Character Thoughts Graphic Organizer

I am excited about the increase in novels now available for students learning a second language.  In my opinion, novels can be a teacher's best friend in providing comprehensible, compelling input (but be sure to choose a book that is at the students' level). 

The novel Bianca Nieves is a great book to study relationships (as well as Spain's culture and bullfighting). My students are keeping notes on evidence of relationships throughout the novel that are strained or that are outright hostile!

I appreciate that Carrie Toth, the author, has not shied away from using the subjunctive throughout the book. At this level, (Spanish 4), I welcome every opportunity to model the use of subjunctive in daily conversations and discussions.  It is important that students understand how commonplace the subjunctive is from children's storybooks to novels.

One way to model the subjunctive in context, is to ask students to provide the thoughts of a character in a book, stating what she liked or didn't like about a situation or about what another character is/was doing. I used the graphic organizer pictured above, after reading chapter 5 of Bianca Nieves, for students to get creative with Bianca's true thoughts on what is happening in her life.  

Exploring a character's thoughts can also be accomplished by asking the students to write journal entries in the character's viewpoint.  However, the advantage to the thought bubbles, as shown in the picture above, over a journal entry is the limited space for each thought on the graphic organizer. (In my experience, students are more willing to write a few sentences in thought bubbles than having to organizer their thoughts in paragraph form.)

I'm also currently reading La Calaca Alegre, also written by Carrie Toth, with another class. I am making a similar graphic organizer for the thoughts of Carlos, "los pensamientos de Carlos".

Two copies of the pdf of the pictured document are available if you have use for them:
Click HERE for the pdf of Bianca in black and white, empty thought bubbles.

Click HERE for the color pdf of Bianca, empty thought bubbles.

      On the left is another organizer that I used with my students with the story "Jack y las habichuelas mágicas".  
1. I downloaded the story from THIS website.  
2. I read the story to my students.
3. We talked about Jack's thoughts using phrases:
-Me gusta que..
-No es justo que...
-Espero que...
-Es raro que...

4. We also talked about the giant's thoughts, fears, what angers him, etc.
No grade; a lot of input (plus the benefit of reading with the story about Jack)

The final piece is an assessment. Please note, however, that this is not the first time we have discussed how a character feels about the actions of another character in a book or story. Also, when students talk about their weekends, I sometimes tell them to add something that isn't the truth so we can DOUBT something that the person did or usually does on weekends.  The students have had a LOT of input on this!

5. I distributed the above sketch with thought bubbles and students wrote the mother's thoughts. I provided a few prompts (similar to what is listed in #3) that I wrote on the board for the students. 

"Word Sneak" in MFL Classroom

"Word Sneak" is a language game that Jimmy Fallon plays with guests on his talk show.  Jimmy and his guest each receive 5 index cards with random words written on them.  The object of the game is to work, or sneak, the words into a conversation as casually and seamlessly as possible, in the order as given to you.  Watch this fun example of Jimmy Fallon and Bryan Cranston playing "Word Sneak".

Words for "Word Sneak" game

I made a few changes to the game to make it work with my Spanish 4+ class. 

1.  I showed a few minutes of "Word Sneak" on YouTube so students fully understood the game.

2.  For a practice run, I wrote 10 random words in Spanish on index cards and two students volunteered to play the game.  (Some of the random words were:  me dolía, las estrellas, vaca, sangre, etc.).  One of the students started the conversation, used the first word in telling about what happened with her pet, to which the second student responded, "sneaking" her first word into the conversation.

For something extra, after they finished I asked the other students if they could guess what words were on the cards.

3. Then I gave each student TWO index cards. The 16 words I had written on the cards were words that I pulled from the first chapter of La Calaca Alegre, a novel written by Carrie Toth. Since I have a small group of Spanish 4+ students this semester, 8 people played the game, instead of 2. It was FUN! If I hadn't know beforehand what was written on the card, I would have had a hard time figuring out which words were intentionally "sneaked" into the conversation.

