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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I am not a big fan of textbooks and was thinking of creating my own exercises this year since my new school has very few resources but I found a brillant textbook called Gente Joven in the school library.

Good points about this textbook:

• Everything is in Spanish, there is no English explanation or translation. For me, it is very important to immerse pupils in the target language. This is how toddlers learn how to speak.
  
• The exercises are fun, engaging and challenging. For example, we were describing how people look like and there was an exercise about a casting for a TV serie. Pupils had to say why they would choose this boy or this girl. So not only, they had to say basic sentences describing people, thay also had to give their opinions using "creo que el chico puede ser ... porque...".
  
• The teacher's book is full of great ideas to get students involved with group and independent work. The collaborative listening activity which I posted earlier on this week is based on the teacher's book.
  
• There are also tasks to assess students such as creating the school website in Spanish or recording a radio show for a speaking assignment, along with sheets to mark pupils and to let them reflect on how they performed (again all in Spanish).
  

I also went on the publishing website "Difusión" and found a list of useful resources for free. So only, you have to register to access them.

What about you? do you use a very good textbook or create your own resources?

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Yesterday, I showed the short animation Flatlife to my grade 12 students (17-18 years old)

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I found this fab quote today:

"A few of my keener students have asked me to give them with advice and hints to help them keep their Spanish going over the summer, in anticipation of next academic year. Earlier today, over at http://www.asisehace.net/blog, I provided them with a list of websites containing audio and video resources that will help them keep their Spanish ticking over and, who knows? They might even learn one or two new things. The list is copied below:..."
from http://www.boxoftricks.net/?p=1187
You should read the whole article.

What about you? Do you have a list of fun and engaging resources to learn a language?

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I found this brilliant video on Ideas to Inspire



This short animation could be used when teaching household tasks and furniture in another language. After watching it, students would have to discuss the following in the target language:

• the people: who are they? describe them, what are they doing?
  
• the rooms: name them, describe the different objects in the rooms
• opinions: what do you think about the people? are they helpful? kind? unkind?

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