La Silla Especial - Interviewing Students

There is an activity I've done in the past with my students called  "La Silla Especial" in which I've "interviewed" them in front of the class in Spanish in an effort for the students to learn more about their classmates and to provide comprehensible input.  This idea comes from Bryce Hedstrom's  "La Persona Especial".  You can find an explanation and information on the activity HERE and a poster of the questions and additional information HERE. If you need the questions in French or Japanese, check Bryce's website for these resources.

This year, after the interview, the students wrote information about the interviewee on the board and I took a photo of the person surrounded by the information.   Then I printed the photo, glued it to orange or yellow paper, and displayed it on the side whiteboard. We started "La Silla Especial" early in the semester, and continued it either as part of the planned lesson or when there was extra time at the end of the lesson.  Hands down, it was one of the students' favorite activities.

We call it "La Silla Especial" because the students sat on a swivel chair, but I may change it to "La Persona Especial" as Bryce calls it because the focus is on the student and not the "silla".

The Telephone Game

When I was little, I used to play a game called "Whisper down the lane".  Everyone sat in a line. One person whispered a sentence into the ear of the person next to him.  The next person listened to what was said and then repeated it to the next person in line. When the last person has heard the sentence, he shares it with the group to see how much it has changed.

For several years, I've been doing an activity similar to this with my Spanish 4 classes.  My students always call it the Telephone Game. This year I tweaked the activity and made it suitable for level 2 also.  The two versions are listed below.

It's best to do this activity where you have a lot of space because you don't want students to hear others not on their team. That makes it an ideal outdoors activity.  

1. Write a story in your TL that has a lot of details.  HERE is the story I wrote in the morning the day of the activity. I used this as an oopportunity to recycle structures and vocabulary that I taught throughout the school term. Write questions about the information in the story.

2.  Divide the class into teams of 3 or 4.  It works best if all teams are equal.  If the numbers aren't equal, you can recruit the extra students to serve as "eavesdroppers" (they listen to the students to make sure they are speaking in the TL).

3.  Everyone will need a writing utensil.  When we go outside, each student takes a clipboard and a pencil with them.   

4.  The teams should each form a line, with a lot of space between the first person in line and the second person, between the second person and the third, etc.

5.  The teacher tells (reads if necessary but be sure to "tell" the story and add emotion) the story to the first member of each team.  They should listen well because they will be in charge of retelling it to the next person in line.

6.   After you, the teacher, have told them the complete story, they walk to the #2 person of their team and the 1st student tells the story to the 2nd student on their team.

7. After the 2nd student has heard the story, student 2 walks to student 3 and tells her the story.  While student 2 is telling the story to student 3, the teacher should hand a paper with questions about the story to student 1. 

8. When student 3 has heard the story, she tells it to student 4.  Student 2 then has time to complete the questions about the story.

9. After student 3 is finished telling the story to student 4, hand each of them a paper with questions for them to answer.  

When all the papers are completed, redistribute them to grade.  The team with the most correct answers is the winner.

2nd version
 This is the version I used with Spanish 2.  

1. Students form groups of 3.  
2. Tell the exact same story that you used for a higher level BUT this time ALL the students listen as you tell the story.  
3. Hand 1 question paper to each team to complete after you tell the story.
4. The team with the most points wins.

Another variation is to have the students work in groups of 3 but only 2 students from each team listen to the first version.  Those two students work together to retell the story to the 3rd student on their team that didn't hear the original version.

Two years ago I had 3 stories that weren't quite as long as the one linked above, but, of course, they are temporarily missing.  

Suggestion: If you are doing the activity in the first version, tell the students that the person that feels most comfortable with listening activities and retelling should be the first or second student.  If the first few students miss information, the rest of their team will miss out on more points.

I demonstrated this to my Spanish 4 class by having 6 students go out to the hall while I told the story.  Two students in the class then had to tell the story to 2 students that were in the hall.  Then 2 more students came into the class that were in the hall and listened to the story from the students that listened to my version, etc.  The students enjoyed listening to how the information was not communicated correctly, or not communicated at all!