After playing the game, we read Chapter 1 of La Calaca Alegre. The students already knew most of the words, but the game served as a refresher/review of the words in which students could hear and use the words in context.

For bigger classes, you could have several groups playing at the same time. If you have enough words, after the groups are finished they could pass their index cards to the next group and play with the new set of cards.

I recommend this for a level 3 or higher class.  It doesn't take long and it's a fun way to involve the students in peer conversation.

Interactive Reading for 2nd Language Classes - Larry el vampiro

A top priority for me when I plan lessons for my Spanish students, is to find creative ways for students to read a text in the target language.  I was able to accomplish this last week by using a story that I wrote two years ago.  I created an interactive reading by adding dialogue and gestures to the text to involve the students in the reading.  I have done something similar to this in the past (an explanation can be found on the blog post HERE, named Going on a Bear Hunt), or when reading a chapter in Piratas.  However, this interactive reading is modeled after a reading and blog post (read about it HERE and watch the video) shared by the amazing Alina Filipescu, (@FlipescuAlina on Twitter) a creative Spanish teacher in California.  

The structures that I was paying special attention to were:  "le dolía la muela", "quería morder" (because I want them to get used to seeing the verb in the infinitive form after a conjugated verb - btw, I don't use that explanation for the students), and "no la encontró".

There are 5 embedded readings of the story "Larry el vampiro". (I linked them to an earlier post about Larry el vampiro - HERE - click on "Larry el vampiro" written in the first sentence.) If you are unfamiliar with Embedded Readings, please go to Laurie Clarcq's blog HERE for an explanation and many, many embedded readings that teachers of several languages have shared on her blog.

Below is Version 3 of the story that I projected onto the board.  I read the black text, the students read the red text, and the students did the actions in the blue text.  (The powerpoint is also available from my shared GoogleDrive HERE.) 

Powerpoint larry el vampiro interactive reading 2015 from sonrisa1

I have two Spanish 2 classes and I told them that I was going to record them reading the text with the actions and my husband was going to decide which group did the best job.  Amazing how a little competition between classes creates a team atmosphere among the students in each class.

In preparing to record, during the recording, and when watching the recordings, the students read, and/or heard, the story (with the new structures) more than 7 times in one class period; several more in the following class period.
- first we decided the actions/gestures and practiced them individually
- they read the story 2 times to practice before the recording
- 1st recording, they read the story w/ actions
- they watched their recording
- 2nd recording, they read it (with more enthusiasm)
- they watched their second recording
- the 2nd class of the day asked to watch the other class' recording
- the students asked to watch their own recording again

That is a LOT of repetitions in which they're focused on creating a good recording so they were connecting meaning with their actions and dialogue.

I have the winning video of the students which I may upload to my school website AFTER I double-check with the students about posting it.  (They agreed to the recording so I could share it with for a future presentation, but I want to ask them before posting it online.) In the meantime, you can listen to an audio recording of the beginning part of the story HERE.  

We spent several classes on the embedded readings, on sketching, on retelling the stories, etc.  The last activity was a free write and that's where the time invested in the activities for Larry el vampiro was evident. They're writing was better than expected...once again!

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.

PSMLA 2015 - 1,2,3 Movie Talk Presentation

Today my colleague, Krista Kovalchick, and I went to PSMLA at Valley Forge, PA, and gave a presentation on Movie Talk.  Below are links to websites that we mentioned in our presentation.

 Additional Resources mentioned in our presentation:

Movie Talk blog posts; find videos and materials to use related to the movie talks from 2011 to present. They include: Alma, El monstruo del armario, Blind Date, Hit & run, El vampiro y la dentista, Sheep in the Island, Toilet paper/ipad commercial, La niña que recuerda, and La Dentista. 

Embedded Reading website by Laurie Clarcq

Pancho Camacho game - explained by Alina Filipescu w/ video demonstration

Movie Talk videos on Pinterest (The link will take you to my Pinterest board, but don't stop there, SEARCH Movie Talk and you'll find a lot of Pinterest boards!)

