I walk towards the blonde with her hand up.
"I forgot to tell you something, Señorita."
"Yes, Sofía?" I ask the teen.
"I hit Elena with my car."
I turn to look at the empty seat. "Is that why she's not here?" There's an exclamation point to my question.
"No, no, she's fine! It was Monday night and she came to school yesterday, so she's fine!"
"Uh huh." My comment is laced with suspicion.
"She is!" Sofía protests. "It was her fault too!"
"Really?"
"I was turning to leave after the softball game and thought she was going to keep walking straight but she turned left!"
"And now she's not in school."
"She's fine!"
**I'm not sure why this student felt it was important to fill me in on her driving incident but it certainly made for a few amusing moments as they worked independently on their Costa Rica projects. Also, I did see Elena in the halls later that day so I guess that hit only took place at 1-2 mph and may have been more Elena walking into the side of the car even :)
Saturday, April 30, 2016
Thursday, April 28, 2016
No Internet
We lost the Internet at school yesterday for about 3 1/2 periods. It was definitely interesting since my school is in a one-on-one model.
Second period my Spanish II went to work on researching their Costa Rica projects when the crash happened. My first back-up plan was to pass back a set of quizzes and have them work on test corrections. Then I remembered that the sophomores had Chromebooks which meant all their notes were in Google docs--on the cloud which is unaccessible without Internet. So I went to Plan C and pulled out a bunch of magazines I had brought with me from Maryland--which I left in 2011. I did not have a class set of any of these magazines written for Spanish learners, but I made sure kids were broken up into small groups of 3-4 with the same magazine. I asked them just to take notes on what they understood. It might not have been the most useful lesson, but with needing to come up with a completely different lesson on the fly with no electronic resources, I think I did pretty well :)
Spanish III luckily was reading a novel. Unfortunately, I had created a Prezi of visuals to go with the chapter, so they didn't get that input. I mitigated damage by putting them in pairs with whiteboards. As they read, they wrote words they couldn't figure out on their boards and held them up. I then gave them clues to figure out the words or else directed them to another pair of students who had recently asked me for that word.
Spanish I had also been planned with on-line activities but Thursday's lessons were not Internet-reliant, so I switched the days. Thankfully the game is one that I've re-used from other years so I had enough copies in a folder in the room. With the Internet done, I didn't have any ability to print.
It was interesting to note how integral the Internet has become to daily life in the classroom. It was also interesting to see how students adjusted since a number of them had also lost the Internet from the phones (a cell tower had gone down). Some of them were cranky, some a bit lost especially in study hall where even though I only allow phones to be used for schoolwork, I know they're sneaking peeks at other sites. However, I adjusted lessons to keep the learning going and they settled down to do the work. We survived :)
Second period my Spanish II went to work on researching their Costa Rica projects when the crash happened. My first back-up plan was to pass back a set of quizzes and have them work on test corrections. Then I remembered that the sophomores had Chromebooks which meant all their notes were in Google docs--on the cloud which is unaccessible without Internet. So I went to Plan C and pulled out a bunch of magazines I had brought with me from Maryland--which I left in 2011. I did not have a class set of any of these magazines written for Spanish learners, but I made sure kids were broken up into small groups of 3-4 with the same magazine. I asked them just to take notes on what they understood. It might not have been the most useful lesson, but with needing to come up with a completely different lesson on the fly with no electronic resources, I think I did pretty well :)
Spanish III luckily was reading a novel. Unfortunately, I had created a Prezi of visuals to go with the chapter, so they didn't get that input. I mitigated damage by putting them in pairs with whiteboards. As they read, they wrote words they couldn't figure out on their boards and held them up. I then gave them clues to figure out the words or else directed them to another pair of students who had recently asked me for that word.
Spanish I had also been planned with on-line activities but Thursday's lessons were not Internet-reliant, so I switched the days. Thankfully the game is one that I've re-used from other years so I had enough copies in a folder in the room. With the Internet done, I didn't have any ability to print.
It was interesting to note how integral the Internet has become to daily life in the classroom. It was also interesting to see how students adjusted since a number of them had also lost the Internet from the phones (a cell tower had gone down). Some of them were cranky, some a bit lost especially in study hall where even though I only allow phones to be used for schoolwork, I know they're sneaking peeks at other sites. However, I adjusted lessons to keep the learning going and they settled down to do the work. We survived :)
Thursday, April 14, 2016
A Tiny Geography Victory
We don't teach geography much in school these days, and I believe it is important to know our world. As part of my campaign to increase this knowledge, we've been using some games from Jetpunk every once in awhile when I have a few extra minutes of classtime to leverage.
Today my seniors had 2 minutes to study the countries of the different continents before hiding their maps. We then did a Jetpunk that asked for us to identify the first five countries alphabetically for each continent (Australia was part of Oceania).
Overall we didn't do really well. HOWEVER, my years of pounding South America into their heads meant that as a class, we identified all 5 of these countries (even Brazil that I try to ignore since Spanish is not their main language).
I will take my little victories where I find them :)
Today my seniors had 2 minutes to study the countries of the different continents before hiding their maps. We then did a Jetpunk that asked for us to identify the first five countries alphabetically for each continent (Australia was part of Oceania).
Overall we didn't do really well. HOWEVER, my years of pounding South America into their heads meant that as a class, we identified all 5 of these countries (even Brazil that I try to ignore since Spanish is not their main language).
I will take my little victories where I find them :)
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