The students enjoyed this again this year. They enjoyed it so much that I'll be writing new stories to use for another time before school ends.

VERBA + more!

VERBA!
Have you heard of VERBA?  It is a fun card game created by Kevin Ballestrini, (@kballestrini on Twitter) originally in Latin, but now he is branching out to other languages. By some stroke of luck, Katherine Matheson, (@Katchiringa on Twitter), a Spanish teacher that worked with Kevin to create a Spanish set of VERBA cards, asked if I would be interested in Beta testing the cards with my Spanish classes. Of course I said YES! (Click HERE to read Katherine's blog post on using VERBA in her Spanish class.

In a few days the VERBA cards arrived and I adjusted my lesson plans for the next day.  For the first trial, I used the cards with my smallest class of 10 students.  After I explained the game, the students took over and there was very little for me to do other than enjoy watching the students play the game.  

The rules suggest that when the deck of cards is gone, the game is over and the person with the most cards is the winner.  Not in my class! The students took it upon themselves to shuffle the deck and turn it over so they could continue playing.  The odd sentence combinations that they made at times kept their attention and purposefully engaged in the game.  

If I understand Kevin correctly, he is planning on putting the cards on the market very soon (or maybe they are already available to order).  If you want a deck, connect with him on Twitter or go to the VERBA website for additional information.

In addition to playing VERBA, the colorful cards have a lot of potential for the second language classroom, such as "3 Rounds" described below.

3 Rounds game (Update: I later discovered that this game is known as Salad Bowl.)
The cards make the 3 Rounds game a no prep, fun activity.  3 Rounds is a game my family plays at holiday get-togethers in English, but I modified it for use in the MFL classroom as described below.

1. Players sit in a circle. Teams members are every other person in the circle.
2. Give each player 2 cards (if it is a large group of 15 or more, I suggest giving each player only one card)
I told players to look at their card. If they didn't recognize the Spanish word listed on the card, I allowed them to trade it in for another card.
3. Collect the cards and put them in a basket.

ROUND 1
4. The first player (team A) pulls a card from the basket (and only that person should be able to see the card). The first player describes the word in Spanish.  His team members guess the word. As soon as they guess the word, he pulls another card and proceeds to describe that word. The player has 20 seconds to continue describing words.  
5.  When the 20 seconds are over, the 1st player passes the basket and the card in his hand if his team members did not guess it in time, to the person to his left.  The 2nd person then describes the words for 20 seconds and team B guess the answers.
6. This continues until all cards have been guessed.  Each card guessed is a point. Keep the score on the board.

ROUND 2
7. Put all the guessed cards into the basket again.  Players have now heard all the words mentioned in the previous round so in this round, the person describing the words in the basket can only say 1 word to describe the word. 
8. Play continues as in Round 1 with teams taking turns describing. At the end of the round, tally the points for each team and add them to Round 1 points. 

ROUND 3

Round 3 - Acting, no sound effects and no pointing allowed.

9. Put all the guessed cards into the basket again. Players have now heard all the words mentioned two times from Round 1 and Round 2.  For Round 3, players have to ACT out the word. I included the rule in ALL the rounds that players could not point to the object if it was in the room. If they did, the card turned into MY point.  :-)

This game was also a BIG hit! 
I played it with a level 4 class and they had no problem describing the words. Several days later I played it with a level 2 class and it worked well with this group too.

3 Rounds could easily be played based on vocabulary from a novel or a cultural unit.  

The VERBA cards could also be used to play Bolsa FEA.

I want to ask my students to do some brainstorming to find additional uses for the VERBA cards.  If you have any ideas. please list them below or Tweet them to me @sonrisadelcampo.  

Lesson Plans for when you lose your voice

I almost made it through the 2014-15 school year without losing my voice...but when I awoke this morning and started to talk, I knew my luck had run out.  

I, like many of my colleagues, think it's easier to go to school when I'm a little under the weather than to write lesson plans for a substitute.  Instead of calling in sick, I altered my plans in an effort to preserve what little voice I had left through my four classes.  