Movie Talk data base by Christy Miller
 

Sharing Lesson Plans & Juggling

Recently, I read a world language teacher's comment online in which she said she had changed her curriculum to focus on teaching with comprehensible input.  She had several preps and the amount of work required to prepare new materials and lessons for her classes, along with the mountain of extra tasks that all teachers know too well, was leaving her feeling overwhelmed. She was a mother of 4 children and school demands were overtaking her family time.

Many teachers, possibly all teachers, can relate to her feelings because they are either on that path now or have been in the past. For those World Language teachers that have left the textbook on the shelf and have ventured into the world of planning their own curriculum, scope and sequence, lessons, materials, and activities, they are well aware of the time commitment and energy needed for this task. 

It's been a few years since I started on my "Adiós textbook, Hola Comprehensible Input" journey. I've been adding, changing, deleting, tweaking, improving, etc, my lesson plans ever since.  My focus this year is to be even more diligent in my efforts to recycle previous structures as new structures are added.

Below is a link that I'm sharing that has lessons and materials for teaching several focus structures with my Spanish 2 students.  The structures in the lessons are:

1- quería, había, fue (also puso - needed for class story)

(s/he wanted, there was/there were, s/he went) also (s/he put)

2 - estaba triste, (no) encontró, buscó

(was sad, didn't find, looked for) 
3 - se llamaba (s/he was called)

4 - tenía, vivía, era (had, lived, was)

5 - se llevaba (s/he was wearing)

6 - se sentó, a la derecha de, a la izquierda de

(s/he sat down, to the right of, to the left of)


Follow this LINK to lesson plans and materials for the listed structures. My hope is that you will find something that will be useful to you and your students.

Overhauling your curriculum is a huge task. The more knowledge you have on second language acquisition and the more experience you have in teaching (which includes a compilation of lessons that you learned from both your failures and successes), the farther ahead you will be when planning.


Another thought: Teaching should not be done in isolation.  Sharing materials is related to juggling (which is on my radar now especially since my focus is on recycling structures as new structures are added):

I'm a juggler. 
I begin the school year juggling a few balls (new structures). That's fairly easy. 
Then I add a few more balls while at the same time I have to keep the previous balls in the rotation.
After adding more and more balls, I start to feel a bit overwhelmed...
BUT...
when I find another juggler and we can share the same amount of balls between us, the task is less daunting.
When I find 2 other jugglers, all 3 of us have an easier task.
Imagine how much easier it is when there are 4, 5, 6, and many, many more juggling at the same time, lessening the amount of balls each of us have to manage.  
It's much easier and the social interaction is amazing.
  
THANKS to all the other World Language "jugglers" out there that have helped make my task easier throughout the years.  You know who you are. I am grateful to have you as my colleagues and friends.

CI Friendly Back-to-School Night Information

Last night at Back-to-School night, I wanted to give the parents a demonstration of TPRS. However, I also wanted to show parents how to access class information and materials on my teacher webpage on the school district website, and explain class procedures and other important information to the parents, such as why there are no student desks in my room, and what novels we read. I knew that with the information that I wanted to share, I did not have the time needed for a successful TPRS demonstration.  In lieu of a demo, I gathered the papers and materials from that day's class (see photo below), taped them to the board, and explained TPRS using the visuals aids.  The following was written or taped on the board:


1. The 3 focus words for the day, with the # of reps of each word written in red.   There is a small yellow post-it note on which a student wrote tally marks to keep track of the repetitions. 


2.  A notebook paper with the details of the class story; written by a student.  (I tell students that do this job and the job mentioned in item #3, that they can write in English or Spanish.)

3. The notebook paper with questions related to the story; written by a student.

4. The sketches for the story by our very talented student artist of the day.

Those visuals were beneficial in showing the parents how words are introduced and used in context throughout the class period, and the number of repetitions needed for students to, first, recognize the word and, later, to eventually produce those words.

