THE MAGIC OF STORY LISTENING

THE MAGIC OF STORY LISTENING

by | Dec 13, 2020 | Teaching Methods

Last year I discovered Story Listening through a wonderful teacher named Meghan Hayes and her YouTube Channel. I started using this method, and, in the summer of 2019, I had the opportunity to be in a two-day training with the creator of this method, Dr. Beniko Mason. I also had the opportunity to meet and see Meghan in action. So inspirational!

Story Listening is not just sitting to read a book to your students or using props to tell a story. Story Listening (SL) requires a process to get ready for the story. Drawing while you tell the story is a big part of it, along with providing input that is optimal (comprehensible, compelling, rich, and abundant). If you are interested in learning more about Story Listening, I highly recommend that you start by understanding the research behind this method. Here is a video of Dr. Mason talking about SL.

I also keep discovering other YouTube channels of wonderful teachers who use this method and share about it. Cécile (@towardproficiency) is one of them! She recently shared how she used the story Julián is a Mermaid***by Jesicca Love (@jesslovedraws), and Profe Valentina  shared with me that she also told the story to her students. Thanks to the inspiration from these two teachers, I decided to introduce the story to my 3rd and 4th graders. Some of them had already read the book and were excited to see it in the Story Listening format!

I have gotten in the habit of sharing and talking in some depth about the author or cultures related to a story before I tell the story to my students. I find this to be much more rewarding and thoughtful for me and the students than just quickly naming an author or culture/country and proceeding to tell a story. In the case of Julián is a Mermaid, my students got to learn a little about author Jessica Love. As a follow-up activity, I often bring the books to class so they can see the beautiful illustrations too! I get a chance to talk about the book. Unfortunately, my classes are only 25 minutes long, and I try to squeeze in as much as I can while still trying to ensure I’m pacing things to give my students time to process and go along with me.

I have been using SL with my home learning students via Zoom so they don’t really get to see that I “cheat” a little with my drawing. I actually draw my simple figures on sticky notes and put them on the board next to a version of the story.

As you can see in one of the pictures, my drawings are basic, but my students really love the process of me making them and then giving them a chance to try to figure it out. I have really enjoyed using SL in my classes and highly recommend that you give it a try!  I invite you to bring to your students the power and magic behind Story Listening and to take a risk no matter what you feel about your own artistic talent. Students love it!

Con cariño,

***Amazon link

 

EL DÍA DE LA RESISTENCIA INDÍGENA IN SPANISH CLASS

EL DÍA DE LA RESISTENCIA INDÍGENA IN SPANISH CLASS

by | Oct 12, 2020 | Social Justice

Growing up in Colombia we didn’t have a “Columbus Day.” This “holiday” was called “El Día de la Raza”  to celebrate the different races born after the mix of a not a very pleasant encounter. Even though it wasn’t known as Columbus Day, it was still meant to focus on the “great” things Columbus did for us (we celebrated Cristobal Colón, as he is known in Spanish). I have a vivid story of when I  was in 3rd grade and Profe Raquel told us that if it weren’t for Cristopher Columbus we would not have been sitting in that classroom listening to the stories of how brave he was to travel across the Atlantic to new lands. Although teachers made an attempt to recognize the diversity in Colombia, it continued supporting the main narrative that Columbus was great and brave. I never remember hearing of all the bad he did to the people who were in the territories where he landed until later when I was in bachillerato (high school).

In the last decades, countries like Venezuela and Nicaragua have opted to change the name of this holiday to “El día de la Resistencia Indígena” to honor the struggles the Indigenous people went through during the colonization period and to acknowledge that these struggles are not over. Other countries have joined this movement too!

As language educators, we can’t continue supporting the sugar-coated stories about Cristobal Colón. This is an invitation to make space and time in our curriculums to have these conversations and show the true story. It doesn’t matter if it takes some class time to have these conversations in our students’ first language. Children might also be having these conversations within their homerooms, so this can be reinforced in Spanish class.

A teacher friend that I admire and has been working hard on bringing this work to the classroom is Fran, also know as The Woke Spanish Teacher. Her curriculum is deep in Anti-Bias and Anti-Racist (ABAR) education and she works on this all year round. When doing this type of work in the classroom, it is important to know your students and also their developmental stage so that the material can be tailored to their age group. This is something that I am currently working hard on and something Fran knows how to do really well.

Here is an example of what Fran does with her students:

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by Fran /she/ella (@thewokespanishteacher) on

But before bringing these topics to the classroom we have to do the work. We really need to educate ourselves. There are several trustworthy sources on the internet. Here are some that I recommend:

The Zinn Education Project

Teaching Tolerance

Rethinking Schools

Cultural Survival 

The Instagram post below gives great ideas to celebrate Indigenous Peoples Day. Some of them are:

  1. Land Acknowledgment (Here is a website that can be used for that).
  2. Educate others about the true story of Colombus.
  3. Support Indigenous businesses.
  4. Amplify the voices of Indigenous people on social media.

