Microblogs - Twitter - An Assignment for EDTC614

I don't know about how much y'all've used Twitter in the past, but I haven't used it in ages since my school district went through a phase requiring teachers to have one (and then we promptly weren't allowed to use them anymore). 

I get very self-conscious about my tweets and don't feel that many of my comments or thoughts are that terribly worthy of sharing. I don't feel like my tweets are witty enough or interesting enough. 

I've noticed that a lot of people's tweets can get pretty whiny or demeaning to others, whether it's from celebrities or just average people who like to hide behind the seeming anonymity of social media. Not that that is an issue isolated just to Twitter. 

Also, I don't feel I have enough characters to say most of what I'd like and I battle between weird abbreviations or rewording the entire thing to fit. 

I find I have a similar problem with my Remind.com account/app. I use Remind to remind my students and their families about upcoming events, quizzes, tests, fees due, etc. With the same 140 character allotment, I find myself wrestling between sending 2 messages or using the abbreviations. Last year I had parents complain about the abbreviations (it was quite the ridiculous mess). I think that my district had intended us to use Twitter in the way we use Remind now, but I feel more comfortable with Remind than Twitter since only my students and their families can see the messages.

What is a Blog? - Assignment for EDTC614

Blog = web + log    (learn something new every day!)

I love connecting with others on my blogs. It is so fast and simple and in many cases FREE! It is so exciting to get comments from people all over the world!

I used to keep a blog in high school and college just to have a place to vent. I loved that I could make posts private, where only I could read them or select a few friends to read them and comment, or make them public. It was a great way to share the teenage/ college student years.

I have used blogs before in my elementary classroom to host student discussion topics and as a digital portfolio for Reader's Response and Literacy Circles. I kept our blog private so that only the students, myself, and their parents could view it.

I currently use Blackboard for my middle and high school students and their parents to learn Spanish through posted videos, tutorials, and infographs. I often have homebound students or students who transfer in without any previous experience with the Spanish language, but with the tools I've provided online, they can catch up or stay on track with the rest of the class.

I have used blogs for online Professional Development in my school. I've had digital meetings with discussion boards where teachers with different planning periods can meet online and discuss hot topics and work in our Professional Learning Communities.

I am currently using this blog to connect with other teachers and promote my products on teacherspayteachers.com.

I love http://creativelanguageclass.com/ because I get so many good ideas from them.

And of course, blogs are not just for education. I love food blogs! I get great recipes and advice from  http://theclothesmakethegirl.com/, http://www.againstthegrainnutrition.blogspot.com/, http://practicalpaleo.blogspot.co.uk/, http://paleomg.com/, http://www.primalpalate.com/, and my favorite http://nomnompaleo.com/. The pictures that go with the recipes are amazing and I get excited to make healthy food from scratch!

Come Visit Maestra in Middle's TPT Store to Snag Some FREEBIES!

My Teachers Pay Teachers Store is up and running!

http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Store/Maestra-In-Middle

Come take a look and snag some FREEBIES while you're there!

  

Feel free to do a little shopping and browsing of my other products!

        
I'd love to hear your feedback! Positive feedback and constructive criticisms are so helpful to creating things that are useful in your classrooms!

My Very First Linky Party - What I Do About Homework

I've been following Jenaya The Lesson Plan Diva and she's having a linky party about homework policies. You can check it out at http://www.lessonplandiva.com/2012/02/homework-linky-party-how-do-you-do-your.html.


Jenaya asked to share about what we do in regards to homework.


Way down south here in my ISD, we're only allowed to have homework count for 10% of a niño's overall grade. We are also only required to have 15 grades. Do the math.. that's like 1 grade for homework. :blink: Hardly worth it, right??


Some teachers average the homework by hand for the whole quarter, but this seems like a whole lot of keeping track that I'm just not in to. Plus, if a kid never does his homework or never turns it in (with his name on it.. that a problem for ya'll?) he can still make it out of class just fine, which doesn't motivate me to spend my time, effort, or precious copy allotment on bothering to give out homework at all.


Many of us get around this little hiccup in education, realizing the importance of extra practice and time that a 50 minute class just doesn't allow for the kids, by enforcing "natural consequences". The natural consequence of not finishing your assignment in class, whether you're simply a slower worker or you decided to use your independent practice time talking with your neighbor instead, is to finish it at home. I get to count it as "classwork" and you end up doing your work at home or getting penalized for not doing your work. Winner!


Sneaky? Maybe.. but you are not going to be terribly successful at a foreign language (or at much of anything in my opinion) in 50 minutes a day, 5 days a week, about 180 days out of the year. You really need the extra practice. Not learning new material without your teacher; practice of the skills you are well on the road to mastering.


