Category: Target Language - Talia Block

BreakoutEDU in the World Language Classroom

2/8/2019

Escape rooms are all the rage right now, so why not cash in on the fun? BreakoutEDU offers a way for students to get the experience of an escape room within the confines of your classroom. Even better is that you have the opportunity to customize the breakout to fit your students’ age, content and language level. Once you get started, creating clues and events will be a breeze.

Preparation
Like any other lesson, I found that starting with the end in mind was really helpful. I set up a scenario that relates to the content we are studying and gives a hint as to what they should be prepared for. For my 4th grade animals unit, it seems as though some animals were stolen from the zoo and locked up in our school while the 5th grade students needed to unlock a petition to stop the use of plastic straws in the school.

Selecting the right part of the unit to do this is also essential. At the start of a unit, students don’t tend to have enough related vocabulary to accomplish the task, but at the end of the unit they are ready to move on to the next topic. Breakout activities are great for re-invigorating the learning and reignites excitement about the topic. Another benefit of doing the breakout mid-unit is that I can recycle material from class to create clues. Whether clips from a movie or an infographic, making a clue of something familiar can keep the clue from being too difficult or frustrating.

One last thing to consider is the amount of time you have to complete the breakout. My classes are 30 minutes long, which really becomes 25 by the time we get settled, I explain the activity and we clean up. I found that splitting the class into teams and having each team complete only one clue. If a team finished early, they were to split up and help the other groups (who were also told to accept the help!)

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.

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!

I "Can Do"

8/17/2017

Students self-assessment has always been a bit of a struggle for me. Can a 3rd grader really assess his own learning? How can I help my learners understand where they are and where I want them to go?

Enter the ACTFL “Can Do” statements. These are not new, but after many years of working with them, I finally feel that I figured out their true place in my classroom. Over the past few years of writing and re-writing curriculum, we’ve used a wide range of Can Do statements in our documents and with our students. I’ve created bulletin boards, created ranking documents and pretty much anything else you can think of. No matter what form they’ve taken, the self-assessment piece hasn’t worked for me.

This year, my team and I are taking a different approach to the Can Dos and self-assessment. In language learning, it is impossible to acquire something and then never use it again. Language builds on itself; we go deeper into topics and broaden our vocabulary around that topic. We constantly talk about spiraling curriculum and vocabulary, but how does that play out in the Can Do statements.

Enter the travel map.

This goal is to help students visualize a path through our unit. Each can do reflects the vocabulary and functions we expect of our students, and through this path, they better understand that each piece is important in reaching our goal.
As we go, students will be asked to shade each circle. Wait, shade? You read that correctly! Since language learning is not a one and done, we want to help students visualize they are consistently adding layers to their learning. By shading the circle, students demonstrate they are continuing to build their knowledge so that by the end of the unit they’ve had the chance to revise the Can Dos multiple times.

Part of my goal for the year is to help students understand that learning is a process and that it takes a long time to become proficient. I’ve been working on my Spanish since I was in elementary school and every day I learn new words and phrases and I work to refine my language. It is my hope that not only will they begin to understand the process of learning language, but will also be kind to themselves on the days where they struggle and extremely proud of themselves as they see the progress they’ve made.

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?

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.

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?