In Spanish 2, my original plans included reviewing the class story from yesterday using the structures, oyeron un ruido, se durmieron, & se despertaron.  I wasn't satisfied with the number of repetitions of the focus words from yesterday and I wanted to add some additional circling of the structures.

So...if I couldn't circle the different parts of the sentences, why not give that job to the kids? 

The first thing I told my Sp2 students was their instructions if I held up a large index card that had a frownie face on it.  If I held it up and then looked directly at a student, that meant the student was too chatty and the class' job was to say "shhhh" to the student.  I demonstrated the card and was sure I would be using it several times for each class, but I didn't need to use it once!

Then I made 9 additional index cards to represent 3 different types of questions:
3 cards w/ questions that circle the subject (yes/no, either/or, short answer)
3 cards for questions that circle the action (yes/no, either/or, short answer)
3 cards for questions that circle the rest of the sentence
                                                             (yes/no, either/or, short answer)

I wrote a sentence on the board and modeled how to ask questions (circle) for each part of the sentence. Of course I did the following in Spanish, but I'm writing it in English for those that don't teach Spanish:

EX:   Sally ate the hamburger.
(subject) Did Sally eat the hamburger? 
              Did Becky eat the hamburger or did Alice eat the hamburger?
              Who ate the hamburger?
(action/verb) Did Sally buy the hamburger?
                    Did Sally buy the hamburger or eat the hamburger?
                    What did Sally do with the hamburger?
(rest of sentence)  Did Sally eat the apple?
                           Did Sally eat the apple or eat the hamburger?
                           What did Sally eat?
             
Then I handed the cards out to 9 different students and wrote a sentence on the board that paralleled the beginning of our story from yesterday. After I said the sentence on the board, the students with the "Subject" cards asked the class questions, followed by the students with the "action" cards, and ending with questions from the students with the "rest of the sentence" cards. While I wrote the next statement on the board, students had to give their card to another student so others had to ask the questions for the next statement.

This isn't an activity for a long time because you will lose the interest of the students.  What I noticed helped to keep their interest was the storyline and creating l-o-n-g sentences.  These are the sentences that students asked questions about from one of my classes:

Dan y Omar fueron a la playa en Costa Rica.
Los chicos se durmieron en la playa a las once y veinte de la noche.
Dan y Omar se despartaron rápidamente porque oyeron un ruido.
Vieron un oso grande en el agua que tenía un sándwich en una mano y un
     bikini en la otra.  

Needless to say, this isn't the most compelling input w/ target structures, but it:1 - keep their attention (especially since there were 9 cards for each statement)
2 - gave them multiple repetitions of each structure
3 - gave them practice on forming questions
4 - gave my voice a break

Hopefully, by Monday, I will have my voice back and be ready to resume teaching again.

Reading La Guerra Sucia in Spanish Class

I have read La Guerra Sucia, a novel written by Nathaniel Kirby, several times with my students.  Thanks to several teachers blogging about their lessons with this book (see Kristy Placido's lessons HERE and Carrie Toth's lessons HERE), I am quickly increasing the culture and connections when reading the book.    
Last year, Kristy posted a photo of herself with a gray wig and a white bandana which were the props she used when teaching her students about Las Abuelas de la Plaza de Mayo in Argentina.  When I realized that chapter 7 of the novel La Guerra Sucia was titled, "Las Abuelas de la Plaza de Mayo", that photo came to mind and I was inspired. With my $5 off coupon in hand, I headed to the local fabric store in search of some white fabric. The only thing I needed was some basic sewing skills and, within an hour later, I had successfully cut and sewn 11 white bandanas for the total price of $1.04. 

The following day when students entered the classroom, I had this photo projected on my white board.  The previous day the students had researched information about Argentina's history, and one of the topics was Las Abuelas de la Plaza de Mayo. We discussed what they had learned from their research and then I had them open their novels to chapter 7.  Then I pulled out the white bandanas and told them I created enough white bandanas for ALL the students to be able to wear one for the class - even the guys were included. 

I have great students, and even though there was a hint of hesitation at first, everyone took a white bandana and promptly tied it on.  I will share with you that after I finished tying on my white bandana, I looked up only to see the guys had tied their bandanas on "do-rag" style, but they obliged me and re-tied them the proper way.

