Fun App: TextingStory Chat Story Maker

Get ready for that feeling when you find an app that you immediately think of a boatload of possibilities for using it in your classroom.

I was scrolling through Twitter tonight when I saw a Tweet from Meredith White about the app, TextingStory Chat Story Maker. Less than a minute later I had downloaded the app and was creating a short story to use in class tomorrow for my bell ringer.

I made the video to go with Martina Bex's curriculum, SOMOS 1 Unit 2. I'm enjoying the ease of using the SOMOS curriculum, especially since this is the first time I've taught Spanish 1 since spring of 2012. 

Thank you, Martina (a.k.a. the coolest person I know ❤️ 😊 - right back at'cha)

Have fun using the app!!!

One Word Images & ChatterPIX PLUS App Smashing

I stumbled across an app earlier this year that when combined with One Word Images (OWI were originally created by Ben Slavic. Read about & watch a video of a OWI on Mike Peto's Blog) will provide various possibilities for World Language teachers. 

The app is called ChatterPix and it is available for IOS devices AND Android devices. Better yet, it is FREE! As soon as I saw the app I couldn't wait to add it to my presentation "Make Technology Count in the CI Classroom" for #iFLT19 in St. Petersburg, Florida, to share it with other world language teachers.

The ChatterPIX app allows you to upload a photo, draw a line for a mouth on a person or on any object that is in the photo, and then you record your voice and the "mouth" moves as you are recording.

When I was experimenting with the app and searching for photos on my camera roll, I came across a photo of a OWI that my Spanish class had created and the idea to use the app on the OWI was born.

On the right is a photo of the OWI my Spanish class created. To summarize, Mahe is an umbrella that is afraid of rain and has a friend that is a sponge. (If you're wondering how did we decide on a name such as Mahe; students couldn't agree on a name so I asked four students to tell me a letter of the alphabet and from those letters I created the name Mahe. 😂)

I uploaded the photo to ChatterPix and added the voice.

Some of the uses when combining ChatterPIX with OWIs are:

- teacher creates the recording for students to access for additional input
- teacher creates the recording with the OWI asking true/false or short answer questions for students to answer
- teacher creates the recording with a few changes to the details/story; students  find the differences between the recording and the original class story
- students create a recording as if they were the object; summarize information about the object
- students create a recording as if they were the object; add new information about the OWI (character)


In general, students can use ChatterPIX for presentational mode, especially for students that don't want to have their own photo on the end product. The finished products can be uploaded to your school's LMS (Learning Management System, such as Schoology, Canva, Edmodo, etc.)

- students draw a character from a novel the class is reading and record as if the students are the character; what are his/her thoughts on what is happening?; what does he/she hope does/doesn't happen?; how does s/he feel?
- choose a painting and have the painting tell what is represents (great for art "units")
- teacher uses photo and records a voice; students decide if what the person or object says is logical or illogical in reference to what is happening in the photo
- students create a comic strip and upload it to a powerpoint or googleslides; make characters talk with ChatterPIX

Below is an example that MadameMoran tweeted which uses ChatterPIX. (#greatmindsthinkalike) 😊

Presentational Mode (writing, speaking, visually representing) Next...to app smash with ⁦@Flipgrid⁩ #langchat ⁦@EmilyBoatright⁩ ⁦@ptyut1999⁩ ⁦@MadameDarlis⁩ ⁦@gadoeworldlang⁩ pic.twitter.com/j9g5VvKnHN

— Madame Moran (@AlisonM19365957) July 19, 2019

Next...

If you want to step into App Smashing, try combining a app or website that removes the background in photos of people (and objects if you're willing to pay extra or do extra detailed work), then add a new background for the people in the photo, and make either the people talk with ChatterPIX or pick an object in the photo to talk TO the people. (Thanks to Krista Kovalchick for permission to use the photo with her and me.)

Below is a screenshot of a slide from my Tech Presentation at #iflt19 on Appsmashing with ChatterPIX and the website Removebg.com followed by the steps I followed to create the above video.

1. Take a photo. Make sure there are not other people in the background!

2. Upload the photo to removebg.com and remove the background. Download the photo from the removebg.com website.

3. Choose another photo to which you want to add the person/people on the downloaded file from removebg.com. (My friend, Karen, sent the photo in this step when she was at Epcot and I was at in-service. Years ago I was at Epcot but not with Krista, the woman in the photo with me.)