As parents were entering the room, I had Mike Peto's powerpoint playing on the benefits of learning a second language.  You can find and download Mike's powerpoint at his blogpost HERE. Thanks for sharing Mike. :-)

I also covered my boards with information on:  grades, output, input, and the idea that someone else mentioned on one of the forums I follow: ask parents to finish the sentence, "I had 4 years of (Spanish, French, German, etc.) in high school and I..." 

Donkey-Jote also made an appearance so I could explain the expectations for target language use.  

This blog post will serve as a file system for me to use the same information at out next Back-to-School night in February 2016.  

Using CI to Make Comparisons

When I taught straight from a textbook, there was always a lesson on making comparisons.  I think one was called "Making Comparisons of Inequality". Now that I teach with Comprehensible Input, I include comparisons in conversation using a powerpoint slide of famous people. Not only is this approach interesting, but it is easy and requires little preparation work on the teacher's part.  

Teacher prep before class:
1. Create a powerpoint slide with photos of  famous women.  I have a slide with photos of Beyoncé, Betty White, Adele, Dakota Fanning, Ophrah Winfrey, and Michele Obama.

In class:
2. Ask students the names of the 6 people. Allow time for this part of the conversation to be flexible. For example, I provide extra input by asking students if they know someone else that is named "Betty". That can lead to what names do you think of when you think of an older person? (maybe Mabel, Henry, Elliott, Beatriz, etc)

3.  Make comparisons of the people on the board.  I began with asking students ¿Adele canta mejor que Beyoncé or Beyoncé canta mejor que Adele?  ¿Quién tiene más años, Beyoncé o Dakota Fanning? ¿Oprah Winfrey es más famosa que Michele Obama o Michele Obama es más famosa que Oprah? ¿Quién es más atractiva, Beyoncé o Betty White?
One student in the class captured everyone's attention when he said Betty es más atractiva que Beyoncé. Perfect! I stopped asking questions to the entire class and then focused on that one student. The student continued to play along and through that time period we learned that Betty White is more attractive than Beyoncé; that Betty White canta mejor que Beyoncé, that Betty White tiene más amigas que Ophra Winfrey...basically, anything or anyone that I compare Betty to, Betty always came out on top.

4. Lastly, distribute small squares of paper and tell students to write:
  1. the name of a famous person
  2.  the name of a student in the classroom

In having the students write 2 names on the paper, my plan was to...

5. Compare the names of famous people to each other and then compare two students to each other. However, the first card I pulled from the pile was Donald Trump and the name of a boy in class. The name Donald Trump produced good engagement and listening behaviors from the students so I stuck with those two names, and, of course, one thing we compared was hair. After I asked several comparison questions, I asked the students to talk to a partner and think of another comparison.

We continued with several other papers with names Larry the Cable Guy and Kim Kardashian. I always made sure that if we used the words inteligente, fuerte, guapa, my students ALWAYS had better traits than the celebrities.  

I like to include comparisons in class stories, but I did this activity after a quiz in a way to engage the students and give them a lot of reps of comparisons through talking about people they knew.   

READING and My 2nd Language Journey

If you speak more than one language, you have a story to tell about how you became bilingual. When those stories are shared, openly and honestly, we can study them, compare them, and find common factors that helped move the learner forward in his/her proficiency in the language. In my language journey below, there was the usual formal teaching of grammar rules and vocabulary, followed by tests on those areas. However, that is not what made the biggest impact on my language abilities.

(This is the first time I wrote publicly about my language journey. It wasn't the easiest post to write, but as I said above, I wrote it to share what has been most beneficial to me in improving my language proficiency. The purpose of this blog post is not to share my grades in college, but rather to show that students can figure out how to successfully play the Grade Game. Good grades doesn't always accurately measure one's language proficiency. I am still on my Language Journey and I continue to learn each day.)

