alice’s posterous

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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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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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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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What do I remember from school? a song by Sting we learnt in my English class,  a trip to Verdun during my history class. This trip made me understand the word "war" as well as this book our enthusiastic History teacher made use read A l'Ouest rien de nouveau by Erich Maria Remarque. Apart from that, I don't remember much. Why? maybe because lessons were boring. We never took an active part in our learning, most of our lessons were about listening to the teacher's monotonous voice and to take notes. I have found that since I have a PLN, Google reader, Twitter and Friendfeed I have learnt so much more than I did during all the time I spent at school!
Maybe because now I can explore and discover new things, whereas before I was just a passive learner. And maybe that's why many students are not involved in lessons.

This video I found on Shelly Terrell's blog shows what learning should be about: FUN!

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I have noticed there is a lot of talk at the moment about cell phones in schools: should they be banned or could they be used as a learning tool? Teachers I know from my PLN, twitter and from the blogs I read are mostly pro cell phones. However, the policy at my school is that cell phones have no place in the classroom and that students shouldn't be using them during lessons. I understand that if a student uses his or her cellphone to answer a call or a text message during a lesson, then obviously the teacher should stop it. But I have read an excellent post by Steve Dembo where he explains that " a teacher requires that the cell phone be out and ON the desk. In plain site. Not hidden in a pocket or backpack. So if the student is using it, the teacher KNOWS. And if the student is using it when they shouldn’t… Well, that’s when there are consequences. Phone is confiscated until the end of the week, or the parent can pay a $25 fine to get it back for their student. Sure, there were plenty of students who lost their phones, and plenty of fines paid. They used the money to pay for a field trip before the end of the year. But the point is, the students learned when it was ok to be using the phone as a learning device, and when it was inappropriate. Believe me, no student wants to go to his parents and let them know that they need $25 to get their phone back… and explain why."

Now my school has a tight budget and clearly lacks new technology and as Steve Dembo mentions "here we are with millions of dollars in technology that’s being paid for by the parents VOLUNTARILY… and most schools refuse to leverage it because of outdated policies and teachers that don’t want to modify their own classroom management strategies."

I must admit I love my computer but I am not really good with cell phones or other personally owned devices, I have the most basic one just in case of emergency. Most of my contacts are by emails or skype calls. However after watching this wonderful presentation from this other excellent post by Lisa Nielsen, I am tempted to have no fear and give cell phones or ipods a go, especially because we don't have many computers in my school. If in any doubt about whether or not you should allow your students to use their cell phones in your lesson, watch this, it's great!

The POD's are Coming

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mafalda.ppt (927 KB)

"Learning a foreign language is much more than learning a number of sentences, a certain amount of
vocabulary or a number of grammatical rules. It means being able to interact in a new cultural context
that will enable us to function in a society different from our original one." from the Spanish ab initio Syllabus (IBO)

This is why it is very important for my students to learn about Spanish and Latin American culture. Because they are learning how to describe people and about likes and dislikes, discovering the world of Mafalda, a comic strip written and drawn by the Argentine cartoonist Joaquín Salvador Lavado (pen name Quino) perfectly fitted into the unit.

At my new school, technology is very scarce: there are no interactive whiteboards and only a few video projectors are available from the library. Then, because we don't have our own classrooms (German custom: students stay in a classroom, teachers move from class to class), this means we have to carry a laptop and a video projector from class to class. So, I have become a bit lazy and decided to do without technology most of the time!

For the Mafalda's lesson, the easiest would have been to show my students a PowerPoint presentation about Mafalda and the main characters in the comics. Because of the technical issues I have mentioned above, I decided to print out each PowerPoint slide and to laminate them. When I started the lesson, I stuck each laminated slide on the wall in different parts of the classroom. I asked my students to go around the class and read each card, a bit like you would in a museum I guess :) As they were going around, I asked them to stop anytime they crossed another students and to explain to each other what they had read on the card. Because they are Spanish beginners, they could explain in English but most of my students tried in Spanish which was great. I then asked them to go back to their seats and we went through true and false statements about the cards. Students really enjoyed standing up and discovering each character at their own pace. I actually think this lesson was far more exciting than if I had gone through a boring PowerPoint and it was more focused on differentiation as each student could read at their own pace.