4. Layer the edited photo from removebg.com to the new background.

5. Upload the new photo to ChatterPIX. Choose a person or an object to animate with a voice. Download the video with voice recording to your camera roll or computer for use in your world language classroom.

Removebg.com

This website takes all the work out of removing backgrounds. I used it with ChatterPIX but I'm sure you'll find uses for it for other activities in your World Language Classroom. Or, have fun using it and surprising your friends with the photos. After all, having fun with tech shouldn't be limited to our classrooms!!

Try THE MATCH GAME in your MFL class!

The Match Game is a TV panel game that features two contestants that try to match the answers of a 6-member panel.  The game premiered in 1962 on CBS and was updated several times during it's run. The game show host would read a sentence with a blank in it and the contestants wrote an answer to fill in the blank, earning points for each member on the panel that wrote the same answer.

I used the general idea of this game show in class today to reinforce the nosotros (1st person singular) form in the past tense.  It's an easy game that my students enjoyed and which  allowed the students to provide Comprehensible Input to their classmates. It also was a good game to play to add some pizzazz to my 2-hour class today due to state testing.

Teacher prep for The Match Game  
Write a list of situations in the TL on notebook paper or you can write them on a powerpoint slide. These are the sentences I used today:
- Nosotros fuimos a un partido de los Hershey Bears. (a hockey team)
- Encontramos $2.000 en el parque.
- Vimos a Big Foot.
- Fuimos al concierto de Beyoncé.
- Vimos a Zac Efran en Hershey, PA.
- Fuimos a Disney World.
- Compramos un árbol de Navidad.*
- Fuimos a Hawaii.
- Preparamos la cena.
- Visitamos a nuestros abuelos.
- Vimos a una persona que tenía problemas con su coche.
- Fuimos a West Virginia.

(Translations for above: We went to a Hershey Bears hockey game. We found $2,000 in the park. We saw Big Foot. We went to a Beyoncé concert. We saw Zac Efran in Hershey, PA. We went to Disney World. We bought a Christmas tree. We went to Hawaii. We prepared the dinner. We visited our grandparents. We saw a person that had problems with his car. We went to West Virginia.)

Directions to play The Match Game:

Team Shake app

1. Divide the class into two teams. Every student needs a marker, mini-marker board, and an eraser. (I use the app Team Shake to randomly put my students in groups.)
 
2. Ask for 1 volunteer from each team. The volunteer sits in the front opposite his or her team (or somewhere in the room that the volunteer can NOT see what his team mates have written nor can the team mates see what s/he has written. I constantly needed to remind the students to not lay their boards down on their laps and to write with the board perpendicular to the floor.)

3. Read a sentence. I did a practice round with the sentence: Fuimos a Burger King. (We went to Burger King.) All students write what "we" did next. 
The members on each team were allowed to look at their teammates answers and (quietly) ask them how to spell their answers. But, the two volunteers needed to write their answers without any help. 

4. I asked Team A to show their answers. I read each of them and then the volunteer from Team A showed his answer. His team received a point for each member that matched his answer.

Note: ONLY the answers with the verbs spelled correctly received a point. (I did this because I allowed the students to ask their classmates for help. If the volunteer had his word spelled incorrectly, it did not count against his team since he had no help.) 

Another Note: The students had to write more than the verb. If they said "comimos (we ate)" that did not earn a point if it matched. They had to say "comimos hamburguesas" or "comimos comida". I was lenient on how closely they matched.

5. Then I turned to Team B and checked their answers. I alternated which team started each round.

6. I kept the score for each round on the board. I also wrote the verb that the volunteer had written on the board under the volunteer's name. That team could not use that word again in subsequent rounds, which forced them to use a variety of verbs and to be creative.

This game can easily be alternated to focus on something other than the nosotros form I used with students.

As my principal said earlier this week, the days between Thanksgiving and Christmas are when we earn our money, meaning it's a difficult time of the school year to teach.  Do yourself a favor and include a game that keeps the students in the target language and helps you make it to the New Year. 

12 Ideas for Teaching Prepositions in the MFL Classroom

What is the best lesson to teach prepositions in a second language classroom?  The short answer is - there isn't one lesson. I have found the best way to teach prepositions is to introduce one or two at a time, then gradually add new prepositions to the ones students have acquired with a different activity. It's important to focus the students' attention AWAY from the vocabulary of prepositions to using the prepositions as part of a greater purpose.