My language journey followed this path:
High School - freshman year, Spanish 1
College - (16 yrs & 3 children later; obviously I was a non-traditional student)
- Freshman year: Spanish 101 & 102
- Sophomore year - Spanish 201  
- Junior & senior years - changed my major to Spanish, studied abroad in Spain
Graduated college, summa cum laude, with a Spanish degree 

Returned to college, after birth of my 4th child, to complete student teaching requirement; obtained my teaching certification.


Honest thoughts and reflections on my language journey at college:
1. College level Spanish 101, 102, 201, 202, are full speed ahead! If you didn't have 4 years of Spanish at the high school level, (which I didn't) the pace of these college classes means acquisition rarely takes place. 

The Grade Game?

2. If you're serious about Spanish, getting A's is very attainable - for me it was easy. In beginning and intermediate classes, it required memorizing lists of vocabulary, understanding how to conjugate, knowing cultural facts - easy. Upper level classes were more demanding, but I obtained A's by completing the requirements on the syllabi and doing well on assessments.
3. A's on a college transcript don't accurately equate the level of one's proficiency in the language. (Often, fast-paced classes encourage "studying" in a manner that puts the material in the short-term memory.)
4. My semester in Spain was worth the money and major inconveniences. (I was married with 3 children at the time). With only a few exceptions, I think colleges should require this.
5. Even though I obtained all A's, with the exception of one B+, 
in my Spanish college courses, many times I felt I should have retaken the previous level or should have retaken some of my upper level classes.  I was happy with my grades; I wasn't happy with my proficiency level. (If I got A's and wasn't happy with my proficiency, what does that say about those getting B's and, gasp, C's?) Surely, I'm not the only one that felt that way.


So there I was, a Spanish education graduate with my impressive college transcript, was offered a job and was ready to start teaching 3 months after graduating. But there was one problem: I wasn't satisfied with my language abilities. I knew that I wasn't where I wanted to be with my Spanish proficiency.

That's when I started making trips to the community library and checked out   books in Spanish. I started with very young children's books, then moved to children's books with more text, some of which were bilingual. (I don't know how many hundreds of Spanish children's books the Lebanon Community Library has, but I've read the majority of them, or at least the majority of the ones they had 12-15 years ago.) From there I progressed to young adult readers, and eventually to full-fledged novels.   

Reading gently pushed my proficiency in the language higher and higher. 
My vocabulary grew from reading books, not from memorizing vocabulary lists, grouped by themes or topics. Verb tenses started to make sense to me because I saw them in context. The more time I spent reading in Spanish, the less I needed my trusty verb conjugation book (the one that I dragged with me to Spain to help me make sense of those 16+ verb tenses).  I understood the syntax of the language, and word order fell in place. I discovered that when I spoke in Spanish, I knew words that I had no idea I knew.

When I look back over my language journey, I clearly see the positive impact from READING. The money I spent on college to "learn" Spanish can't begin to compare to the gains I made in proficiency from reading books at the free local library.  

My language journey hasn't ended. I continue to learn daily and I continue to read novels in Spanish (my Amazon account confirms that!).

My personal experience of the power of reading, plays a big part in why I make it a priority to include a reading component in each of my lesson plans. It's also one of the reasons why I embrace TPRS, Teaching Proficiency through READING and Storytelling.  Reading, at the appropriate level, can help students to make big gains in their proficiency. 

My language journey at college, progress made from reading books from the local library, and teaching has made the following clear to me:
- Acquisition occurs when we are exposed to comprehensible input. 
- You can't speed up language acquisition. 
- If you rush through material, your students will resort to studying and memorizing.  They'll get good grades but won't be able to speak well in the language.
- If you assess materials that can be studied and memorized, the result of those assessments don't give a clear picture on the students' abilities; they're invalid.
- A's mean nothing if they are not connected to a student's proficiency in the language.
- Creating valid assessments is not accurately addressed in universities.
- The majority of students, high school or university level, are very well aware of their language abilities, or lack of abilities. They know when the assessment you gave them doesn't correctly measure their abilities. They may breath a sigh of relief because they got a good grade, but they know it's not valid.
- If your students are asking you what they need to study for the test - that's a problem.
- Reading is input that each individual reader has the power to control the pace.
- The "flow" in reading is an amazing experience.  It happens when you are reading a novel and forget that it's not in your first language.

