How to teach Proteger's Meaning

Also known as "The Day the Teacher Was Officially a Monster"

Teacher: Tengo un bebé.   Rock arms as if I am holding a baby.

Teacher: Aquí tenemos el monstruo.    Rise up on toes, hold arms above head with hooked fingers, and growl and hiss at class while swaying from side to side.  Expect some giggles and confused expressions.

Teacher: Protejo el bebé!     Step to the side and pretend to slash at and stab the imaginary monster.

While I realize some students probably guessed the meaning of proteger from its appearance, more students got it after this bit of acting.  Plus they now have an interesting image to help remember the word...and share at home.

The only problem was that students were trying to guess the meaning from my first charade of rocking the baby since normally I don't act out a whole scene for them to learn one word.

Practice People Vocabulary

My Spanish I students learned twenty words that name people (boy, girl, man, neighbor, etc) on Tuesday.  They have practiced writing the vocabulary but today I wanted to help them connect the words to images.  Each student picked up a whiteboard and supplies.  I named a word in Spanish which they copied onto the whiteboard and then illustrated the word.

Not sure I would want to visit this doctor...

Hands in the air!

After each drawing we held the boards up so everyone could look.  There were definitely some smiles and giggles at the unique ideas and artwork.  I enjoyed being able to complement a variety of students, some for their drawing skill, others for their creativity.

Spanish Club Activity: Trivia Game

We played a trivia game in Spanish Club today.  Students put themselves in teams, but each student had an individual whiteboard to give his or her own answer.  If everyone on the team had the correct answer, they got two points; one point was earned if at least one person got the question right.

The questions were all based on famous Hispanic Americans and were all multiple choice.  I used names from the lists of people that my students are researching for Hispanic Heritage month.  For each question there were four choices, one of which usually was obviously not the correct choice.

What I really liked about this game was how everyone from freshmen to seniors could contribute.  I also loved hearing kids say "Hey, I know that name from my project!"

Interactive Bulletin Board for Hispanic Heritage Month

Our second bulletin board for the year has made it up!  I can be awful about changing my bulletin board so this is an accomplishment for me.  This one celebrates the contributions of Hispanic-Americans to mainstream culture in the United States.  Nine different people are detailed a little bit.

The interactive portion comes from asking students to look at a longer list of Hispanic-Americans and then submit additional names.  I will add those names to the list as I receive them.  Student contributors will also get an Olé ticket which can be turned in for candy or other small prizes.

Teaching Days of the Week with a Song

The days of the week are a pretty straight-forward concept for my students.  I love presenting the new vocabulary and asking them to notice two major differences: starting on Monday instead of Sunday and no capitalization.

I also like to play a YouTube video that I came across a few years ago.  The teacher sings the days to two different tunes: Pop Goes the Weasel and The Addams Family theme song.  The video can be found here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJURmxbRwz4

I came across a rap that did go through all seven days in exact order and thought it would be fun to assign each kid a day and they would have to stand when they heard their day.  Unfortunately, my students had a really hard time hearing the words.  Here is the link in case you're interested in trying it out with your classes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9nyuTTn6hVM

The students are also asked to respond to the prompts "Mi día favorito es" and "No me gusta."

5 Ways to Celebrate Mexico's Independence Day in Spanish Class

Feliz Día de Independencia!  Happy Independence Day, Mexico!  (I started this entry a few days ago...)

One of the biggest misconceptions that my students bring into the Spanish classroom is that Mexico's Independence Day is Cinco de Mayo.  In my on-going quest to rid them of that idea, I decided years ago to try to not just tell them "No, you're wrong!" but to try to replace their mistake with the truth.  Therefore, in September my Spanish I, II, and III students all explore Mexico's Independence Day with a variety of activities. (Spanish IV focuses on Spain and this year did not do any of these exercises.)

1. Wordsearch: a nice simple activity that reminds students of important names and terms related to Mexico's Independence Day.  A good exercise for students who get done with the main activity more quickly.

2. Venn diagram: comparison of the US and Mexico's Independence stories and days of celebration.  This year we did it as an individual warm up and then created a class one on the board.