Below are 12 activities that I've used throughout Spanish 2, rather than teaching a "unit" on prepositions.  Most students at the end of Spanish 1 are already able to use several prepositions of place such as debajo de, a la derecha de and a la izquierda de (under, to the right of, to the left of), so I recycle them throughout the semester and gradually add other prepositions.


1. Students' Photos of Pets. Personalize conversations using prepositions with student's photos of their pets. Ask your students to send you photos of their pets at different locations (on top of the sofa, inside the car, under the bed, etc.) and you will have instant engagement. Who doesn't like looking at adorable animals? If you're ambitious, make a list of the locations of the animals, type it and leave a space for students to match the animal photos on the powerpoint with the statements on their paper.   

Or...have the students use ipads to add captions to photos of dogs (their own or ones they find online) or other animals using prepositions. If you want to be really creative, make it a fun contest and students earn opportunities to vote for their favorite picture from participation points. Winner gets...I'll let that up to you.  :-)

2. Class Story:  The original purpose of this class story was to give the students a lot of examples of the Spanish structure estaba + -ando or estaba + -iendo. The story takes places in a movie theater which allows me to recycle to the left of, to the right of, and I add behind (detrás de) and in front of (delante de).  The plot of the story is that someone goes to the movie theater and the people surrounding that person are distracting and noisy because of what they are doing.  Click HERE for an in-depth description of the story.

3. Plaza Sesame: Arriba, Abajo, Alrededor y a Través. Looking for a fun Brain Break? Let your students watch this video of Grover as he adds rep after rep of arriba, abajo, alrededor, a través, and lejos & cerca.  Make it even more interesting by asking a student to be the mirror image of Grover - if you can find a student with that much energy!

4. Two puppets and a box.  I have several hand puppets, one of which is the lovely "Covadonga" cow puppet (pictured on the right) that I've used in my classroom since my first year of teaching. I place a cardbood box on a tall stool in the front of the classroom. Then I ask for 2 volunteers and they choose a puppet.  I say a sentence using the prepositions that students already know such as "los animales están detrás de la caja" (the animals are behind the box). The 2 students stand on either side of the stool with the box and put their puppet behind the box. I continue calling out places where the two animals are and students place their puppet at the appropriate location in relation to the box. After the first 2 students are placing the animals in the correct place without hesitation, the students choose someone to take their place and the new students repeat what I did previously and then I add more prepositions.

5. Here is another Brain Break with prepositions. I tell students to stand and to move their chair to a location in the room where they have more space on around their chair. I call out a preposition and students must put their body at that place in relation to the chair.  For prepositions such as "debajo de" (under) or "dentro de" the students and I decide ahead of time how we will demonstrate those prepepositions.

6. Hide and Seek. I have a colorful small plastic frog and an even tinier plastic cat the size of my thumbnail. One student is sent to the hall and the remaining students decide where in the room to hide the frog or the cat. The student in the hall enters the room and must ask questions to determine the location of the cat. The student may say, "¿Está el gato a la derecha de Nancy?" The students must respond using a preposition in their answer, i.e. "No. El gató está a la izquierda de Nancy." This continues until the student can tell us where the cat is.

7. Hide and Seek Photos. There are several websites with funny photos of children that failed miserably playing Hide and Seek. Project the photos and ask guiding questions to describe where the children are, i.e. ¿Está el niño debajo de la cama o debajo del perro?"
  a. 33 photos that show just how awesomely bad children are at playing Hide and Seek.  
  b. 20 kids who are totally winning at the game of Hide and Seek
  c. 37 photos that prove little kids suck at hide and seek 

8. Finding Mimo. Where's Waldo doesn't hold a candle to the adorable dog named Mimo. Project the photos in the links below and then let your students find Mimo, and then they can describe where the dog is located in relation to other objects in the photo. Or, ask yes/no and either/or questions in the target language about Mimo's location to scaffold the activity for beginning levels.     
  a.  Bored Panda - Finding Mimo
  b.  Bored Panda - Finding Mimo #2
  c.  Bored Panda - Finding Mimo #3

9. Felt Board App - 9 girls & 9 Cats. I use this when working with the vocabulary words: llevaba un vestido, tenía un gato, era, and estaba, but it also reinforces the prepositions to the left of, to the right off, and behind. An explanation of this activity can be found HERE.

