Comment below or tag your tweet with #NFLW17

Brain Breaks

12/7/2016

If you’ve ever taught elementary school, you know the kids are squirrely. They can’t sit for more than 10 minutes or so before needing to stand up and move. This is great for language teachers as we often want our students moving around the room and interacting. There are times, however, that we need students to focus on an interpretive task or work on a presentational activity.

After reading about primacy and recency, I realized this was a great way to plan my lessons. Even with a 30 minute period, students could only focus on a task for about 10 minutes before needing a change. Enter the brain break.

Not only do brain breaks give students a chance to rest and recharge their brains, but also it is a way for me to incorporate cultural songs and ideas and to review previous lessons. Here are a few of my favorites:

Chocolate
This is a popular one with students as they get to talk (and think about) chocolate. It has a simple rhythm and simple hand gestures, but it gives them a chance to interact with a friend during class.

Cho-co-la-te
Choco choco la la
Choco choco te te
Choco la
Choco te
Choco Choco la te

Palo, Palo
This is a new find and the students love it! Again, simple words and gestures make it easy to introduce and do during class and it’s just fun! (The action starts about 2 minutes in.)

Palo, palo, palo
Palo, bonito
Palo, eh
Eh, eh, eh
Palo, bonito
Palo, eh

Hand clap
Everyone loves a good hand game and this one is no different! There are three parts to this, the second being quite long. While there is not a lot to the game, I love that the students learn the words associated with the different actions. As they move their hands, they have to say the words. For now, I only have them do part A, but as they get better I may add in part B and the finale. (Start video 1 min in.)

Busca algo…
This is a game we used to play as part of the color unit, but our color unit has been absorbed in other places (thankfully). Kids simply listen for the color (busca algo rojo) and walk around the room to find it. There are three rules: no running, no talking, and no touching other people. It’s a quick and simple way to get them moving and spot check for if they remember their colors. If you want to change it up, have them look for objects or letters.

Body Rock, Paper, Scissors
This is your typical rock, paper, scissors game, except that students use their entire bodies to form each object. Before playing, I go over each word and each movement with the students. We practice them in different orders and then in order. When they are ready to play, students close their eyes and say: “roca, papel, tijeras, ¡ya!”. On ya they pick a movement and open their eyes. You can teach phrases like “I win” or “rock beats scissors” as an added bonus.

Estatua
Another great way to review vocabulary is with statue. I name an object and students freeze in a way that demonstrates that word. Sometimes, I throw in feelings or adjectives as well.

When introducing the brain break, it can take a few extra minutes out of class, but once students know the song or game, all they require is the title of the activity to get going. It is worth the minutes up front to help long-term class participation and interest.

These are just a few of the many brain breaks out there. Not all are specific to the World Language classroom, but they can be adapted quite easily. Another option is to take a favorite rhyme or hand game in your target language or to search in your language via YouTube or Google.

No matter what you find, find a way to let students move and have a good time.

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?

Cromos...Olympics Style

4/25/2016

It’s April and everyone is in a slump (at least my students and I are). As I dive deeper into my 4th grade unit on the Olympics, I find myself wanting something a bit more. It isn’t the authentic resources I’m lacking, or the interpersonal activities, but rather a little something something for the students to get overly excited about. Enter Cromos.

Bethanie Drew wrote about the use of Cromos, which are basically trading cards for the World Cup, in this blog post. Based on the post and our Twitter conversations, it sounded like the cards were a ton of fun. But how could I use World Cup Cromos for my Olympics unit? Would the kids really be able to connect with the cards if they had nothing to do with what we are studying?

I decided it was time to do a little DIY. In class, the students are using pictures of real athletes headed to Rio 2016 as a point for conversation about the sports, geography, and how sports are played. These are people the students are already familiar with and they are also a great connection to the sports the students love.Why not use these athletes to create our own set of Cromos?

I did a little Google searching for an Olympics frame and Rio 2016 symbol, and I created my own template for the Cromos. (A downloadable file is available below.)