3. Reading in Spanish with questions: currently this is a handout that I found.  However, with increased Internet access in schools, you could easily find some authentic sources on the web and design related questions.  (You could even find two or three sources with different levels of difficulty and align them to your students' needs.)

4. Cartoon strip: after learning about Mexico's independence story and celebrations, have your students retell the story in cartoon format.  My level II kids did this and then those who wished posted their cartoons in my room.  My level III students then looked at the comic strips and voted on their favorites.

at work

Cartoons waiting for the vote

The story: ring the bells to gather everyone, farmers joining the fight, Father Hidalgo is executed, more fighting until independence, today's celebrating

5. Role-playing: Each year my level II students have a "visitor" come speak with them about Mexico's drive for independence.  I got the idea from one of the best in-service days ever.  The speaker used a book produced by Jan Herrera and printed by the Bureau of Education & Research.  I start class in my regular clothes, say I need to step out for just a minute, and re-enter dressed in a black robe.  From there I pretend that I am a nun from the time of the beginning of Mexico's fight for independence.  My character is made up but she knows the facts about the day and tells her story which is also the story of the Mexican people.  The students take notes as she speaks.  Later they will use these notes to answer questions or other related activities.  (I also have a reading available to be used by those who missed something in the story-telling.)  Last year's group really liked this activity; this year's students were less enthusiastic but still attentive.

Numbers Game in Spanish

We are learning our numbers 0-15 this week in Spanish I (among other topics).  Overall I think numbers are pretty easy to learn but one fun little activity I do is the Human Numbers Game.  I have all the students stand up and tell them to get in a group of a specific number.  Anyone who is not able to join a group is out and must sit down and silently study their numbers.

I make sure that the first number I name is always that the class can divide evenly into so no one is out on the very first round.  After that I change it up to try to get one to three students out per round.  I have found that calling out "Grupo de Uno" does a good job of breaking clumps up.

My fifth period really got into the game this year; I think one kid got pulled halfway across a desk to be assimilated into a group that needed one more person.

I enjoy how this activity can be done entirely in Spanish.  Also, it practices listening skills and allows the kids to be out of the desks and moving!

Matamoscasitas

I first learned about the flyswatter game when I was an elementary education major in college.  Once I moved into my own classroom, I would write out the words on an overhead transparency, project the words onto the board, and after giving strict instructions on what the flyswatters were allowed to hit, hand over one flyswatter to each team.

The students overall really enjoyed trying to be the first one to hit the vocabulary word.  However, I never felt that this activity involved enough students.  I tried making all students write down the answer after each round, repeat the word after me, be allowed to give directions to guide the student with the flyswatter.  I still felt as though it was too easy for students to not be actively involved since only two kids out of possibly thirty were at the board at a time.

My new classroom only had a SmartBoard, no projector.  No way did I feel comfortable letting high school students hit that piece of technology hard!  And so, the Matamoscas (Flyswatter) Game went into storage.

This week I decided that I wanted to take a chance on the Matamoscas Game again but instead of breaking the class up into two teams, I would put the students in pairs and give each group its own board and a mini-flyswatter (matamoscasitas) to each student.  I made the mini-flyswatters by cutting rounded paper shapes and gluing them to the end of fat popsicle sticks.  (My bored study hall kids helped me with the construction :)

I gave very strict instructions on how to act with the mini-flyswatters to my Spanish III students.  Then we started the game which was grammar based instead of vocabulary (they had to hit the correct irregular yo form after I read a sentence in Spanish that used a different form of the verb).  Whenever a student won, he or she initialed next to the word.  At the end I had one tie-breaker question for pairs that had equal scores.

I was really happy with how the students behaved; I did not see one flyswatter attack!  Plus, none of the flyswatters broke which had been another worry of mine.  The kids all seemed engaged, solving my earlier concerns with the Flyswatter Game.  It does take a little bit more prep work this way but I believe the trade-off is worth it.  I can use this idea for a variety of vocabulary and grammar topics across all four levels which is great.

Maybe one year I will make the Matamoscasitas papers different colors.  What do you think?