Those are a few of my reflections.  More may be added in the next few weeks or months.

Of what has your language journey consisted? What has pushed you to higher proficiency in your 2nd, 3rd, etc. language? 

Connect with Students using a +1 Quiz ?

Do you want a practically guaranteed way to learn more about your students and make the important connection with them as a valued student in your classroom? You may be surprised to hear that this can be accomplished by having the students answer a quiz question.  

It is the +1 Quiz ? and it's not my original idea.  I heard about the +1 Quiz ? at a conference a few years ago in which Blaine Ray described how it worked. I also heard about a variation of this on the national news last school year when an elementary school teacher did a variation of the same thing Blaine Ray did. 

What is the +1 Quiz ? ? From what I understand, when Blaine Ray gave a quiz to his students, he told them that they had the opportunity to earn a bonus point if they wrote a sentence at the end of the quiz that was about something happening in their lives.  It could be something they were happy about such as their birthday was in a few days, that they had a game that evening, or something more serious such as their dog recently passed away, or they were nervous about a big geometry test the next day.

I vowed to do this in the past (I even blogged about it HERE, saying I wanted to experiment with it), and actually did it one time last year, but then I get forgetful and don't remember to tell the students about the +1 Quiz ?.

On Friday, one of my classes wrote sentences about the information that they learned about their classmates.  It was a nine point quiz and on the spur of the moment I remembered the +1 Quiz ? and told the students that the quiz was worth 10 points; 1 point for each of the sentences about their classmates and 1 point for writing something about themselves that they wanted to share. I gave them permission to write it in English so they weren't limited in what they wanted to write.

Here are a few of their sentences: 

 

 

 

and the one that absolutely made my day:

 

As I was reading the papers, I was reacting to them in my thoughts.  Then I decided that I should write those thoughts directly on the paper.  After all, the students wrote something about themselves, I'm sure the students will appreciate some feedback to what they wrote.

I learned a great deal about my students from this little exercise beyond their abilities in Spanish class.  Why did I wait so long to try this?  

La Dentista script from Sr. Wooly's song

Who doesn't love the wonderful Sr. Wooly and his creative videos and ever-increasing teacher materials?  I'm positive if I had my students list their top five activities of the semester, Sr. Wooly's videos would, without fail, be top contenders.  

In 2013, I added Sr. Wooly's La Dentista video as part of our (official) curriclum for Spanish 2.  Before any of the activities below, the students and I read a children's book about going to the dentist, (Max va al dentista), read a story on A-Z reading about a vampire that goes to the dentist, complete the MovieTalk of La Dentista y el Vampiro and related activities (click HERE for those activities), create class stories using high frequency words and structures, and complete several other components in this "unit" of the curriculum. 

To prepare my students for the vocabulary in the video La Dentista, we do the following activities:

1) An activity with the phrases:  Creo que sí and Creo que no/no creo que.  Students wrote 1 sentence about themselves that was true (verdadero) and 1  that was not true but could be possible.  I read one of their sentences to the class and their classmates said Creo que sí if they thought the sentence was true, or no creo que sí, or creo que no if they didn't think it was true.

2) To pre-teach the structure, se quejó de, I created a TPRS storyline. Students contribute the following information about a fictitious character:
 - name
 - lived with mother, father, or both
 - number of siblings
 - class in school 
 - sport person played
 - instrument the person played  

Then I use the students' suggestions in a story about someone that complained throughout the day about each of the above items.  After our class story, students read a story, from a previous school year, about "Dante". 

