Leer es Poder

The World Language department at my school is making reading in the target language a priority this year. Below is the bulletin board outside of my Spanish classroom and Krista Kovalchick's French/Latin classroom. There are four 5x7 photos of the 4 WL teachers and the other photos are some of the students in Krista's and my classes. There are a few photos that we will add in the next few days to complete the bulletin board.

I have a rather extensive classroom library partially from buying books with our school budget, but the majority of the books I buy from amazon or the publishers with my personal money.  Krista does the same with buying books for her classroom, but it is a bit more difficult for her because there are not as many French and Latin books written specifically for second language learners are there are for Spanish language learners.

My plans are to write a grant and buy additional books to build up the classroom libraries so all the WL teachers have a nice selection in their classrooms from which the students can choose during SSR. 

I'm waiting for 4 new books from Fluency Matters as well as other books that I have heard about that will soon be published. You can never have too many books for your students, right?  :-)

We continue to read class novels together; 1 in level 1; 2 in levels 2 and 3; 3 (or more) in levels 4 and 5. Below are photos of my classroom library. One of the racks has children's books that I rotate after two or three weeks. I have a huge collection of children's books from an earlier grant and from a teacher that moved to the middle school and gave the books to me. I don't make those as accessible because the language and grammar is usually more difficult than the novels. 

En 2016 espero que... A Bulletin Board for the New Year

Hall bulletin board display

If there is one thing I've learned when adding a display on a bulletin board, especially when it is original and requires creativity and making sketches, die-cut letters, etc, (more work than simply buying pre-made bulletin board sets from a catalog), it's to make sure what I put on the board is something that I can leave there for at least two months.

My plans were to make a bulletin board for the coming Christmas holidays, but with only 17 school days between Thanksgiving and Christmas, I ruled out a Christmas bulletin board for this year (at least for the large bulletin board in the hall). 

I had been waiting to be inspired and f-i-n-a-l-l-y it happened. (Which is a good thing because the bulletin board in the hall had only red fabric on it for several weeks!) I decided to have the students write what they wish for in the new year. 

Students' wishes/hopes for the new year.  (names of students covered)

Students started their sentences with: Espero que..; Deseo que..; or Quiero que...
 I shared my photos with Nelly Hughes (@nellyanhug), and she immediately replied that the sentences they wrote for the bulletin board provides me with even more information for PQA.  Killing two birds with one stone is always a good thing!
To the left is a collage of a few examples from the board.

 If you are interested in the pdf files of the people, please send me an email, leave a comment below, or contact me on Twitter (@sonrisadelcampo).       

Update:  Emily Long sent me a photo of the bulletin board that she made with her students (below).  Thanks for sharing the photo, Emily!

 

Bulletin Board Celebrating Seniors

In May, for my last bulletin board display of the school year, I created a bulleting board that would celebrate the seniors in my Spanish 4 and 5 classes.   The seniors provided me with a photo of themselves and then they completed the information on the kite of their names, their highest level of Spanish at PHS, the college to which they are going, and their intended field of study at college. 

It was a way to honor the seniors before they graduated and to showcase to other students in the school the amount of semesters each the seniors were enrolled in Spanish classes. 

It may be hard to see in the photo, but the two figures at the bottom of the bulletin board have just released the strings of the kites, symbolizing that they are moving on from high school to the next adventure in life.  The two figures represent the Spanish 3 teacher and myself because all the seniors had both her and I as their Spanish teacher this year or in the previous year.

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".

Bulletin Board - Why Learn a Second Language

As World Language teachers, part of our responsibility is to educate others about the benefits of learning a second language.  I have a Pinterest board on which I store articles about language learning and developing proficiency.  I imagine that the majority of language teachers have read similar articles.  But, what have we done to share that information with the population outside of the World Language teaching profession?

This week we had our second Back-To-School Night because students started a new semester and new classes in January.  This is also the time of year when students, and their parents, are scheduling their courses for the next school year.  

To promote our program and educate others about the benefits of learning a second language, I decided to create a display on the bulletin board in our hallway. First I contacted students that have graduated from our school and asked them to send me a statement in what ways they have already benefited from being able to communicate in Spanish, whether it is in college, a job they have while going through college, travel experiences, or how they are using Spanish in their career since graduating from college.  My Spanish 5 students also wanted to contribute, so on a small white marker board, they explained why they have continued through level 5.  Then I took photos of them holding their whiteboards and added those photos to the bulletin board.

I could have added more information and statistics, but this time I focused on individuals and the benefits each of them has experienced.  Do you have any ideas for something I could add to the present board? 

Subjunctive Hearts - in time for Valentine's Day

Valentine's Day will be here in a little over a month. Even though the following activity would be a great one to complete in February, I did the activity with one of my classes on January 9, because the last day of the semester is this Friday, and the following week I'll get new rosters of students.

First, my students listened to Victor Muñoz's song, "Mi Princesa". They were familiar with it because I had played it during class changes earlier in the week. After listening to the song one time, I distributed Zachary Jones's cloze activity (found in his Cancionero 2012 book) for them to complete when we listened to the song again. We discussed the lyrics and the multiple examples of the singer wanting someone else to do something - Quiero que tú... (subjunctive indicator) . 

Then the students cut pink and red paper in the shape of hearts, wrote lyrics following the pattern of the song on their hearts, and embellished their hearts with Valentine's shapes.

As a last minute idea, I decided to post the hearts on the bulletin board outside my room. The students helped me to arrange their lyrics hearts in the shape of one big heart.  (My high school doesn't have an Ellison die-cut machine so when I have time to stop at the elementary school, I want to replace the temporary letters with some more polished looking ones.)

Spanish 4 students with their (Subjunctive) Hearts