In a way, not having technology makes you think about more engaging and differentiated options! And by coincidence, I just happened to be reading Isabelle Jones' really interesting  post about Naked Teaching and reflecting on the use of technology in the classroom.

What about you? do you have any great ideas to teach without technology in the classroom?

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As mentioned on the website :
"The general objectives of the European Day of Languages are:

1. Alerting the public to the importance of language learning and diversifying the range of languages learnt in order to increase plurilingualism and intercultural understanding;

2. Promoting the rich linguistic and cultural diversity of Europe, which must be preserved and fostered;

3. Encouraging lifelong language learning in and out of school, whether for study purposes, for professional needs, for purposes of mobility or for pleasure and exchanges."

Otherwise, you can join a Facebook group to share ideas and a great wiki created by @dominic_mcg to share experiences and good practice with even links to resources from the seven previous EDLs!

What are you planning to do on EDL?

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I teach Spanish and French in an IB (International Baccaulaureate) school. This is the first time in my teaching career that I experience the IB programme. Previous to that, I was teaching the British curriculum.

So, what is the IB? According to the IB website:
The International Baccalaureate chooses to define "international education" according to the following criteria.

• Developing citizens of the world in relation to culture, language and learning to live together
• Building and reinforcing students’ sense of identity and cultural awareness
• Fostering students’ recognition and development of universal human values
• Stimulating curiosity and inquiry in order to foster a spirit of discovery and enjoyment of learning
• Equipping students with the skills to learn and acquire knowledge, individually or collaboratively, and to apply these skills and knowledge accordingly across a broad range of areas
• Providing international content while responding to local requirements and interests
• Encouraging diversity and flexibility in teaching methods
• Providing appropriate forms of assessment and international benchmarking.

• ask challenging questions
• learn how to learn
• develop a strong sense of their own identity and culture
• develop the ability to communicate with and understand people from other countries and cultures.

This is illustrated by a hexagon with the three parts of the core at its centre.

Students study six subjects selected from the subject groups. Normally three subjects are studied at higher level (courses representing 240 teaching hours), and the remaining three subjects are studied at standard level (courses representing 150 teaching hours).

All three parts of the core—extended essay, theory of knowledge and creativity, action, service—are compulsory and are central to the philosophy of the Diploma Programme.

The three core requirements are:

1. Extended essay: The extended essay has a prescribed limit of 4,000 words. It offers the opportunity to investigate a topic of individual interest, and acquaints students with the independent research and writing skills expected at university.
2. Theory of knowledge (TOK): The interdisciplinary TOK course is designed to provide coherence by exploring the nature of knowledge across disciplines, encouraging an appreciation of other cultural perspectives.
3. Creativity, action, service (CAS): Participation in the school’s CAS programme encourages students to be involved in artistic pursuits, sports and community service work, thus fostering students’ awareness and appreciation of life outside the academic arena.

What about you? Have you experienced the IB programme?

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1_phonics.ppt (901 KB)

When Suzi Bewell talked to me about phonics, I didn't know what she was on about! She explained to me what it was and did a explanatory presentation on strategies for teaching French phonics (also Suzi Bewell set up a blog for her school which is amazing! http://www.allsaintslanguagesblog.typepad.co.uk/):>

I thought it was a brilliant idea to improve students' pronunciation. Most of the time, we teachers assume that our students know how to pronounce words in the target language, but in fact they don't. They are very confused when we correct them and then their motivation to learn another language starts to decrease! That is why I am thinking of planning strategies to teach my students Spanish phonics next year, although I do think Spanish is very easy to pronounce (compared to French!). For most of the words, you just pronounce them as you read them apart from some letters like "jota" for example. Rachel Hawkes did a lot of work on how to teach Spanish phonics and her blog is full of excellent ideas. I found one of her Powerpoints on ideas to teach phonics (just see above).

What are you thoughts? Have you tried teaching phonics to improve your students' pronunciation?

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