ACTFL 2018 in New Orleans was amazing! I loved attending presentations by so many great teachers! My colleague Rebecca Landor and I had a great time presenting our session Digital Storytelling Toolbox. Our presentation focused on how to incorporate technology into storytelling through the use of digital platforms such as Storybird, Flipgrid, Adobe Spark, and Storyboard That. Below is a pdf of our session in case you missed it!

Here are some ideas of how to use each of these platforms to enhance storytelling in your room...

Flipgrid
Interactive video platform --I love Flipgrid because it lowers the affective filter and gives more reserved students an opportunity to share their ideas orally. Once you have a teacher account you can create a 'Grid' for each section of your class and post topics for students to create videos on. You can control how long the video must be and who can see/comment on each post. 

• Have students record themselves giving a summary of a story/book chapter that you read in class. Students can then listen to their classmates' videos and leave a comment with an additional detail from the text that is missing. 
• Students can record their ideas for a detail that they want incorporated into a story. Then, they can listen to their classmates' videos and as a class decide which details should be added. 

Storybird
Online book creator

• Pull structures from a story/novel that you are going to use in class and create a Storybird story to pre-teach the vocabulary. Here is a link to the story 'El cerebro' which Rebecca and I wrote to pre-teach vocabulary for Las aventuras de Isabela. 
• Print stories that you create in class and put the books in your classroom library for FVR. 
• Give students a list of structures that you have been working on and have them create their own stories in Storybrid (this would work better with older students.)

Adobe Spark
Online platform used to create videos

• Import visuals from a story that you created in class and have the students record themselves narrating important events. The images you upload could be student drawn or from Google.

Storyboard That
Online storyboard/comic creator

• Students choose images/characters to create or re-tell a story. 
• Create deleted scenes or a dialogue of what two characters would say to each other behind closed doors. 

What are your favorite digital storytelling apps? What are your favorite ways to use digital storytelling?

I just finished teaching a unit surrounding the documentary Living on One Dollar and I cannot recommend this documentary enough! During this unit my students were captivated by the lives of the families living in the small town of Peña Blanca, Guatemala. We had meaningful classroom discussions about poverty, clean water, necessities vs. desires and education. 

Below are some the the activities that I used with my classes during this unit. 

• Have your students take a survey (I use Survey Monkey) to get them thinking about some of the themes of the film and how they relate to their lives. Some of my questions included:
  • ¿Tienes acceso a agua dulce en tu casa?
  • ¿Cuántas comidas comes cada día?
  • ¿Sufres de malnutrición o comes comida saludable?
  • ¿Cómo gana dinero tu familia?
  • ¿Vas a la escuela?
  • ¿En el futuro quieres ir a una universidad?
• When I was watching the documentary I was astounded by the statistics of world poverty. Have your students guess how many people in the world are living on less than one dollar a day. My students were shocked when I told them that the correct answer is 1.1 billion. 
• Have students read the infographic below to provide them with more information about Guatemala. I also had my students compare and contrast Guatemala with the United States (information for the US is in the worksheet below). 

After watching the documentary my students brainstormed ways that they could be the catalyst for global change. The website Living on One has some great resources for these discussions, as well as current information about the families in the documentary. 

My favorite time of year in Spanish class is finally upon us...March Madness! This is my second year doing Música miércoles (thanks to Allison Wienhold for the idea) and it has been a huge success for various reasons...

• Culture! Many of the videos we watch provide students with the opportunity to see the diversity in the people and places of Spanish speaking countries. 
• Excitement! A lot of my students have their own Música miércoles playlists on their personal devices and they listen to the songs at home. 
• Comparisons! I think that one of the most powerful realizations I can give my students is that we are more similar than we are different. Comparing and contrasting songs from Música miércoles with songs in our own culture helps my students see all that we have in common in this world. 
  