3) I turn the volume off when we watch La Dentista the first time and I narrate the action and descriptions using vocabulary that the students know and introduce a few others. During this narration I also ask questions throughout to check for students' comprehension.  

The second time we watch the video with sound and subtitles.  We may watch it a few more times, and I pause it to ask students to describe what is happening.  The last time we watch is with the grammar pop-ups.

*4) I distribute the story script for La Dentista and I read it to the students. 

Partial script for La Dentista

When I read a word they are not sure about, they tap their foot on the floor and I translate the word to English and continue with the reading in Spanish. 

Sometimes I assign the script for homework.  Students have to read the story to their parent in English.  The purpose is for students to read the story again in the evening and if they're reading and don't know a word, I tell them to circle it and tell me the next day so I know which words are causing problems.

  Recently, Carrie Toth (@senoraCMT) posted materials on her blog (HERE) that she uses with La Dentista.  Her materials have a powerpoint with screenshots of Sr. Wooly's video and text.  I'll add that to my materials to provide more repetitions of high frequency structures. (Plus check out her materials on Billy la Bufanda, and Runaway on the same blog post!)

Because Sr. Wooly's videos easily captivate the students' attention, we use many of the videos as part of our curriculum and others for a brain break or end of class video if there are a few minutes remaining.

If you have heard about his videos but haven't subscribed yet, I strongly recommend that you do so now.  Plus, according to his recent email to current subscribers, his new and improved site will be revealed within weeks. 

*Since Carrie has a transcript available for the La Dentista story, I did not link my version on this post.  If you would like a copy of my transcript, indicate that in the comment section below (and also indicate if you prefer not to have your comment with your email published and I will send you the document without posting your comment) or contact me on twitter @sonrisadelcampo and I can send the document to you as a link from Google Drive.
  

I CAN Statements with Novels

Reading is a important element of the Spanish curriculum at my school district.  In each level of language, which equals 100 (+/-) hours of class time, students read 2-3 novels.  With the small number of classroom instruction available to us per language level, I am constantly evaluating and re-evaluating our curriculum to make sure we are using that time wisely.  In regards to reading novels, I used to ask myself how can I demonstrate that reading a specific book has helped move the students forward in their language acquisition and understanding of the culture?  

Last December, I created I Can Statements for students to check off after we created several class stories, read parallel stories from previous years, personalized information to the students in the class, and completed several MovieTalks.  The I Can Statements provided a clear list for the students of what they could do after completing the "unit".  (More detailed information about the I Can Statements can be found HERE.  To be clear, the statements are not directly related to ACTFL's CAN DO statements, but were inspired after my chat with Michele Whaley at ACTFL14.) 

After using the I Can Statements with my students, I started thinking about how I could do something similar for the novels that we read in class.  

Below are I Can Statements I made last spring for the book  Fiesta Fatal by Mira Canion.  

Chapters 1-5 (link to doc): 

 

Chapters 6-10 (link to doc):

 
Fiesta Fatal begins in Mexico, with references to towns in Mexico, markets, azoteas, quinceañeras, transportation, and other related culture.  The I Can Statements include information on culture, as well as specific statements related to students' language abilities such as retells, making predictions, listening skills, and comparing.

The I Can Statements help the students, parents, and administration see the benefits of reading novels in the second language.  One option is to revise the documents to add lines for parent signatures.  For example, add 7 lines for a parent to initial, but only 5 of the 7 need to be initialed.  The students choose 5 of the 7 to demonstrate their skill to a parent. I think parents will enjoy hearing their son or daughter speaking in Spanish, even if they don't understand what they're saying.

I have similar documents started for the other novels we read in class, but I still need to create the sketches to go with them and finish the documents.  They would be completed at this time, but . . . I've become hooked on reading popular fiction novels in Spanish (como: La Chica del Tren, Perdida, La Ladrona de Libros, Ve y Pon un Centinela,) and there are many others on my shelf or on Amazon calling my name.  :-)