They were so pleased with their white bandanas that immediately the cell phones came out and they were taking photos.  Before we could read they begged go down the hall to visit the Spanish 1 teacher and show off their new accessory.  I consented with the stipulation that they had to explain the significance of the white bandanas to her in Spanish and she then translated it to her Spanish 1 students. (A little promotion of upper level Spanish classes is always a good thing.) Then we returned to class and read the chapter.

Additional activities on this subject that we did or will very soon complete:
- Listen to a podcast - Notes In Spanish Advanced - Adopciones - start the Podcast at 5:00 for the discussion about Argentina 
- A Spanish article with questions that I had found last year
- Martina Bex's cultural activity 

Making the bandanas and wearing them for the reading was a minor change from previous years, but you can bet they are going to remember that part of Argentina's history better than they have in the past.  

Picto-Frases - An Activity to use with Fiesta Fatal

I recently stumbled across a website named Pictotraductor. On the Pictotraductor website, you can type in a sentence in Spanish and it will generate the sentence using a mix of sketches and words for things that cannot easily be illustrated. (See below for link of paper shown on the left.) I can think of several uses for this, but since my students are currently reading Fiesta Fatal, a novel by Mira Canion, I created an activity to use after reading chapter 6 of Fiesta Fatal.  

I read Fiesta Fatal with my Spanish 2 students.  I am doing increasingly more grammar pop-ups on the ellos form of verbs, which means I point out the verbs that show the action of Vanesa and Julieta, and the two men that pursue them.  All of the sentences on the Picto-Frase activity include the ellos form of verbs.

I have two classes of Spanish 2, so after the first class, I changed a few things, and after the second class I changed a few more things to improve it. Below are the instructions on how I used it:

1. Read chapter 6 of Fiesta Fatal.
2. Showed examples Picto-Frases of other sentences from chapter 6 of Fiesta Fatal on a power point. Students said the sentences in Spanish.
3. Distributed the above Picto-Frases paper (find it HERE). Students looked for the sentences in chapter 6 and wrote the Spanish sentence below the pictures.
- Next time, I will ask the students to highlight or circle the word that shows the action that two or more people did.

After we read chapter 6 I realized I forgot to do the sentence Bingo game that reviews Chapters 1-5 of Fiesta Fatal.  Mira Canion talked about this idea at CSCTFL this spring and then Martina Bex created the game which you can find HERE and download for free.  I love this version of the game because it uses sentences rather than single words.

Response to: What do You Really Write About?

This morning I was reading tweets from #langchat and clicked on a link that took me to Señor Fernie's blog.  He is a kindergarten through 8th grade Spanish in Florida. His most recent post was titled, "What do you really write about?" In the post he explained how he copied the text of his blog and put it into Wordle to see what words were most common in his writings.  In the ending paragraph of the post, he encouraged other teachers to do likewise.

I followed the same method as Señor Fernie, but I only copied my blog posts from October 2014 through present, instead of the entire blog. There was a total of 10,360 words. (If I want to do that I should set up my blog with a RSS feed to make it easier.)  My resulting Wordle is shown above. 

The Wordle is similar to Señor Fernie's - the two biggest words:  Students & Story.  And for those that know me well, you won't be surprised to see "cookies" made it into the Wordle. :-)

An interesting experience. I, like, Señor Fernie, encourage others to do the same. 
 

Retention Rates

Springtime is the time of the year when we receive the list of students' course selections. After receiving them I reach into my files and pull out the previous year's list and numbers and compare them to the new information.

Retention rates is a topic that is often discussed on language forums.  As World Language (WL) teachers, we want to see students that begin in level 1, continue through level 4 and higher.  But, at times, I wonder about the amount of pressure we put on ourselves and our departments when it isn't realistic to expect 100% retention rates.  A few things to consider:

1. Let's be honest: What percentage of students are mainly in the WL classes because (a) their high school requires a minimum of X years of language study, or (b) they want to meet college requirements of X years of language study.  
Question: Why do we automatically assume that students take a language class with an initial goal of becoming fluent or proficient in the language?