10. Felt Board App - Students read a description and recreate the picture using the Felt Board App.  There are three separate scenes the students needs to recreate, and after each one, they bring their ipad to me to check it for accuracy and sign that I've seen it completed.  The document with the descriptions and photos of the screens is on my googledrive HERE.

bit.ly/1QCy3Ft

11. Cats, Cats, and more Cats. I found a picture on Pinterest with 20+ cats in a room. Follow this link to the pin on Pinterest. I uploaded the photo on my ipad on the Pic Collage app and added names for most of the cats.  See a sneak peak to the right.  In class, I describe the location of one of the cats and the students call out the name of the cat.

12. Vamos a cazar un oso. Take this well-known children's story and add your own actions to get the students up and moving around and to reinforce prepositions such as: por encima no podemos pasar, por abajo no podemos pasar, lo tendremos que atravesar.

Apps for the MFL Classroom

There are three apps that I've been using in my Spanish class lately.  

1. TAP ROULETTE. Sometimes in class I have more students volunteer than I need and at other times not enough students volunteer.  For a fun, easy, and quick way to choose a student, I use Tap Roulette.  The students put one finger on the ipad and when I press go, the roulette begins and the sound of the roulette wheel will eventual end and a bright red mark will appear under the finger of the person that was "chosen".

One day, I was reviewing the story that the class had created with me the previous day. I was prepared with questions about the characters and events in the story that didn't have an answer that we had discussed.  My plan was to ask for volunteers to answer the different questions, but then I decided to use Tap Roulette to do that work for me.  This was my smallest class (8 remarkable students!!) so we gathered our chairs in a tight circle, and I held out the ipad for the students to place their fingers on it.  Whichever person was chosen by Tap Roulette had to create more details to answer the question.  

The students enjoyed this, especially when their classmate was chosen twice before they had even been chosen one time.

The app is free.  It supports up to 11 fingers on the ipad and 5 fingers on the iphone.

2.  Team Shake.  This app provides a quick way to put students in a group.  You can select how many groups you want or how many people you want in each group.  First, you have to upload the list of names of your students.  If a student is absent, there is an online tab to take that person's name out of the draw. Then press shake and your groups will be listed for you.

This app cost .99.

3.  Touch Blur.  This app is handy when you have pictures of class activities that you want to share without others being able to identify the students.  Upload the photo into the app and touch the screen to blur faces or other things in the picture to hide its identity.

This app is free.

IFLT15 - Post 2 - Workshops

The IFLT15 conference was held on July 14-17 in St. Paul Minnesota at Tartan High School.  As I mentioned in the previous post (IFLT15 - Post 1), Carol Gaab and Grant Boulanger were the organizers of the event.  They created a schedule that provided the opportunity for participants to observe teachers in the morning, both elementary and secondary classes, as well as workshop sessions in the am and pm sessions.  In the previous post I shared what I experienced from observing the teachers, which was fantastic!  In this post, I'll share information from the sessions that I attended each day.

Opening Plenary Session
The Opening Session was conducted by Carol Gaab, Kristy Placido, Carrie Toth, and Darcy Pippins.  I was helping with registration so I didn't see the first half hour but I was there for the remainder of the session. 

Carrie Toth and Kristy Placido (@senoraCMT & @placido) shared their experiences working with KIVA and the Pulsera Project and how they extended their classroom beyond the 4 walls.  Through their projects, they connected their students to other communities in various countries and helped students to have a more global view, including raising funds to build wells in Mali. You can read about their projects on their blogs (Kristy Placido and Somewhere to Share - Carrie's blog). Carrie also talked about: how to use Twitter as an authentic resource, her Water is Life unit and connecting it to science, 

Darcy Pippins (@darcypippins) gave a brief talk on the success she has been experiencing with her AP students.  After hearing Darcy speak about her students, I made a note to attend her session later in the week to learn the steps involved from beginning levels to AP.  

(Carol Gaab spoke to the group in the Opening Session and in the Experienced Workshop after lunch.  It's been a few weeks and I don't remember which information was shared in each session so I lumped it together below.)