  

I created a bracket with almost every song that we have listened to so far this year in Spanish class (the songs are randomly paired against each other.) Below is the list of our songs this year:

• Celebra la vida: Axel
• No te vas: Dvicio
• Solo si es contigo: Bombai
• Latinoamérica: Calle 13
• Si tú la ves: Nicky Jam
• Volar: Alvaro Soler
• Ilumina tu Navidad: Jesse y Joy
• De pies a cabeza: Maná
• Yo contigo, tu conmigo: Morat y Alvaro Soler
• El arrepentido: Melendi
• Amor con hielo: Morat
• Pa' afuera los dolores: Adriana Lucia
• Ese camino: Julieta Venegas
• Sabrosura: Sebastian Yatra
• Diferentemente iguales: Bebe
• Robarte un beso: Carlos Vives y Sebastian Yatra
• Internacionales: Bomba Estéreo
• Es tarde: Juanes
• La tierra del olvido: Carlos Vives
• Guatemorfosis: Gaby Moreno

I posted the bracket on the bulletin board outside my classroom so my students can track the progress of their favorite songs. 
*My bulletin board is big so I had to take 2 pictures to get both sides of the bracket.

​Today in class each student will fill out a bracket. Each week in class the students will vote via Survey Monkey on the songs that they want to advance forward to the next round in the bracket. We will re-watch parts of different videos and have a lot of PQA (personalized questions and answers) discussions about how their favorite songs are doing. When we are done I will give the students their brackets back and they will see how well they did--special prizes will be awarded to anyone with a perfect bracket! 

Are your classes doing a March Madness bracket? If so what song do you think will win this year?

When I first started teaching I remember frantically trying to come up with activities for every holiday that occurred during the school year. These days there are plenty of times when I don't even acknowledge holidays in my class because the students are already engaged in something else. 
This Valentine's Day it seems that the starts aligned for my classes to celebrate because we are between units and it is also Música miércoles! Woohoo! I decided to show Yo contigo, tú conmigo by Morat and Alvaro Soler. 

On Música miércoles the students complete some sort of activity using the lyrics of the song for their warmup (I post the lyrics digitally on Schoology in English and Spanish). Examples include:

• Find the English translation of key phrases from the song in Spanish.
• Match Spanish phrases to clipart pictures on the whiteboard (students must read through the song to find out what the phrases mean and match them to the appropriate picture).
• Write down your favorite line in English and Spanish.
• Write down the cheesiest, funniest, weirdest line in English and Spanish.
• What would ________ say? We just finished Bianca Nieves y los 7 toritos so I asked my students to write down a line that Bianca would say to Salomé or that Marcos would say to Bianca. This generated some great discussions!

Next, I have the students play Quizlet Live or Kahoot! Jumble  with phrases from the lyrics that they just studied. In Quizlet Live students either match the Spanish to the English translation or they correctly identify the next part of a line/phrase in Spanish. In Kahoot! Jumble the students have to put the Spanish words in the correct order to match the English translation of one of the lyrics from the song. 

Once the students have interacted with the lyrics we read about the artist and watch the music video. Afterwards, the students talk to their partners and share their reactions to the song/video (they must back up their opinions with evidence from what they heard/saw). If your students don't have the language to do this yet you can project a slide with adjectives and other phrases that they will need to express their opinions.  

To complete our Valentine's Day fun students will complete one of the following activities: 

1. Use the lyrics from the song and make a blackout poem (thanks Spanish Mama for the great idea).  
2. Create a Valentine's Day Mad Lib! I took the story script for La novia ingrata by Martina Bex as my inspiration for this activity. First, I put Martina's story in the past tense and added more exclamation phrases and adjectives. Next, I created blanks in the story by taking out the names of the stores, the gifts, the exclamation phrases and the adjectives. I then assigned each blank in the story a number and created a list that has the type of word they need to write (noun, masculine adjective, store name, etc.) for each blank in the story. Once the students filled out the list they will write the words from the list in the blanks in the story with the corresponding number. 

At the end of class we are going to have a 'Slam de poesía' to see who has the best/cheesiest poem and the funniest Mad Lib. There will be prizes for best dramatic reading, most original idea, funniest and cheesiest performance. 

Who else is excited to celebrate the Day of the Dead with their students!? This year I'm doing a long unit about Día de los Muertos, but I still want to teach my students about it. Tomorrow we will have a Día de los muertos inspired Música miércoles (thanks Allison Weinhold). Last year we listened to 'La Calaverita" by La Santa Cecelia. This song is awesome because it captures the celebratory nature of this holiday.   

