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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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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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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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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In an attempt to get my Spanish students to practice their Spanish outside the classroom, I decided to set up a blog for them to be able to view, read and listen good stuff related to Spanish culture and language. To also share and view their work. The main objectives of this blog are for more students to keep up with their Spanish and to also make them share their views in the "comments" section. Especially when they listen or read other students' works, they will be able to compare, assess and see how work can be improved.

At my last school, I already set up a school blog using Edublogs. I chose http://edublogs.org/ because it was free and I suppose their tag line "Blogging for students and teachers made easy"! drew the attention on me. Nevertheless, it was not that easy to set up and at times, it took a long time to download resources.

My personal blog is with http://posterous.com/ and I find it so much easier to use, especially if you're not a geek :)
All you have to do is to write an email as your post (as I am doing now) and send it to Posterous. Posterous takes care of the rest. If you want to send a video, you attach it to the email or copy the URL into your email and Posterous will show the video in your post. If you want to send a picture, just copy the image location or attach it to your email. Again Posterous will show the picture in your post. If you want to send a slideshow or a document, attach it to your email, Posterous takes care of the rest.
I did a lot a recordings this year with students using a little microphone plugged into my laptop and Audacity. I save the recordings as .mp3 files and attach them to the emails I send to Posterous. Posterous insert the audio files into the new posts and this way, students can listen to their own recordings (which they looove!).
So far so good... They are not many comments made by students yet, but I know it takes a while and it is a learning process. The blog is http://spanishblog.posterous.com/ and of course, your comments are welcome as well :)

What about you? which platform do you use to blog and why?

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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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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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This week, in Spanish, we worked on a conversation between a mum and his son about his new girlfriend. The mum wants to know about his son's new girlfriend and keeps asking him how she looks like (description vocabulary: hair, eyes, size...). And of course, the son doesn't want to say much to her mum. This conversation can be found on Gente Joven 1, a great Spanish textbook I mentioned in an earlier post.

First students listened to the conversation and answered questions about it. Then I gave them some key phrases and expressions from the conversation. Some key expressions applied to the mum "A ver, ¡cuentame!" "¿Como es?", "¿Es guapa?"..., others applied to the son "¡Pero mama!", "si, es muy, muy guapa", "Es morena, alta y delgada"...
Students worked in pairs and had to say the phrases with the correct pronunciation and gestures. I let them repeat and repeat the phrases to really get into their roles and pretend they were Spanish people (very loud and with lots of gestures!). Despite the fact the task was quite repetitive, the students really enjoyed repeating the phrases with the correct pronunciation.

Finally, once they got into their roles, I asked students to prepare their own conversations using some of the phrases they repeated as well I using their own. I told them they were going to be recorded and marked on their pronunciation, fluency and the correct use of feminine and masculine words. Students really got engaged and worked hard to prepare and rehearse their presentations.

The following lesson, I recorded students' conversations. Whilst, they were being recorded the other groups would mark them on pronunciation, fluency and the correct use of feminine and masculine words. At the end of each recording, we would discuss the performance. I noticed students would always remain positive in their comments but would also be sharp on incorrect sentences
.
I was extremely pleased with students' performances and I could really see they enjoyed doing the task. I posted their recordings on the school blog and I have asked them to post some comments.

What about you? have you experienced a fun and engaging speaking task?

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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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