I also try to encourage the niños-yo to practice their vocabulary words 15-20 minutes a night. I realize in middle school, however, the Core Four take the bulk of their time, so I just encourage them to try and schedule it in as often as possible. Studying vocabulary for my niños-yo is mostly focused on Flashcards (either on notecards made by the kids or online at Quizlet.com) and Writing Repetition (writing their words 5-10 times a piece until they've mastered the spelling).


I know a lot of elementary teachers have a Spelling/Vocabulary Contract where the kids can select from a menu or tic-tac-toe board which activities to do for a grade, but as this is my first year in middle school and the high schoolers last year would have laughed (and probably spat) in my face about a S/V Contract, I haven't tried one yet with my niños-yo. Thoughts?

Hope this helps any of you in the same position where you're barely allowed to give homework. We are allowed to serve piping hot "natural consequences," which is good because it keeps my niños on-task and working hard to get finished with assignments in class.

Survival Instincts Set In..

Go me! Graded 5+ assignments for each class just in time for progress reports! Here in our ISD, we have gotten on quarters (4 nine-week grading periods) this year. We have also gotten on a 7 point grading scale, which is totally kickin' my poor little niños-yo in the patootie! Really, I think it just makes things worse for me because now the kids are even more likely not to make an A or B in class. And it's still frowned upon to scar the children by failing them.. so.. just more work for me. In a way I like it, because I'm the sort who'd rather you make corrections on things and actually learn from it.. and I'll accept your hard work on assignments without penalty (unless it's been entirely too long, like, weeeeks) because I'd rather have you do it sometime instead of never.. and it signals the on-top-of-things parents quicker that there's a problem. I think it also covers-my-Rs by giving progress reports out every 3 weeks. Then there's still plenty of time for the kids to get it in gear, and plenty of time for parents to get after their kids. Not that the progress reports usually make it home; we know they live in the bottom of backpacks or trashcans and that sadly the parents don't keep up with our reminders of when to be on the look out for them. :shrug: I don't pretend to have a solution for that. Automated telephone system every 3 weeks with your kids grades.. if only the telephone numbers ever worked.

Found 2 more Spanish teacher books I'm ordering off Amazon soon as we get paid Monday at Midnight (finally!). Another different thing in this ISD is that we get paid right before Christmas Holidays, and then not again til the end of January. Rough! And no Christmas bonus like last ISD. Bummer.

Didn't quite make it to typing up some worksheets for later in the week (time for that later).. or typing up yet my lesson plans for this week (it's all on paper, just another 30 min of work I can do during the first few hrs..tomorrow). Must make sure to get them all straight and in order by afternoon, however, since Skool 2 (the one trying to to be closed by the School Board or taken over by the State) has our Recovery School District people coming in to inspect. Skool 1 has observed me maaaybe once. Skool 2 has observed me probably 10 times this year. I teach 3 classes at Skool 1 totaling about 50 kids (so blessed to have small classes). I teach 3 classes at Skool 2 totaling 12 kids (that's right. Twelve.) And Praise the Lord I don't teach Core 4! I'm just enrichment! Why do LosPowersThatBe at Skool 2 worry so much about me??

Not looking forward at all to Morning Duty at 7am (bleh).. and I PROMISE PROMISE not to push it tomorrow. Anyone starts gettin' my blood pressure up is GONE! I will be spending the majority of my days sitting with my feet on the crates of graded papers. Let the young ones jump up and come to me for help. Last week the OBGYN put me on strict bed rest because my blood pressure was waaay too high and caused me to swell up like Violet Beauregard! Got to do the urine collection for possible protein, which came back negative, thank God, so no preeclampsia. Also having to monitor my blood sugar since my 3-hour blood sugar test came back riiight on the borderline. I don't do hand pain or blood, so this has been an awful week. Today starts week 32. MUST MAKE IT TO THE END OF FEBRUARY.

Anyhow, here's hoping we all have a great week! Once I've typed up some more worksheets, I'll see if I can't figure out how to attach them here to share with ya'll.

Lapbooking with Spanish

Lapbooking..

So, I was tired of the same old projects for my niños-yo. They're within a magnet program at our school, and a lot of their classes focus on Project-Based Learning (check out http://www.bie.org/diy for more on project-based learning) and they get bored with the same poster or tri-fold business.

Now that I'm on both sides of the desk in a classroom as both a student and teacher, I am not generally a fan of PBL. Mostly, the partners and groups bother me. I have always been the member who took on most of the burden of a group project while the other members sailed by on my coattails. Any time I survey the niños-yo after a PBL project, the main complaint is that one kid took over and the other kids did nothing. And it shows in the work I get. Even with assigned roles, this tends to happen.