2. Of the students in WL classes that sincerely want to become fluent/proficient, do they realize the time commitment and the number of hours needed to reach that goal? (They learned their first language from infancy, but most likely have not considered the amount of input they received in their first five years of life. As a child they had to learn the language in order to communicate their needs and desires. They didn't have another language to use as a back-up if they weren't understood.) If they do realize that, how many are willing to make that commitment and work towards fluency? 
Question: As WL teachers, we were not deterred by the amount of time and commitment needed to become fluent in the language, but then we wanted to teach others the language so we had some mighty strong incentive to want to master the language. Will students not planning to teach the language in the future have the same dedication or time to continue their language study, especially when their major will demand a great deal of their time. 

3. In the junior and senior year of high school, many students take AP classes to give them a head start at college.  The schedule for those classes are often at the same time slots as the higher levels of Spanish. 
Question: If you were planning to go to college for a science degree, and the AP class was offered at the same time as the level 4 or higher Spanish class, wouldn't you also choose the class which parallels your planned future studies at the university level?

4. Knowing a second language, especially Spanish because the Latino population is increasing at a rapid rate, will certainly be beneficial to students in the future.  
Question: That's a long-term benefit and we live in a world of short-term goals and rewards.  Are students prepared to invest time in something that is not in the near future?
   
5. When a freshman enrolls in an art class, do the art teachers expect that student to continue to take art classes throughout his high school years?   
Questions: Do art teachers, or business teachers, or even core subject teachers, track retention rates like WL teachers do? What percentage of students that take the first level of high school math are sitting in Calculus classes as a junior or senior? If the percentage is less than 30%, or 20%, or 10%, is that viewed as a failure of the program or the teachers?
Likewise, if a high school requires 4 classes/credits of English in order to graduate, does the English department have expectations that the students will continue to select additional English classes after the requirement is met?

This year when I received the course selection information for next year, I was pleasantly surprised to see that our Spanish numbers were up by more than 100 requests, an overall 22% increase from the present year to next year.  Every single level, from Spanish 1 to Spanish 5, saw an increase from the previous year. The requests for Spanish 1 was up by

1 student, which means the other levels accounted for the 100+ increase. The biggest increase was incoming freshman that chose to double up on Spanish 1 and Spanish 2 in their freshman year, causing the Spanish 2 numbers to skyrocket. Rough numbers show that 31% of the students that started Spanish 1 had signed up for Spanish 4, and 18% of the students that started Spanish 1 had signed up for Spanish 5. (I'll update this with actual percents soon, which I believe will be 2-4% higher than the rough numbers.)

Those percentages have steadily increased over the last ten years.  I believe the increase is due, in part, to the method we use to teach language. (Other factors include a change in our Spanish program for 8th grade students and a 5x5 schedule at the high school.) But even with the steady increase, the percentages are not near 50% retention through level 4.
 
In addition, when August rolls around and I receive my class rosters, those percentages in the upper levels will decrease due to scheduling conflicts.
  
More than ever, instead of focusing on retention rates and percentages, my goal is to focus on the students in my current classes and set my sights on helping each one to have a successful experience in the language classroom.  Some will return to the next level of Spanish the following year and some will not, for various reasons as listed above, but ALL will be equipped with improved language skills and proficiency because of the time I, and others in my department, have shared with them.   
  

La Casa Tomada resources and other short story resources

My all-time favorite Spanish author is hands down, without a doubt, Julio Cortázar. Thanks to Carrie Toth for creating 3 embedded readings for Cortázar's story, La Casa Tomada.  First, she took a section from the middle of the story for the first reading, making it comprehensible by limiting the vocabulary and adding clip art for words that may be unfamiliar.  In versions 2 and 3, she added more information and vocabulary from the original.  The embedded readings change what could be a frustrating experience for students approaching the intermediate proficiency level, to an enjoyable reading experience.

You can find Carrie's three versions of the story HERE.