Carol Gaab (@carolgaab) reminded us about the importance of backward planning, how to plan a "unit" based on novels, the importance of repetitions, and the need for a variety of experiences for the students.  Some quotes from Carol (and I hope I wrote them correctly while frantically typing on my mobile device):
"Point & Speak, Pause, Repeat" - the basics
"Pacing is an Art"
"Talk to your students to find content"
"You don't have to create a story; stories are all around you"
"Timing and Repetition is Crucial"
Referring to repetitions "don't be nice, be sneaky"
"BRAINS crave NOVELTY"
"Refine, define, combine"

Carol gave a demonstration on different ways to involve students (in this case teachers), with a story about Jane and Tarzan, and demonstrated story-asking with a reading action chain. She wove an incredible amount of repetitions into the "lesson" to show us how to keep it fresh and novel for students.

Sessions: 
Due to observing extra teaching sessions and helping to coach on Wednesday and Thursday afternoon, the sessions I attended was reduced.  To get the most of my time, I chose presentations that I hadn't seen at other conferences and/or presenters that I hadn't seen before.  

Carrie Toth - iPads
- use apps to enhance the CI and storytelling
- uses Educreations with Chac Mool: students sketch pictures on regular paper, take photos with ipad and upload to Educreations
- students work in groups to write a story similar to the class story, students pose for photos, upload photos to Educreations; Carrie records the story on Educreations and plays it for the class the following day
- Popplet: make a thought web of a character from a novel
- Appsmash Feltboard & My Comics; create a scene using feltboard app, upload to MyComics app, add speech bubbles
- Puppet Pals - for review of a novel
- Thinglink: describe a character from a novel; related information
- 30 Hands - students used this for their KIVA advertisements and uploaded the video to YouTube
- Tellagami: Appsmash Tellagami and Explain Everything

Martina Bex - Culture Units
Martina (@martinabex) walked the participants through the process of creating a culture unit.  She outlined 7 steps to follow when creating a culture unit, and she paused after each step to allow participants to work in small groups to discuss and create a possible unit. Check her handout for the outline and a graphic organizer to start planning your next culture unit! Also check her website, The Comprehensible Classroom, for a goldmine of resources.

Her handouts, as well as many other handouts for IFLT15, are on TPRS Publishing, Inc. website. Click on the IFLT15 Conference tab, then click on IFLT 2015 Program.

Darcy Pippins - AP
Background on Darcy's school's language program:
- Spanish is required for grades 4 & 5
- Spanish 1 is offered in 8th grade
- AP Spanish taken in senior year (with some exceptions).  If students do not take Spanish in 8th grade, they may skip Spanish 4 and go from Spanish 3 into AP as a senior. 
- High school Spanish classes have 160 hours per level. 
It's obvious that her school district understands the value of learning a second language!

- Darcy recommended the book "Whisperer" by Donalyn Miller. This author tells how her students read 40 books and kept journals of books they read. 
- Darcy had create ways to keep her students in the target language: La Rana de Vergüenza - a stuffed frog; if a student spoke in English the frog "jumped" to that student's desk and remained there until another student accidentally spoke in English. 
- Word sneak game - see Jimmy Fallon's video of word sneak to see this demonstrated
- Cloud of Doubt - how Darcy referred to the subjunctive without using the grammatical lingo
Darcy outlined the novels that students read in each level.  They are:
Sp1: Brandon Brown quiere un perro; Las aventuras de Isabela, Esperanza, Isabela captura un congo; Piratas
Sp2: El viaje de su vida; el Nuevo Houdini, Problemas en paraíso, Felipe Alou
Sp3: Viva el toro, La herencia, Los ojos de Carmen, Vida y muerte
Sp4: La guerra sucia, La calaca alegre, Esperanza renace, Vida o muerte en el Cusco, La hija del sastre

Mike Coxon - Beyond Movie Talk
Mike (@coxon_mike) shared ways he continues providing Comprehensible Input beyond Movie Talk.  His link to his blog is Optimizing Immersion.
- "Don't forget about the R in TPRS when using Movie Talks"
- Go beyond the story by asking for the Backstory, what happens before or after the clip, have students act the parts in the video so draw out more information and conversation
- two videos he uses in class:  The Balcony Girl, Vampire's Crown, 

Those are a few of the notes I took while attending sessions.  If you want more quotes and links for resources, I suggest you check the Twitter hashtage "iflt15 and/or search for Wendy Farabaugh's twitter feed from July 14-17 (@MmeFarab) or Dustin Williamson's tweets (@dwphotoski).  Others were tweeting also and, by the end of the week, there were tweets from new Twitter accounts thanks to Kristy Placido's and Carrie Toth's lunch session on Twitter. Also, according to Martina Bex's blog, The Comprehensible Classroom, she will blogging about IFLT (and NTPRS) in the near future.