This year my students are going to begin class by reading Martina Bex's articles on Día de los muertos. This is an awesome resource because Martina includes various versions of the Day of the Dead reading--perfect for differentiating the materials between different grade levels. After reading about the holiday, my students are going to read the lyrics to 'Día de los muertos' by El-Haru Kuroi.
This song is much more serious in comparison to the Santa Cecelia song, but I like that it shows real families celebrating and remembering their loved ones on this important day. After discussing the lyrics as a class, students will watch the video using this EdPuzzle activity. The EdPuzzle incorporates the song lyrics as well as information in Marina's Day of the Dead reading.   

I also want to incorporate footage from the Día de los Muertos parade in México City. Below I've posted are several videos that capture this awesome parade, as well as a beautiful ad from British Airways. 

What are you doing to celebrate Día de los Muertos with your students?

On Saturday my amazing colleague Rebecca Collora and I had a great time presenting our session Storytelling 101: How to Create Comprehensible Stories for Young Learners at the Illinois Council on the Teaching of Foreign Language (ICTFL) conference in Tinley Park, IL. During our presentation we focused on using narrow language (Terry Waltz's Super 7) to create comprehensible and compelling stories using digital storytelling platforms such as Storybird and Book Creator. Below is a pdf of our session in case you want to learn more about digital storytelling and assessment activities to use with stories. 

Here is the link for the Storybird story I used to backwards plan for Brandon Brown quiere un perro.

Rebecca and I are also thrilled to share that our book 'Daniel el detective' is officially available for purchase through TPRS Books. This level 1 reader (150 unique words) is a story about a boy named Daniel who lives in Spain. Daniel wants to go to the Tomatina with his friend and he is excited when his parents give him a ticket. One day he wakes up he finds that his ticket is missing! What happened to his ticket? Will he be able to solve this mystery and find his ticket before the Tomatina?   

We hope that you enjoy our book! 

Anyone else using the AAPPL test to assess your students? All of the feeder schools in my area give the 8th grade Spanish students this assessment to determine who is going into Spanish 2 vs Spanish 3 in high school. Last year was our first year administering the test, and although it was a bit of a headache with our tech issues, the test provided us with useful information about our student's proficiency levels.

Although I don't want to 'teach to the test' I do want to make sure that my students are prepared for the types of tasks that they will be asked to complete during this assessment. When my colleague and I took the practice test we noticed that one of the main themes on form 'B' of the test was having the students compare/contrast their country with another and make recommendations for people visiting their town. I wanted to find a way to prepare my students for these types of tasks through a Comprehensible Input friendly approach that was in keeping with topics we were already studying this year.

I was thrilled when I found Carrie Toth's Si tú la ves + Free Unit of Study on Ecuador blog post. I just finished the María y los cuyes Movietalk I did last year to pre-teach vocabulary for Bianca nieves y los 7 toritos, and Carrie's unit was the perfect segue to continue learning about Ecuador and also focus on cultural comparisons for the AAPPL test.  

After we finished the Movietalk about the cuyes in Ecuador, we watched Nicky Jam's video for the song Si tú la ves. Before watching the video the students studied the lyrics and read the following information based on an article in People en Español.

After watching the video I printed out the pictures and information in Carrie's lesson on all of the places they visit in the video (Quito, Baños, los Andes, las islas Galápagos y Guayaquil) and made stations with the information. Students had to work in small groups to read the slides and write down the following information in their notebook. 
1. Nombre del lugar
2. Actividad turística
3. ¿Te gustaría visitar este lugar? ¿Por qué?

As soon as the students had visited each of the stations we had a classroom discussion about what was the most adventurous, beautiful, and crazy place they read about. We also discussed what place was the most similar/different to the city where they live. Overall, I was impressed by the cultural comparisons the students were able to make after watching the Nicky Jam video and reading Carrie's slides. 

Next, played a game where I provided students with information about the activities that someone who is visiting Ecuador likes to do. Students worked in groups to write a recommendation for what activities that person should do on their trip to Ecuador and why. I gave each group a point if they came up with a recommendation that made sense based on the interest of the tourist, and I gave two points to the team with the most interesting/creative recommendation. 

