alice’s posterous

A few weeks ago I read a very interesting post from Dominic McGladdery about giving effective feedback to students. When I mark homework or assignments, I usually follow the "traditional marking" method which is basically using a red pen with "lots of crossing out", the type of marking which "confuses students and can demotivate them, too. (The ones who bother to read it, that is)"!
Well, I used to do this and never questioned it (because when I was at school, my teachers use to inflict this on me too, so I thought it was "ok" to do it!) until I read Dominic's post and it opened my eyes to lots of other types of marking which make way more sense to keep students motivated.

They are lots of different ways of marking positively, but the one I chose to try is the "highlighting method" from Chris Hart (you can read his rainbow assessment blog post which explains the method in more details.). I highlight where students have achieved the set objectives or have written a well structured sentence with the appropriate vocabulary and grammar, which allows them to see clearly which are the good bits in their work, so they can use them again and again. So instead of highlighting the bad bits, the good bits are highlighted which is way more motivating!

On the same note, before I used to ask students to highlight the words they didn't understand in a text they had to read. Now,  I ask students to highlight all the parts they understand. This way, they can see that they can actually understand most of the sentences in a text and they can also see how much progress that have done in understanding a new language.

Students are more motivated and therefore more engaged :)

What about you? How do you give feedback to your students?

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Click here to download:

GFuertes.escuela.ppt (583 KB)

Christian Jacomino created a wonderful method for French children to learn how to read, but not only how to read, how to enjoy reading French literature, something that schools omit to do nowadays because "it is too hard"!. His method focuses on the reconstruction of oral and written literary works such as poems, stories and songs and it revives the tradition of memory exercises.Through this method, Christian has created presentations of several literary works called Moulin à paroles (m@p) and he offers workshops (only in France at the moment) to help teachers and pupils use those presentations in a creative and suitable way. So far this method has been very successful with students who have been struggling for years with reading.

There is a poem called ¡Mi escuela, mi escuela! in the Spanish textbook Gente Joven I am following with my students. I thought it would be nice to create a Moulin à paroles with this poem and make my students follow this method although they are Spanish beginners. So I asked Christian if I could create a similar presentation to his and of course he said yes and helped me start on a shared Google document. So this presentation has been the result of a truly collaborative work. I have never met Christian physically, but we have been able to work together on this poem thanks to the magic of web 2.0!

Today, I have delivered the lesson to my students following the instructions on the presentation and I am proud to say it has been a true success. Students loved repeating each verse to each other and they were very proud to be able to remember a poem in Spanish although they only started to learn the language a few months ago. At the end of the lesson, I could hear a student who usually doesn't seem so keen on Spanish, reciting the poem to a friend who studies French. What a better example to show students how to enjoy literature!

I cannot thank Christian Jacomino enough to let me work with him and share his method with my students, and also write this moving newsletter on his website.

What about you? have you taught a poem in another language to your students?

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Yesterday night was St Martin's day in Germany and I had to bring some food to my children's kindergarten (or nursery). I had a bar of chocolate in my cupboard so decided to bake an easy peasy chocolate cake! I found the recipe on this fantastic French website called Marmiton where people share their recipes. Each recipe comes with a rating and comments from other people who have tried it as well as a picture (but not for every recipe).

For the chocolate fondant, all you need to do is to melt 100g butter and 200g chocolate in the microwave. When melted, add 5 egg yolks.

Add 100g caster sugar and 4 tbsp of white flour and mix well. Then beat the 5 egg whites until stiff and incorporate them to the mixture. My son did this very carefully!

Pour the mixture in a butter greased cake pan and put it in the oven at 180 degres for about 20 minutes (depending if you want the cake to be firm or gooey!). My children loved eating the leftovers of the chocolate mixture ;)

Unfortunatly, I don't have any pictures of the final cake because I completely forgot to take one! But here is the picture from Marmiton:

http://www.marmiton.org/Recettes/Recette-Photo_fondant-au-chocolat_15025.aspx

And here is where we had the cake, around a nice fire :)

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This week I have decided to try to use it as often as I can in an attempt to make my students visit the blog and leave comments. I have noticed they do visit the blog but they have not yet stepped into the commenting phase. Do you have any suggestions to make students comment on a blog?

If you haven't tried this yet, please do. You can find microphones at a very affordable price and they are so easy to use with Audacity. You can then save your recordings as .wav or.mp3 files and easily embed them onto your blog or website. You will see your students being motivated to SPEAK ;)

What about you? what do you do to make your students speak in another language?

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First you need about 140g hazelnuts. I didn't toast them but I finely chopped them in a food processor.

I then added 140g self-raising flour and 1 tsp bicarbonate of soda (and I completely forgot to add 140g sugar!).

I whisked 3 egg whites until stiff, then I quickly stirred 140g butter melted, 75ml milk and the 3 egg yolks into the dry ingredients.
When the mixture was smooth, I stirred in one-third of the egg whites, then I gently folded in the rest. My son wanted to give me a hand :)

I poured the mixture into a tin,  and baked it for 40-50 mins until the cake was golden and springy to touch.

Whilst the cake was baking, I prepared the dark chocolate filling. I microwaved 100g dark chocolate with a bit of water and 1 tbsp clear honey and mixed it well to obtain a smooth consistency.
When the cake was out of the oven and had cooled down a bit, I splitted the sponge in half. I gently spooned the chocolate filling over the first half.