Remembrance

I was walking out of MAP cafeteria, breakfast with friends just finished and now on our way to Tuesday's morning chapel service.  We noticed a small crowd around the boxy TV in the lobby and paused.  A plane had hit the World Trade Center towers in New York.  We continued on to the chapel and the brief service but that stab at normalcy was quickly defeated.  By the time I made it to my first class of the day--computers--we knew something was terribly wrong.  I don't remember anything my professor taught that day; I was too busy scouring the Internet, desperate to find a news site that hadn't crashed and could give details of the horror unfolding along the East Coast.  I will never forget the tears of a classmate.  Her father worked at the Pentagon.  He was safe but it would be hours before she would know that she still had two living parents.

This day marked the turning point in my life, a definite step into adulthood.  The events of 9/11 have impacted the entire world as I have known it as an adult.  So it is strange to me to look at my students and realize that the seniors only have vague memories of that day and my freshmen?  They only know this day through our stories and photos.  How do I address it then?  Especially in a foreign language class?

This summer I travelde to Spain for the first time.  In addition to many of the top tourist sites, I visited the Atocha Train Station bombings memorial.  It was a sombering moment.  The terrorist attacks during that morning rush hour ten years ago had painful similarities to our 9/11.   The memory of my visit there came back strongly during first period today while I supervised my study hall; two periods later during my planning time, I scrapped my original lesson for Spanish IV and instead designed a simple on-line scavenger hunt to open my students' eyes to the events at Atocha.

The activity can take some refining and honestly is better suited to a lower level since it is all in English.  However, I am proud of the fact that my students had the chance to learn about these events on the anniversary of such significant moments in our own national history.

Atocha: http://www.quia.com/sh/187473.html

Ir Quick Practice

Today in Spanish II we reviewed the irregular forms of the verb ir in the present tense.  I have two Spanish II classes this year and my earlier one is the slightly more advanced group as a whole.  I was still pleasantly surprised by the number of students who remembered the forms of ir from last year.  One of them spit out the forms extremely quickly while another one gave me a disgruntled look as he told me that he was not going to forget that verb after I said it so many times last year (voy, vas, va, vamos, vais, van!--I think we did an activity where they had to hold up the card with the subject that matched the correct form of the verb such as "yo" to go with "voy" when I said the conjugated form.  I think I'm getting sidetracked now!).

After we wrote the verb into our notes, I passed out little cards to the students.  On one side were two different subjects, one in black ink and one in red.  The ones in black were easier such as simply "ella" while the red subjects were a bit more difficult (vosotras, los bomberos--a word they haven't learned yet).  On the back of each card were the matching forms of the verb so I knew that every student had the answers to his or her card.  Students then walked around the room and approached each other to give the conjugated forms of ir based on the subject on the other student's card.  The neat part though was that the approaching student could request "facil" or "dificil" and chose which subject he or she wanted to try.  If they got an easy question right, it was one point, two points if they got a difficult one correct.

I really liked that this activity gave students choice in their practice.  It allowed the ones who were not as comfortable with the verb ir to build a stronger foundation while the students who remembered the verb from last year could have a bit of a challenge.  It also did not take me very long to create the cards, a big plus for a teacher with four different preps!  This concept could be adapted for different levels of Spanish too so I like that flexibility.

Question side

Answer side (the harder ones sometimes also got an additional explanation from me.)

Confession

I do not speak in Spanish enough in my classroom.  I can give a least of excuses but what is more important is what am I doing to raise the percentage of time spent in the target language for me and my students?

Spanish III today started the process of learning how to hold conversations in Spanish.  They downloaded a document with 18 questions broken into 3 groups.  Individually they worked on writing answers to the questions.  However, I divided the students into 3 groups that started in different spots so all questions were addressed.  I let the students work for 5-10 minutes and then I started talking with them in small groups of 6-8 kids.

I started by asking one of the questions in the group they had been initially assigned.  Volunteers would answer and then we moved to the next question.  I did not always go in order so they had to listen to what I was asking.  Also, after a few answers I started to ask a few follow-up questions.

I liked how the activity gave the students some security by getting to see the questions and having time to work on responses.  However, I am happier with the follow-up questions that started to push them out of their comfort zones and into creating true conversation.