One more to add: learn about the influences of Indigenous languages in other languages and read books written by Indigenous authors.

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by LEAF Global Arts (@leafglobalarts) on

Just like this post on Instagram, as a language educator, I need to be intentional and not just acknowledge other cultures at designated times on the calendar.

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by Colorful Pages (@colorfulpagesorg) on

Are you ready to make a year-long commitment to celebrating other cultures and voices in your classroom? I know I am!

 

MAKE YOUR PET GIVE INSTRUCTIONS IN YOUR CHOICE BOARDS

MAKE YOUR PET GIVE INSTRUCTIONS IN YOUR CHOICE BOARDS

by | Oct 4, 2020 | DIGITAL

Adding extra things to spice up your choice boards is definitely not necessary. In fact, I don’t do it every time a create one because it can be time consuming.  There is no need to worry if you haven’t added Bitmojis, GiF’s or other things to your boards. Sometimes I feel like adding a little fun since right now I am not seeing my students, I am just creating asynchronous lessons.

In my recent board I added my dog Macondo as a helper to give instructions to my kinder and first grade students. It was fun to put him on my boards!  Below I am sharing the steps I followed. I divided them into 3 parts hoping to make it easier for you to follow.

You will need to:

Part 1

  1. Choose a picture of your pet or any other picture of an animal.
  2. Download the app “My Talking Pet.” There is a free trial period.
  3. Open the app and upload the picture.
  4. Once the picture is uploaded, the app will show you some dots to mark the eyes, mouth, and ears (see picture).
  5. Add the voice (Once you have added the voice, that app will ask you for different options to save it. I downloaded mine to my computer).

Part 2

  1. Upload the video to the Unscreen.com website. This will remove the background and the sound. Save this video because you will need it later!

Part 3

  1. Use the video you downloaded from “My Talking Pet” and upload it to the online audio converter site to extract the audio. Make sure to download the audio as mp3.
  2. Save the audio file to your Google Drive and rename it.
  3. Make sure that you set the audio file link to the Google setting “anyone with the link can view” so it is accessible for everyone when they open your choice board.
  4. Insert the link to your audio file directly onto your Google Slides.
  5. Lastly, add the video you downloaded from the Unscreen.com website.
  6. Open Google Slides in “presentation mode” and enjoy seeing your pet or animal give instructions to your students.

It seems like a long process, but once you learn how to do it, things will go faster and smoother.

Have fun!

 

TEMPLATES TO PLAY TIC-TAC-TOE

TEMPLATES TO PLAY TIC-TAC-TOE

by | Sep 26, 2020 | DIGITAL

I recently shared on Instagram a template of a tic-tac-toe game I created to play during my virtual classes. I have gotten requests from different teachers who want this template and since I am all about saving teacher friends’ time, I decided to create more templates and share them here on my blog.

I have been seeing my students in small groups. In order to play the game virtually, I clicked on the “rename” part of Zoom and added either the letter “O” or “X” to divide them into teams. My students don’t have access to changing their names on Zoom because that’s how it was set up at the school where I teach, but if your students can do it themselves, that will save you some time. Since playing this game will require you to move the pieces, it can’t be played in presentation mode.

I used this game to ask questions about stories we have been reading in class. Once the students responded to the question, they could tell me a number for me to move the piece for them. It was simple, and the students seemed to have fun. I played this game remotely, but it can still be used in the classroom. Click HERE to download the slides to have fun in your classes! Once you click on the link, it will prompt you to make a copy of the document.

I also had fun learning the various names for this game in different Spanish speaking countries:

Triqui (Colombia)

Gato (México)

Vieja (Venezuela)

Tres en raya (España)

Have fun playing triqui with your classes!

You may like these resources available on Teachers Pay Teachers:

TIPS FOR FIRST YEAR SPANISH TEACHERS – PART 2

TIPS FOR FIRST YEAR SPANISH TEACHERS – PART 2

by | Jul 13, 2020 | Classroom Tips

This is part 2 of the post “Tips for First-Year Teachers.” If you missed it, please make sure to read it here and come back to this post.

Teaching in the Target Language

(From a previous post called “My Journey as a Spanish Teacher”) In the first program where I taught FLES, all Spanish teachers were required to stay 100% in the TL. I had success doing all I could to get my point across in my classes. I spent a lot of time looking for visuals, making posters, and using a lot of TPR and gestures! The program was successful, but my students thought that I couldn’t speak English. The children were trying harder to communicate with me in the TL, but there was more to it than that. I had a website, and I also sent newsletters home, but a lot of the parents apparently still thought that I didn’t know English.