To finish, I put the other half of the cake back on top to obtain this delicious torte (even without sugar!).

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Continuing with my series "Get active in the classroom!", here is another activity by Marc Helgesen which worked very well to reinforce directions in another language. I did this with my grade 12 group (17 years old). Although they are grown up students, they do need a bit of action from time to time as they tend to be a bit lethargic! We learnt how to give and understand directions in town. Then, as a follow up activity, we did the Tour guide in Madrid. I created cards to put on the walls and tables in the classroom. They were showing La Plaza Mayor, El Parque del Retiro, El museo del Prado, Atocha on them and some shops in Spanish we had learnt previously. It was a double lesson and students had a 5 minutes break so I had time to fix the cards in the classroom without them watching. When students returned from their break, I asked them to stay in the corridor and I explained the following:

1.  Students worked in pairs. One was a tour guide. The other was a tourist. The tourist is blindfolded.

2.  The tour guide directed the tourist around the classroom, giving directions and pointing out things that are interesting. (The tour guide may not touch the tourist). Only spoken instructions are allowed. The tour guide encourages the tourist to touch and pick-up objects. Naturally, the tour guides need to be careful so the tourists don’t hurt themselves, bump into things or other people, etc.

3. When each pair of students had finished their tour, we had a discussion of what makes for good directions, things that were easy or difficult to explain. We also talked about the main sights in Madrid.

Students really enjoyed doing this, they thought it was a fun way of practicing the directions.

What about you? Which engaging activity do you do to practice directions?

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I happened to stumble on an interesting video whilst re-watching this other interesting video embedded in the presentation The PDO's are coming in my earlier post about using personally owned devices in the classroom:

Do you think Joe is joking? I don't think so. I think he is serious: a book is a foreign tool for him!!!

This is the other very interesting video about students talking about their personally owned devices. It really is time we, teachers,  should start using them, don't you think?

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To me, Luz Casal represents Spain. She sings el amor, la pasión, la fatalidad, la muerte... she covers all the Spanish themes with her beautiful voice. I first met her when she sang her famous Piensa en mi by Agustín Lara', which was chosen by Pedro Almodóvar for his film Tacones Lejanos.

She has now released a new album called La Pasión which is a wonderful collection of South American songs. This is the first time that Luz Casal devotes an entire album to already known songs. I love her voice and when I listen to her, it just reminds me of Spain...

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This week, we have been learning members of the family in Spanish with my students and how to describe them. An activity that went well and is based from the excellent textbook Gente Joven is to ask questions about other families.

1. Students write the names of 3 members of their family on a card. They go around the class with their cards and ask each other for each name on the card "¿Es tu madre/ padre/ abuelo...?" (Is he/she your mum/ dad/ grandad...?).
2. Students then stay with a partner. The partner chooses one person from the other's card and ask different questions about this person:
   ¿Cuántos años tiene?
   ¿Cómo es?
   ¿Qué le gusta?
   Whilst asking those questions, they write the answers down.
3. Students write a paragraph using their answers about their partner's member of the family. They memorize their paragraph. They go around the class telling each other about their partner's member of the family "Ellen tiene una hermana. Tiene trece años. Es rubia, alta y delgada. Tiene los ojos azules. Le gusta mucho leer y chatear con sus amigas pero no le gusta nada estudiar."

Students enjoyed finding out about other's families and telling the class about each other. It was also a good way to use verbs and expressions in the 3rd person a not only in the first person.

What about you? Have you used an engaging activity to teach family members in another language?

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Isabelle Jones sent this wonderful link on Twitter the other day about getting physical in the classroom by using movement and language.

Marc Helgesen from Miyagi Gakuin Women's College has listed numerous activities which can be used to introduce or reinforce a topic.I have already tried one of the activities listed called FonFs (Focus on forms). The good thing is that there is no preparation required and you can practice different structures and new vocabulary.

I used it in French with grade 4 students (8-9 years old). They have been learning items of clothing, so I explained to them I went on holidays and I wrote on the board:
Dans ma valise, j'ai emporté.... (in my suitcase, I had.......)
Students worked in pairs. They faced each other. One partner held his hands in front of him, palms up.The other partner said the target sentence (Dans ma valise, j'ai emporté un pull) and slapped the first partner’s hands. The first partner said the next sentence. That sentence included the first item from the previous sentence (un pull) and a new item (Dans ma valise, j'ai emporté un pull, un pantalon) and slapped the partners hands.
Students loved slapping each other's hand! and it was a good way to memorise the different items of clothes, plus they learnt a sentence in the past tense.

I used it in Spanish with grade 7 (12-13 years old). This time they practiced a mi me gusta bailar, navegar por internet....(I like....).They enjoyed it so much (there are all boys!) that we did it a second round with a mi no me gusta.....(I don't like...)

The version from Marc Helgesen includes saying a word starting with every letter of the alphabet, so that students play the game from A to Z. But I thought it would get too complicated for my students so we just did the activity randomly.

There are many more activities I want to try on this web page so I will be posting more to tell you how I adapted them and how they went.

What about you? what are your warm-up activities?

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