My tweak to making PBL projects work is to have each person be responsible for their own project, but assigning them a collaborative group to meet, think, and discuss their ideas with. They can share their creativity and keep each other on task (even middle schoolers love to tattle.. I mean.. help their compañeros remain on task) while still turning in their own project.

No parents can complain (much) about the grade because of other team members, which makes life less stressful, too. Having a checklist (instead of a rubric, which is still subjective) helps also. I choose to make projects mostly in-class ordeals.. I have been known to give Mommy an A and Pepé an F if Mommy did it.

In these lapbooks, the students are to summarize new vocabulary and grammar skills acquired in a set group of lessons/ chapter/ unit. They are to pretend their audience is a younger student of Spanish as well as their parent and present all the information in the unit, demonstrating their understanding of the concepts. Pictures, visuals, pull-outs, fold-outs, etc. make the book more fun to build and engaging for other learners who explore a student's lapbook. Creativity is key here to make ones lapbook stand out from all the others!

Anyhow.. here's my prototype (always helps the kids have a general idea of what it is you expect from them.. visuals help). The niños-yo will design and create their own better lapbook. We talked about how Maestra spent about 4 hours while watching football one afternoon making a quick one just to show them how to do it. This is their what-do-I-do-now project to summarize the units we're in.

Front cover

Sorry for the picture quality (iPhone foto). These are stem-changing "shoe" verbs
(infinitive and definition) we learned in this unit.

Flip open the flaps to reveal conjugations.

All my writing is in Spanish. Challenging students to follow suit
with at least 90% Spanish in theirs.

I made mine out of one and a half file folders. I taped the extra half inside
so I had more space to add information and pictures.

Awesome sites for help with Lapbooking include:http://lapbooking.wordpress.com/lapbook/ (answers "What is a lapbook?")http://www.ourlapbooks.blogspot.com/ (examples)http://www.homeschoolingonashoestring.com/lapbooks.html (examples)http://www.homeschoolshare.com/lapbooking_resources.php (foldables for lapbook)http://www.eduplace.com/graphicorganizer/ (graphic organizers for lapbook)

Hope this project adds to your repertoire of things to do with your niños-yo!

Los mejores sitios de la red para los profesores de español

Here is a smattering of the very best of the web I've found so far in my search for guidance and resources in Spanish instruction for middle schoolers:

http://www.senorjordan.com/los-videos/
This wonderful man has uploaded instructional videos for teaching Spanish. I personally use his videos as a reteach/ review for my students. The niños-yo get tired of listening to me talk and I get tired of talking, too! This is as close to bringing in television and competing with their over-stimulating world to get their attention as I can get.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/languages/spanish/mividaloca/
I love this video series from the BBC. It really helps me incorporate more listening and speaking opportunities for the niños-yo. Again, helps me compete for their attention.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/languages/spanish/lj/
More tools from the BBC. Great for use if you have a Language Lab (lucky you if you do!) or if you get a chance to use the COWS (computers on wheels).

http://www.spanishdict.com/
Not only great for quickly looking up translations and conjugations online, be you student or teacher, but the niños-yo can sign up on the "learn spanish" tab for their own account, allowing them to go through levels of Spanish at their own pace. With videos, flashcards, and repetition, it's another great site if you have a Language Lab, access to COWS, or niños-yo that want to further their studies at home.

http://www.bowdoin.edu/~eyepes/newgr/ats/
Awesome site! It's a concise outline of essential grammar structures based on John Turner's All the Spanish Grammar You Really Need to Know. I used to send my high schoolers to it for help; might be too advanced for middle schoolers. Great to help you as the instructor explain things and has examples and exercises you could send them to.

http://www.laits.utexas.edu/spe/index.html
Although I am a Texas A&M graduate, I can appreciate something good from the burnt orange side of Texas. This site has recordings of native speakers modeling various tasks such as "counting to ten" and "role-playing you've just misplaced your boarding pass." With levels from Beginning to Intermediate to Advanced to Superior, it's great for exposing your niños-yo to different accents and more listening activities.

http://www.miranous.com/
Fabulous resource for teachers and parents. Includes workshops and tools to assist with time and life management planning.

http://mendycolbert.com/Spanish1.htm and http://mendycolbert.com/Spanish_2.htm
Glorious plethora of videos, worksheets, and activities particularly great if you're using Bien Viaje as your textbook.

http://www.as.miami.edu/mll/labs/seallt2011/index.html
Check out the LinguaFolio. I have big plans for introducing this in my classes next year.

http://www.usi.edu/distance/bdt.htm
Bloom's Digital Taxonomy Pyramid. I haven't gotten the chance to play with everything on there yet, but I do love http://prezi.com/if you've never tried it before.

If you've found a great Spanish teacher blog or site, please leave a comment below and share with the rest of us!

¡Juntos podemos cambiar el mundo! Or at least make our jobs a little easier! ☺ !