The conference ended with an inspiring and informative talk by Dr. Stephen Krashen.  Some of his remarks:
"The human mind yields helplessly to the power of a story."
"Comprehension is win-win."
"We are not against testing, we are against excessive and useless testing."
"We have school and we have the brain..which one can you change?"
"Reading is not A way to develop the highest forms of language; it is the ONLY way."
"Read for one hour/day for pleasure and your proficiency will go from intermediate low straight to the top"
and so much more - Check @MartinaBex and @mike_coxon on 7/17 for more tweets on Krashen's talk (which is the source of many of the quotes above).

Overall, GREAT conference and one I recommend to EVERYONE!

Student Artists + Notability App = More CI Reps

I am guilty of not utilizing student artists in my class as I should.  However, this semester I am hoping to change that. This week I remembered to ask a student to sketch the story as we were creating a story resulting in the following:

 

Both of the stories above follow the storyline of the story I wrote before the class.  The structures are the same as my story, but the students' story has different details. You can access the story HERE in present and past tense.

I had the students use my iPad and the Notability app.  I used to have students use the Educreations app for sketches, but Notability is more user friendly, both when sketching and when moving the sketches to paper.

Providing students the opportunity to contribute to the class with their sketches has several advantages:

1. The student artist, and many times, the students seated near the artist, are undeniably focused on the story because the artist is charged with sketching the details as we develop the story, requiring him/her to pay close attention and neighboring students to provide help when needed.

2.  After the class story is completed, I project the sketches and I retell the story and circle the information and the answers.  The students are interested in seeing their classmate's artwork so they're focused on the story once again.

3. After class, it's easy to transfer the sketches to paper.  I make copies for the students and give it to them the following day for additional review.

(4) This is another opportunity to showcase the students' artistic talents.

Reps, reps, and more reps.  

Additional ideas for the copies of the storyboard sketches:

- Students use the sketches to retell the story.
- Cut the paper so there is one sketch on each square of paper.  Place the sketches face down. Turn them over one at a time, telling the part of the picture that relates to the sketch. Put in order as sketches are turned over.
- Chose X number of sketches and create a NEW story using the target structures for the original story.
- Teacher says a statement and students point to the sketch it describes. 

Review Chapters of Novels with PicCollage App

The goal for language teachers at my school is to read a minimum of 2 novels with the students per level.  I prefer to read a novel in 12-15 days instead of drawing it out to a month or longer.

A good way to review the events of the previous chapter before beginning a new chapter is to make a collage using the PicCollage app.  The app has images within the app that are copyright free, making it quick and easy for the teacher or students to create the collage in a short period of time.

This summer I'm going to shop around to check prices for making collages of El Nuevo Houdini into posters for the classroom.  After reading a chapter, I can then hang the posters around the room.  This will help students to remember the events of the previous chapters.  If a student is absent the day we read a chapter, the other students will have a handy visual to refer to when they explain the events to their classmate(s).

Or..display the poster photo collage before reading the chapter to predict events.  An variation of this is to create a collage with 1-2 photos not related to the chapter and ask students to guess which photo(s) are the imposters.

It also might be a nice way to have a verbal quiz at the end of the book.

Another bonus, hang the posters in the hall to help showcase what your students are learning in class.  Better yet, record a student telling a review of the chapter, connect a QR code to the recording, and post the QR code along with the poster in the hall!  

Silent Photo Story: Digital Storytelling with a Twist

Last week my students created a Silent Photo Story project that was inspired by this pin on Pinterest.  (The two students that made the project, below left, gave me permission to post their project.  You can find it at the end of the post and HERE.)

Before assigning the project to my students, I did a trial run by texting photos of a story, with the sentences written on an app on my ipad, to my daughter that was at her college tennis match.  (See one of the photos from the story below on the right.)  I searched for a way to post the photos on an app that would automatically advance each page of the story instead of having the photos listed vertically as on the Pinterest example.  The easiest user-friendly method I found for students to use is the Educreations app.

The purpose of the project was for my students to write in the past tense, include sentences that describe how someone felt about the actions of another person (the imperfect subjunctive), and for the majority of the creative aspect of the project to be completed outside of class time.