There is a short YouTube clip of Cortázar explaining how he was inspired to write the story and his reaction that many people have different interpretations than what he was thinking when he wrote it.  The Spanish subtitles helped with my students' understanding of the interview.  Find the interview HERE. 

After reading and discussing the story, and comparing it to previous stories we read such as El almohadón de plumas, (HERE is Kristy Placido's embedded readings of the story;   HERE is Mike Peto's blog post on the story; and a stop-motion video as an alternative to the video suggested on Mike's post.), we will watch a short film of the video, pausing throughout to discuss and retell.  

Next up, Chac Mool! -  another embedded reading gift to all from generous Kristy Placido (found here).

"Survivor Cubes" in the MFL classroom

If you are a fan of the TV show "Survivor", then you are familiar with the memory type game that the contestants play with cubes.  The host of the show, has a set of cards with pictures on them.  He shows the cards in a sequence to the contestants.  Each contestant has a cube with the same pictures and, one by one, they must turn the cube with the picture facing toward Jeff in the correct order.  Contestants that answer correctly move to the next round.  Those that answer incorrectly are disqualified from the competition.

I modified the activity to suit my focus words for the day, oyó=s/he heard and oyeron=they heard. It was a fun, fresh way to give the students a large amount of repetitions of the focus words without them realizing how many times they heard the words.

1. First, I made 5 cubes, each with the same 6 clip art images. I made origami cubes after I watched this video. (To get even more mileage out of the activity, I used an image for "footsteps" because I knew we would be using it later in class for a MovieTalk.  This activity introduced the word and when I asked how to say it later in the class period, I got a resounding answer from the majority of the students! I should have been more selective with the other 5 images.)

2. In class, I asked for 5 volunteers, and then I chose another student to help them.  The helpers' job was to hold up a clipboard to block the other students from seeing which image the student selected for each round until it was time to reveal their answer.

3. On my computer, I had 6 tabs open from the website FreeSound, that matched the clip art images.

4. Before handing out the cubes to the 5 students and their helpers, we listened to the 6 sound bytes from the FreeSound website.  They were super easy to identify.  I also wrote the vocabulary on the board because the students were going to write the words during the activity:  un tren, un perro, una persona que se ríe, los pasos, una guitarra, una vaca.

5. Then I played a sequence of 9 sounds with the open tabs.  (I had made a recording using QuickTime, but I had problems with the sound, so I kept the tabs opened and selected each one as the students listened.)

6. The 5 students with the cubes selected their answer, facing the clip art image toward me.  I called the name of a student, who then revealed their answer, as I said, "Elisa oyó un perro. Dennis oyó un perro. Anna oyó un perro. Carlos oyó un tren. Hannah oyó un perro.  Cuatro personas oyeron un perro y una persona oyó un tren." 

7. Students that were observing (not those with the cubes nor the helpers) had to choose one person and write a sentence about the person using "oyó".  Ex:  Hannah oyó un tren.  Every multiple of 3, the students had to write two students' names that heard the same sound to get practice in writing "oyeron".

8.  If a student revealed the incorrect answer, he handed the cube to me and both he and his helper joined the others in writing a sentence for each round.

9. The winner received +1 bonus point in the first "game" when they listened to 9 sounds.  In the second round, students listened to 11 sounds, and the winner of that group earned +2 bonus points.

The first few sounds are very easy for the students.  They start getting confused with sounds 5 and higher.  

Update: Vicki Antequera emailed me with the document on the right that she will use for her students to do the Survivor Cubes activity.  She was kind enough to permit me to share this document with my readers.  You can access it HERE.


After this activity we watched Vampire's Crown. (See the blog post with additional information and resources about it HERE.) I used the MovieTalk method to narrate the action using vocabulary that the students knew.  The focus word "oyó" was recycled in the video because the vampire HEARD the boy drinking, HEARD the noise of the sign, HEARD the footsteps, of the dentist, and the dentist didn't hear the footsteps of the vampire.

If the idea of making several origami cubes sounds like too much work, you can simplify the preparation by using cards with the images instead of cubes. I liked the cubes to make it more like Survivor.  (Because this was one of those ideas that came to me before I arrived at school, I very quickly made the cubes, as you may have noticed if you looked closely at them.)