One day,  I was approached by a parent, and his comment was, “I thought you didn’t know English!” At that moment, I had mixed feelings. Yes, I wanted my students to use Spanish with me at all times, during class, recess time, in the hallway, and so on, but I was also sad because I was also there to “promote bilingualism,” and they thought I only knew Spanish. I was traveling from classroom to classroom, and the homeroom teachers stayed in the classroom during the 20 minutes of Spanish instruction. I recall that I rarely had to work hard on classroom management because the teachers were there to help. I also realized that I didn’t really know anything about my students.

Once I moved to a different school, the policies about teaching 100% in the TL were different. The school already had a Spanish and French teacher for grades 4 through 6, so I was hired to create the other part of the program with the help of my colleagues, and we used a backward mapping process to create our curriculum for grades pre-K to 3. Both the French and Spanish teachers used some English with their students. At first, I stuck with using only Spanish in class, mostly out of habit, and my desire to push students to use the TL. I started noticing that the other language teachers had really strong connections with their students, and their students would actually look for them during recess time. That was when it dawned on me that I had been missing an opportunity to connect with my students and get to know a little bit more about them. So by my second year in the school, I finally became more flexible and started to allow interactions with my students in their L1 during times out of my class.

Children would actually come and sit next to me by the bench on the playground, and we had great conversations, from talking about my family in Colombia to their plans after school! That’s when I realized that it was okay for them to use their L1 to communicate with me during recess time. I also feel that because I am a native speaker, they need to know that I am bilingual and that I have an interest in their language and culture. Now, keeping my class at 90 to 95 % TL in my classroom continues to be my goal.

Classroom Routines

As I mentioned above, keeping it simple is the best way, at least during your first year.  In a regular pre-COVID setting, depending on the students’ level:

  1. I greet my students at the door or they enter the class by saying “La frase de la Semana”.
  2. Once in the classroom, we read the class message together, sometimes sing a song, a quick check-in on how they are doing.
  3. We proceed to do the different activities of the class including games, brain breaks,  yoga poses and breathing exercises.
  4. End the class by thanking each other, where I say: “Gracias, class”, and students reply: “Gracias, maestra” (ps: I will change to profe this year because maestra doesn’t sound natural to me. In my prior years in Boston, students called me by first name – this is a topic for another post!)
  5. If I have time I do a quick “exit ticket” for the children to line up.

Other classroom routines might include having jobs for your students, cleaning and sanitizing hands, bathroom procedures,  visits to the nurse, and call-response chants. (See this post on Instagram to learn more about the origin of call-response chants)

Parents also like to know what’s going on in your classes. Having a monthly newsletter or a website as a routine to communicate with your parents is also a great PR for your program!

Setting Up Your Classroom Norms

Simple is my motto! I think three to five norms accompanied with good visuals are great! I usually have them in Spanish, but I introduce them and discuss them in English with my students.  Some teachers like to create their norms along with their students, but I usually go with generally simple rules that are phrased in a positive way. I keep them in front of the room to point at them if I need them as reference. I have experimented with different norms every year, and by far these have worked the best:

You can also piggyback on the norms the homeroom teachers have created for their classrooms.

Join a Language Organization

Stay up to date with professional development by joining ACTFL (The American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages),  NNELL (The National Network for Early Language Learning), or your state language organization. They usually send newsletters to help you stay abreast of the newest research and methodologies in language teaching. If possible attend national and/or regional conferences. Sometimes it is important to be in the same space sharing with people who care about and to whom it matters what you do.

Be You and Make Time for YOU!

With so many teachers sharing on social media it is inevitable to see ideas and want to bring them to your classroom and expect to get the same results as that teacher who posted on Instagram. To be honest, I have been there too, but the reality is that we never know what’s behind the scenes, so if you see an idea, read it, watch the video and see how you can adapt it to the needs of your students and to the special qualities of your personality and style. Remember that you got hired to do that job because you were the best-qualified teacher for it. So start with trusting in yourself!

Last, but not least, make time for yourself! Start now when you are new, use the weekends to disconnect if you can. Make time to take walks, exercise, or watch your favorite show on your couch. I am telling you this because I have made the mistake to get into the routine of just working, even on the weekends – sometimes to the point that I even forget that I have two kids. These last years I have made it intentional to only bring work home if necessary, and it has made a difference in my classroom. A refreshed teacher gives everyone the best chance for truly engaged students!

Please feel free to contact me if there is anything I can do for you!