The students finished the unit by comparing/contrasting a place in Ecuador with the city in which they live. They also had to make recommendations to someone from Ecuador who is coming to visit their city. I felt like our study of Ecuador killed two birds with one stone: I pre-taught vocabulary needed for Bianca nieves y los 7 toritos AND the students got to practice making cultural comparisons for the AAPPL test. Oh, and we also got to learn about the people and practices of the beautiful country of Ecuador!

Do you give your students a standardized test in your target language? What do you do to prepare them for the test?

I know that I feel like this every year, but I can never believe how fast the summer flies by! Tomorrow we have an institute day and the following day will be my first day with my new students. Last year was my first year teaching middle school Spanish and there were so many times where I thought to myself "Oh no...I should have done this differently!" This year I'm excited to learn from my mistakes and make this year even better than the last. 

Last year I started class off with an Instagram photo booth for the first day (read more about last year's first day plans here), but this year I wanted to shake things up! For the first day of school I will show the students a power point introducing myself with pictures of my summer. While I am explaining the pictures the students will be playing "strip" bingo. I will write high-frequency words from my presentation on the whiteboard and students have to fill in each of the five squares on their bingo strip with a different word. When they hear me say a word that is on the end of their bingo strip they get to tear it off. Whoever tears off all of the words first is the winner. This is a great game because it helps the students stay engaged while they are listening. 

On the second day of school I will let the students pick a Spanish name and then we will play Speedball to help learn everyone's name and build our classroom community. I got this game from the 'Mis Clases Locas' blog which has some really great ideas for the beginning of the year. After playing speedball I am going to give my students a survey to fill out about their summer (you can download the 'vacaciones de verano' survey below.) Each student will walk around the room with a clipboard and paper and ask their classmates the questions on the survey. If a student answers 'yes' to one of the questions he/she signs the box containing the question. More advanced students can give a full response using the prompts at the bottom of the square. The object of the game is to get a different name in each square. Once the students are done filling in all of the squares we play bingo! To play bingo I randomly call out names and if a student has a square with the name that I call out they mark it with an 'X'. If someone gets a bingo they have to read the answers back to me. For example, "María fue a las montañas, Juan comió en un restaurante, etc."

Last year I created my syllabus on Piktochart. This year I went onto their website and revised my syllabus to include more detailed course goals and information about homework and grading. I copied my course goals from the syllabus on the Creative Language Class blog and I copied the section about proficiency from a syllabus on a different blog that I can't find now (if you recognize where this section came from let me know--I'd love to cite the blog here.) You can download a copy of my 7th grade syllabus below (the 8th grade syllabus is the same except the novels are Bianca Nieves y los 7 toritos & La Llorona de Mazatlán.) 

What are your favorite activities to use during the first weeks of class?

I'm completely obsessed with Bomba Estéreo's new song 'Soy yo'! 

I originally found out about the song through Kara Jacobs' awesome blog. I used Kara's story as a starting point, but I changed the language to better fit the needs of my 7th graders. After I wrote the story I took screen shots of the video and added text to the images (at this point my students didn't know that the images were from a music video.) You can download a pdf version of the story below. 

After reading the story together in class the students watched the video for música miércoles. It was so fun to see the surprised looks on their faces when they saw that the story we had read was actually a music video!
​After watching the video we played "Who would say it?". I gave students quotes and they had to decide which character would say them. Below are a few examples that I used during the activity.    

I was inspired by Carol Gaab's Higher Order Thinking (HOT) presentation at Comprehensible Midwest for this activity. Students have to use inference to determine if Las chicas or Carmen would say each quote. These quotes also lead to great PQA (personalized questions and answers) discussions. Do you know someone that looks at you with a lot of attitude? Why? How do you react? 

Students also created a comic documenting what Carmen did later that night after she went home with her dad. After writing their ideas in the four squares of the comic, the students illustrated their work. When they finished creating their comics I posted them around the room and we had a gallery walk where the students walked around the room and read their classmate's work. ​If you are trying to target specific vocabulary words you can ask that they include those words in the comic, or you can give them more freedom and have them use whatever words they choose.

Here is the link for the Storybird story I used to backwards plan for Brandon Brown quiere un perro and a pdf of Rebecca's Book Creator story Un mono para Gloria.

Thanks again for everyone who attended our session! It was great to connect with all of you!