Starting the Alfabeto

Today I introduced the Spanish alphabet to my level one students.  (It felt good to be teaching something after several days of pre-assessments!)

We warmed up by looking at the alphabet and noticing the four extra letters (which I know aren't all technically letters any more but I still want the students to be aware of them).

Then I read through the alphabet with the students repeating after me.  I grouped the letters a few at a time so we got a lot of repetition in.

After that I passed out cards, one to each kid.  I went to youtube and clicked on this song "Cadence" credited to Barbara MacArthur.  It plays through the alphabet three full times and there is repetition of most of the letters each time.  We listened to the first singing of the alphabet and each kid had to hold up his or her card when the letter was said.  I paused the video and had the students "cambien" their cards with each other.  Once again they held their cards up when the letter was sung.  Before the third repetition I paused the video for one more switch and this time I could hear kids naming which letters they wanted to hold up.  Also, in addition to working on learning the alphabet, the students picked up the phrase "Olé" from the video; they were shouting that part out by the end :)

We finished the alphabet practice by me spelling out students' names in Spanish and the class writing them down.  When I was done with a name, the class would tell me the name, check their spelling as I quickly wrote it on the board, and then tell me who that student was.

I did also have the kids walk around with a letter card in one hand and their alphabet guide sheets in the other hand and name the letters to each other.  Not sure if I will keep that part in this lesson (may shift it to a later day) for two reasons: 1) some kids are still struggling with their letters this early and 2) I also introduced Cómo estás today as the second part of class and would have liked a little more time with that concept.

Easing Into Questions

Getting the kids to make conversation is difficult for a variety of reasons.  One of those issues is being able to make questions and switch from the "I" perspective and endings to the "you" perspective and endings and then possibly to another form to talk about someone else.  All those endings changing up makes a lot of my kids a bit nervous especially at the beginning of the year.

Today my Spanish III students took a mini-quiz on present tense verbs.  Students who scored 8 or lower out of 10 worked with me in a smaller group on forming sentences with these verbs and specific subjects before eventually joining the whole class activity dealing with questions.

And what was this activity?  Find-out-the-answer-to-one-teacher-created-question-about-each-classmate.  Earlier I took the list of regular verbs the students are reviewing and I made one question in the present tense about each student.  For example, ¿Baila Mariana bien?  Students then had to switch the question into the tú form to ask it on a one-on-one basis to the named student.  After he or she responded in a whole sentence (yo form practice!), the first student had to write a whole sentence answer which wasn't that hard since the verb was already in the él form in the written question.

The questions ranged from pretty normal (¿Barre Adriana el garaje?) to a little bit more...unique (¿Invade Jorge Cuba?)

Overall I liked the activity even though I know it was not the most authentic speaking situation.  It gave the students practice in changing up verb forms.  It also increased the chance to use Spanish.  Plus it meant that they had to learn each other's Spanish names a little more!

I think if I do it again, I would have two questions for each student.  Because each student only had to answer one specific question, he or she didn't really have to think about the response.  Two questions would require more active listening.  I might also have students write the other students' responses in English to practice vocabulary more; the él form is already written on the paper so I'm not sure how much thinking they had to do for it although it was a lot of repetitive practice on the correct ending.  I was also able to catch other grammatical errors when I looked over their response sheets.

First Interactive Bulletin Board of the Year

I am horrible at changing out my bulletin board (I think my first year at this school I kept the same one up all year).  However, I do believe in trying to make bulletin boards that have a component that encourages students to think, create, or otherwise add to the display.

The first bulletin board of the year lists some of the top Hispanic cities in the United States.  The interactive component is to ask students to sign their names by the cities they have visited.  I always put my name in a few to get it started and then over the first week or so, I nudge students towards the board if we have extra time in class such as after announcements at the end of the day.

This year's display is not the most evenly arranged but I had it ready to go before the end of the first week which considering my busy weekend right before school, I am happy with it :)

I also like to include information about Hispanics in Ohio to make it a little more relevant to their lives.  This year I found a map that shaded in counties according to population.

The whole bulletin board

Close up to see directions and student signatures