Reading Spanish Novels Inspires Students to Help Others

HALF of the cookies

Students in my Spanish 4 class read the novels Esperanza by Carol Gaab and Vida y muerte another novel by TPRS Publishing, Inc.  The novels led us into discussions about the living conditions, the unrest and history of civil wars in the countries, immigration, and the challenges that many people in Guatemala and El Salvador face.  (The Teacher's Guides for the books provide a lot of resources for students to investigate. We used Martina Bex's materials  and information about Guatemala from the Aprendemos Juntos website. Side note: The next time I read this novel with students I'm also going to use some of Sharon Birch's amazing ideas - more from her blog HERE.) 

After reading the books, the class decided they wanted to help others in those countries.  Since it was close to Christmas, and since I love to bake, the option of selling cookies to raise funds was an easy decision.

Adding icing to the oatmeal cookies

I distributed cookie order sheets and the students had less than a week to sell the cookies.  I was actually glad that they didn't have much time to take orders because I was afraid that we would be swamped with orders.

Because there was only one remaining weekend before Christmas and we wanted to distribute the cookies in time for Christmas, only four students were available on Sunday, December 21, to help bake the cookies. But those four students were workers! As soon as they finished one job they asked what else needed to be done. Together we baked oatmeal cookies with cream, raisin-filled cookies, and sugar cookies with icing to add to the chocolate chip cookies I had baked the previous day.  The photo at the beginning of the post shows half of the cookies; the chocolate chip cookies are not on the table.

The 100 step Raisin Filled Cookies (well, not quite)

I transported two large boxes of cookies to school on Monday and the students delivered the cookies, the majority of which went to other staff members in school. The students raised $300!  That was a nice amount considering how low-key and last minute idea it was. 

Before Christmas break, the students had searched the KIVA website, an international micro-lending organization, and selected loan proposals from people in Guatemala and El Salvador.  This week I looked at the loan proposals they had suggested and printed out a list of those that were not fully funded yet.  There were 7 options so I gave each student 3 post-it notes.  They used the post-it notes to vote for the loan they wanted.  

We decided to give $100 to 3 different groups.
A. Tejadoras - Guatemala
B. José - El Salvador 
C. Saul - El Salvador 

This was a fun, educational experience for the students and for me that reached far beyond the classroom walls! Because of the educational value of this project, it is something I want to continue this with my Spanish 4 classes in the next semester and in years to come!  

Many THANKS to Kristy Placido and Carrie Toth who have involved their students in several international projects that offer assistance to those in need and who unknowingly inspired me to do the same!  (read about Kristy's KIVA post HERE and 1 of Carrie's projects HERE) 

A Super Fun Christmas Game

My daughter was looking for ideas for our extended family Christmas get-together and she found THIS GAME.  After reading it, I thought, "I can translate the directions to Spanish and use it with my Spanish classes."

Then I thought, "wouldn't it be fun to ask other MFL teachers if they wanted to complete the activity with 1 (or more) of their classes.  If they tweet or email their best sketch to me, I can create a photo collage of the sketches or post photos of their sketches."

I am going to do this activity with all of my Spanish classes this week.  I'll probably buy a small prize for the sketch with the most points and/or the best sketch for each class to provide extra motivation for them to concentrate while drawing.

Update: Below are links to two google slides presentations to use with your class:
  1. Presentation from 2014 made by Elena Lopez
   2. Presentation from 2015 made by Ashley Soriano


Are you interested in joining in?
If so...
1. Complete this activity this week with 1 (or more) of your language classes in your Target Language. Update: @lopezelena saw the tweets about the activity and then created and shared this Google Presentation of the activity - ready to go for Spanish teachers. Thanks Elena.
2.  TWEET the best sketch(es) with the hashtag #platesketch or email the sketch(es) to me by Friday afternoon, December 19.

I'll make a collage or use another way to share the sketches on my blog and Twitter.

HERE is the link to the document I shared on Twitter. Let the fun begin!
UPDATED version (as seen below) click HERE

After Christmas I discovered that there were many other #platesketch tweets that I had missed, so I uploaded a second book.  Click HERE to view the second book.

Photo Collage from Palmyra High School - Dec. 15, 2014

In Search of Global Collaborators for the new School Year

If you are a teacher of students that fit category #1 or #3 below and are interested in a global project with my Spanish students, please read this post and follow the instructions at the end to contact me.  (I plan to do other collaboration projects within the United States also, but I first would like to get the new project started.) 


Before school started last August, I had written a list of personal goals that I wanted to accomplish during the 2011-12 school year.  One of them was to collaborate with other classes in the world.  I was looking for three specific categories:
1 - Students in English-speaking countries learning Spanish (like my students).
2 - Students in non-English speaking countries learning Spanish.
3 - Native Spanish-speaking students in Spanish countries learning English.


A student in my class made the bulletin board (see photo) of a map of the world and yarn stretching to the countries that our class connected with. We were able to find students from each category above for 4 different projects.  In addition, if I had a culture-related question, I was fortunate enough to receive responses to those questions from teachers in Uruguay (the yarn fell off that country in the photo above), Mexico, Guatemala, Spain, and several other countries.


For the first three projects, we used VoiceThread.  In project #1, students from Seoul, Korea and Taiwan left responses.  In project #2, students from Mexico and Spain left answers. For project #3, the teacher from Taiwan started his own VoiceThread and several of my students added comments to his VoiceThread.
first project 
second project 
third project 
The 4th project was more interactive and personal because my students used Skype, FaceTime, Edmodo, and Mindomo to communicate and work with students from Argentina.  My students enjoyed learning more about Argentina and spending time talking to them.  Some of them changed usernames to play videogames against each other.


These collaborations were so successful that months before school ended, I began working on a new idea for global collaboration next year.  Once again I am looking for students in categories #1 and #3 above.  My idea is to do some type of Quad-Blogging with a mix of students from different English-speaking countries (New Zealand, England, Australia, Canada, etc.) and students from Spanish-speaking countries that are studying English.  I have contacted several teachers and plan to make more firm plans on this project during July and early August.  If you are a teacher of students from categories #1 or #3 above and are interested in hearing more about the Quad-Blogging, please leave a message in the comments below with your e-mail, or contact me at: cynthia_hitz@yahoo.com.


I'm looking forward to meeting new teachers and working on a Global Project with my new students this fall!

GLOBAL PROJECT - Collaborators Wanted - Spanish or Language Learners

My Spanish classes are looking for other classes to collaborate on a VoiceThread project with them. Since our 2nd school semester doesn't start until Tuesday, January 24, I do not have the VoiceThread complete yet since the students need to give me their photos to add to the VoiceThread. Below is a sample VoiceThread of what ours will look like after it is completed - hopefully within a week of January 24.

Below are recordings in English and Spanish that explains the project. If you need additional information, please e-mail me at:

cynthia_hitz@yahoo.com
or connect with me on twitter: #sonrisadelcampo





Here is the SAMPLE VoiceThread:

I'm looking forward to hearing from other teachers and adding your class to our project. 

Bulletin Board of my students' collaboration with students in other parts of the world.