Cromos.docx
File Size:	129 kb
File Type:	docx

Each student will receive a template and a set of pictures of the various athletes with whom we are working. They will create a set of 16 Cromos for each player, which I will then laminate. Since I have more than one class, some athletes will have more than 16. I'm curious as to wether some, such as Lionel Messi and Pau Gasol, who the students know, will become more popular or coveted as we move forward.

Throughout the rest of the unit and school year, students will earn Cromos for their behavior and also their use of Spanish. I’m not usually one for this type of reward, but as we near the end of the school year, I think this group could really use it. Students know that in order to earn a Cromo, they must using the highest quality Spanish they can (complete sentences for most of them) during structured activities. During unstructured time or if there is a question, students use their Spanish to the best of their ability. During this unstructured time, I am not looking for perfection, but rather effort, circumlocution, and just using what they know to communicate.
Aside from being a different and fun way to bring the Olympics into the classroom, I am hoping this will excite them about the upcoming Olympics and the many Spanish-speakers involved. Perhaps they will even follow an athlete or two this summer.

Although mine are focused on the Olympics, these cards could really work for any unit you are doing where there are real athletes, musicians, or other people involved. For example, Carrie Toth does a Music Madness in March to reflect the NCAA's March Madness. Cromos would be a great way for students to learn about the musicians and/or groups they are voting for. You can use people, groups, countries, etc. It can be quite a task to find all of the pictures, names, and information, but it is a great way to incorporate the cultural piece into any unit. Not only that, it provides students a chance to ask and answer questions about real people without already knowing all of the answers!

Primacy/Recency Lesson PLanning For Elementary Students

4/6/2016

I’ve been thinking about lesson planning with the idea of prime times for learning during a class period. A recent post by Melanie Stilson brought these ideas back to the front of my brain. After attending a session at a recent conference, she was able to visualize the shift in her teaching, which she put to paper. Her visual of the peaks and valleys of the lesson made sense, but honestly, I was having trouble wrapping my head around the concept for my 30 minute elementary classes. The whole thing makes total sense – hit them with input when they walk in, take it down a notch, give a break, come back at them strong with conversation. But is this really necessary in a 30-minute class? What would it actually look like?

My next read was Sara-Elizabeth Cottrell blog post that touches on exactly this point. There are two main parts of the lesson that are best for activities that require large amounts of focus: the beginning (primacy) and the end (recency). The two most important pieces are the input at the start of the lesson and the activity with what Cottrell calls “high response interaction” (aka interpersonal communication). These two pieces really needed to be the focus of each and every day and should take the most amount of time – about 20-22 minutes of the class. A short dip after the input creates a few minutes for an activity related to that input. With only 30 minutes, the brain break shouldn’t be more than a minute or two.

That’s a lot to take in and figure out. Thankfully, Sara-Elizabeth and Amy Leonard created easy-to-visualize lesson planners for 60 and 90-minute and 50 minute classes. I’ve adapted these to create a template that works for my 30 minute elementary classes:

primacy_recency_lesson_plan.pdf
File Size:	33 kb
File Type:	pdf

Here’s what the lesson looked like:

Prime time 1: I shared what I did over my Spring Break using some pictures from my vacation. Once I shared the activities, I put the students’ activity on the board to model. Using the Olympic events (our current focus in 4th grade), I talked about the activities I watched (basketball and baseball) and the ones I participated in (lifting weights and bike riding). (~15 minutes)

Down time: Students circled the events in which they participated or watched during their Spring Break. (3-5 minutes)

Brain break: Statues (thank you Sara-Elizabeth!): Teacher calls out any word and students create a statue of that word. I used this as a way to do a little formative check as to what they remembered of current vocabulary (basketball, boxing, rowing, etc.) and past vocabulary (lion, frog, happy, etc.). (2 minutes)

Prime time 2: Students walked around asking each other what they did over their vacation in the TL, recording the information in their notebooks. (7-10 minutes)

Time flies with only 30 minutes, but this break down really helped me focus on the important pieces of the lesson. As I do this more and more, I’m hoping to really hone the timing to ensure the bookends of the lesson get the attention and time they deserve.