The Silent Photo Story project:

A. Requirements
   - Write a story in the past with a minimum of 10 sentences.
   - A minimum of 2 of the sentences must describe how someone felt about
     the actions of another person or about a situation.
   - Write each sentence on a mini-whiteboard. (I gave each student 2 
     markers, an eraser, and a mini-whiteboard to take home.)
   - Take a photo of you holding the marker board with the sentence. Your
     actions should match the sentence on the board.
   - E-mail the photos to your school g-mail account.

B.  Students had 4 days to complete the assignment.  I offered to proofread their sentences before they took the photos, but none of the students took me up on this offer.  (Next time, I will require the students to have a mini-conference with me before they complete the project.)

C.  The day it was due, I signed out the department i-pads.  The students accessed their photos through their g-mail, copied the photos to the i-pad, and opened the Educreations app.

D.  On the Educreations app, they uploaded one photo per page/slide.  Then they made a silent recording, pausing 3-4 seconds on each page.  (If you save the project before making the silent recording of each page, the app will only save the initial page of the project.)

E.  After the recording, they saved the lesson and followed my detailed instructions on how to post their projects directly on our class Edmodo page.  Those directions can be downloaded HERE.

F.  The following day in class, we sat in a circle (conversation style which means without desks) and read the stories. 





Note:  This project can also be done completely in class if you do not want to send the supplies home with the students.  One of my students completed his project at home, but it was in one location instead of several locations as in the example above.  His expressions perfectly matched the action in his story.  If I he gives me his approval to post it, I'll add it later.

Lil' Red, An Interactive Story App

Lil' Red - An Interactive Story App

Free Today!!! (2/21/14, reg. price $.99) at the app store for the iPhone or iPad.  Click HERE to get the app. 

This interactive story app has no narration or words which allows you to create your own narration, adjusting the vocabulary and grammar to any level. 

If you need additional repetitions of words, i.e. "it fell", keep tapping on the apples in the tree and each one will fall.  Plus check out the other interactive opportunities.

I hope there are more stories to follow because this type of story will be a nice addition to my MFL class.

Jigsaw Activity in Reading combined with Quick Key app

Chapter 12 of the Spanish reader Robo en la noche is a long chapter compared to the others. I searched the Teacher's CD guide for ideas and it suggested a jigsaw activity to divide the chapter among the students.

I decided to assign the students the jigsaw activity with a bonus incentive to understand and fully share their section of the text to their group members. How? With an informal quiz, that combines all the scores for one group, worth a bonus point for the group with the highest score.  See the explanation below.

1. I wrote the list (on the right) on the board. I told students there needed to sign up for 1 of the 6 groups but also cautioned them that the groups are not what they may think they are.  

2. Before class, I wrote the following information to show each group what section of the chapter they had to read.

 

The students sat with their group and read their section of the chapter. When they were finished I collected the books.

3. Students moved to their letter group, so in the A group there was a student that read section 1 (1A), another student that read section 2 (2B), etc.

    Starting with 1A (or 2A, 3A, & 4A in the other groups), the student explained to their group what happened in their section of the text. Then 2A explained the next section, and so forth.

4. Students returned to their assigned seats. They (individually - not a group quiz) took a 13 point multiple-choice quiz on information from chapter 12, recording their answer on a Quick Key scantron sheet. (This can be done without the Quick Key app, but if you want to grade their answers quickly to find a group total, Quick Key is definitely the way to go!) 

5. I called Group A and they brought their Quick Key scantron sheets to my desk. I scanned them using my iPhone and the Quick Key app, tallied the total of the 6 scores, and wrote their total on the board. I tallied the other 3 group scores in the same manner.

6.  The group with the highest total received credit for 1 bonus point on their next quiz.

Two additional comments: 

- Before they got into their number group (their first group), I stressed that it was VERY IMPORTANT for them to fully understand what they read because they were going to be quizzed on it for extra credit.  Only after they moved into their letter groups, did I tell them they their letter group was the group that was going to work together for points. (My tricky way of mixing up the groups.  As I had predicted would happen, when the students signed up for the number groups, they signed up to work with their friends.  When they moved the 2nd time to their letter groups, it was a different mix of students, allowing them to work with others they may not have chosen on their own - a nudge to help them with their social skills.) 

- After I had tallied the scores and found the winning group in one class, a student raised her hand and said she was confused about what happened in the second half. (Several people in her group had spent more time talking in their # groups instead of fully understanding the text.) I chose the winning group to explain each section to the class to clear up any misunderstandings.  They didn't mind being called out on that because, after all, they were the winning group.