Esperanza - A Verbal Book Report

Student sketches for Esperanza novel

My Spanish 4 students recently completed reading Esperanza by Carol Gaab, TPRS Publishing, Inc. I use this book in my Immigration/Guatemala unit of the curriculum.  The story opens up many opportunities to talk about immigration and why people are so desperate to enter the U.S.  I also like the book because the students learn about Guatemala.  There are so many interesting mini-lessons on the culture of Guatemala, the geography, the currency, the civil war, that can be explored while reading the novel. My recommendation, buy the Teacher's CD and a lot of that work is already completed for you.

For the final assessment on the book, I wanted a project that gave them the opportunity to explain what they thought were the key events in the story.  

For the final assessment on the book, I decided on a verbal book report in which students choose events key events of the story, sketch them, and then record their verbal book report.  Students chose to work alone or with a partner to sketch 10 events in the story on a long strip of white butcher paper. Then they   videotaped their verbal book report using a flip camera.  

The day the students recorded the videos, the class went to the atrium in order to have room so they could record without being really close to another group that was recording.  They taped their sketches to the wall and took turns filming each other. 

Below is a screenshot of the rubric.  I designed the rubric so that the sketches and events are worth 10 points, providing base points that all students should earn if they followed the requirements on the rubric.  The remaining 23 points focus on the actual verbal presentation.  With the first 10 points as a base points, I could more fairly assess the verbal presentation. (Find the pdf of the rubric HERE.)

I strongly dislike the traditional 100 point grading scale with A-90-100, B=80-89, C=70-79, D=60-69, and F=0-59. The rubric is my attempt to offset more points dedicated to a failing grade than a passing grade (59% failing and 41% passing).   

10 Ideas for using Monoface in the WL classroom

Have you seen the website named MonoFace? It's a website that has photos of different people with different expressions.  By clicking on the right eye, left eye, nose, mouth, and head and shoulders, you can create 759,375 characters and expressions (according to the website).  

I saw the link for MonoFace either on Twitter or on Facebook.  Since we didn't have school today, because of the lovely snow, (yes, I still think it is beautiful), I had time to explore the site.

How can this be used in the World Language classroom? For one, I'm always looking for images on Google for different stories and activities for class, which makes this a perfect resource for quick creations.  Or for more specific suggestions...

Create the character(s) and then:
1. Describe his/her physical characteristics
2. Describe the character and create a backstory for him/her.
3. Describe the relationship between several of the characters.
4. Make the character the star of your class story - co-create a story with your students about the person.
5. StoryASK with your students. AFTER creating the story, have the students create a character on the website that they think best suits the person(s) in the story. This can be done as homework to preserve class time for comprehensible input. Or, use this activity as a brain break.
6. Change the expressions of the character and add screenshots of the person in the typed version of your story to add more interest.
7. Give the students 5-9 shots of the character (same person but only the expressions are changed - mouth, possible nose and eyes).  Let students choose from the pics to match the person's emotions or reactions in a pre-made story.
8. StoryASK information about a set number of people (ex: 5 people). Then project on the screen some people you have made and students choose which person belongs to which description.  Students have to defend their choices, in the TL, of course.
9. (similar to #8) Project a collage of people you created, and read information about a person's life or past. Students listen to the details in the story and then decide which person they think best fits the story.  Once again, they will need to defend their decision.
10.  Ask students to think of x number of occupations and list them on  the board.  (x=the number of characters you have created on a collage)  Project the collage and students work in small groups to assign an occupation to each person. Compare the answers from each group to see how many are similar. 
(variation to #10) Brainstorm fears that someone has, or an embarrassing moments, or (fill in the blank w your idea). Then project the collage and decide which person had that fear, embarrassing moment, etc

Those are a few ideas for using MonoFace in the World Language Classroom that I can think of at the moment, but I'm sure there are MANY more possibilities.

I'm sure there are some other obvious uses that I have overlooked at the present time. If you have some suggestions for how to use this in the WL class, please feel free to share your ideas and activities in the comments below.