@cwilsonspanish

Catching up…

Posted on June 7, 2015 by @cwilsonspanish

I apologize for the interruption in posts. I think most educators understand the pressure of March – May in schools, but I clearly underestimated my ability to keep up. Thankfully… the 14-15 school year is behind me, and I’m ready to get caught up. I’ve got big plans for the summer. I plan to:

finish up my #AllTheGoogle series
blog about my professional development this summer
share some highlights from my classroom this year
and! include some highlights from my work on my Master’s degree this summer.

-CL

p.s. part 5, coming up! tomorrow!!

homework, Lesson plan component, Uncategorized

End of Year Sale!

Posted on May 24, 2015June 9, 2015 by @cwilsonspanish

I’m throwing a quick end-of-year sale in my Teacher’s Pay Teachers Store with some useful items for the end of the year in Spanish 1. Check it out! The sale runs from 5/25-5/28 this week!

Products on Sale:

Spanish 1 Autobiography Project: In this Spanish 1 project, Spanish 1 students use the different units they have studied throughout the year to construct an autobiography. They will:
-describe who they are
-their school life
-friends and family
-food preferences
-likes/ dislikes
-passtimes/ sports
-memories (past tense) and
-future goals (tener que, ir a, etc.)
It is a great culminating project or end of course assignment 🙂
The packet includes:
-suggestions for the project product
-guiding questions
-project timeline (with blank dates for editing)
-blank project calendar
-rubric
-and suggestions page with my sample calendar attached
Spanish 1 Speaking and Writing Rubrics: Use these rubrics to grade Spanish 1 production tasks (Speaking and Writing) on a 15 point scale. (5×3 rubric)
General Teacher Evaluations (for student use): Each year, at the end of the year, I give an anonymous teacher evaluation to my students to see–right from the horse’s mouth–how I did. These forms are not age or subject area specific, so they are perfect for whatever you teach 🙂
Blank Gameshow Board, for review games: Use this blank game show board to increase student accountability during games, help students track review games for study purposes or allow students to create their own jeopardy-style game. Attached is also a page with suggestions for use!
Spanish 1 Interviews: Interview questions w/ suggested activities and one BONUS activity page for Spanish 1 students (semester 1) or Spanish 1 A.

-CL

professional development, Uncategorized

Something New

Posted on February 28, 2015June 9, 2015 by @cwilsonspanish

(This is just a Google Series intermission! Have no fear!)

In groups, I see kids gravitate towards what they know. They choose the task they are most suited to do. They regurgitate the knowledge they already firmly held.

That isn’t learning. And, while they may be very good at it… it isn’t helping them get the most out of the experience.

This is the concept behind Cooperative Learning. In Group Work, students choose a task and complete it with the group. In Cooperative Learning… Students are assigned roles that contribute to the learning of the whole. Cooperative Learning works best when it is used often. Sometimes students will choose the role they know they are good at… other times, they teacher will assign the a role which will force them to grow.

This has been my thought process as I debate my choices for my masters degree. I have narrowed it down to two choices (well, two for this masters, anyway). The programs I am choosing between are either: something that I know well, that will get me where I want to go (aka, the less challenging route) vs. something I don’t know as well, that will also get me where I want to go. (aka, the scarier, more challenging route.)

I’m excited to say, that as a (more) mature learner, I understand that I’ll grow more in the program full of new topics for me to study. It will be a different road, a more challenging one, but it will be worth it.

These are the moments I look for in my students. I alternate between them choosing roles and me assigning them… at some point, some of them decide to jump in and try something new, all on their own. When I recognize this, my heart smiles.

Today my heart is smiling at the re-realized remembrance that teachers are learners too.

What do you still want to learn? Please share it with me!

-CL

Google, professional development, teaching

Google Series Part 4: Google Drive

Posted on February 26, 2015February 23, 2015 by @cwilsonspanish

What is Google Drive?

Google Drive is essentially a cloud service by Google. Using Drive means that your files are accessible to you from any device that has internet connection.

Why is Drive better than other cloud services, or better than my flash drive… or better than my hard drive?

Haha, I’m glad you asked! I have iCloud on my iPhone… but it only comes with 5GB of storage–which seems like a lot… until they ask you to pay for more. If a person has a gmail… they get 30gb free! If you have an educational Google account (as I do, since my district has “Gone Google”) then you have UNLIMITED drive storage.

I signed up for Google Drive over the summer, in one of the very first google trainings that our new district Director of Digital Learning was hosting. Since then, I have been trying to convince the world of its awesomeness. Finally, the Digital Learning Committee (which I chair) recommended to the campus that on our next staff development day, all teachers be required to attend a training and sign up.

…Shortly after that, I ran into one of my fellow Spanish teachers, sitting at her desk. She was looking at her Drive in awe. She shared with me the many ways Drive was going to make her life easier. Here is a picture of her Desktop and her Desktop (ha, see what I did there?)

Drive has been my Go-to and saving grace this year. I am a frazzled lady, and I often start working on a task at home and get to school, only to realize the file I need is on my home computer. Drive has changed my productivity, for the better. A teacher’s productivity is directly related to student outcomes. In a teacher’s world, every second counts. If I can save some time, that is time I can be interacting with kids, providing feedback and growing relationships.

Tips, Tricks and Ideas for Google Drive:

Google Drive works best when you check the box that allows any file to be converted into a Google file. This means that if you upload a “Word” document… you’ll be able to open it, even on a computer that doesn’t have Word. Most of your formatting will be the same. Every now and then, something changes… but you can always convert the file back!
Google Drive has a Google search bar… this is amazing! You can search for the title of the file or any word that might be in the file. This is much easier than the process to do the same thing on a normal computer… and even better, you can do this from ANY computer with internet access (or device!)
Google Drive allows you to seamlessly share files with contacts. We’ll get into this more in the next post but: you can share items with links through email, invite others to edit your files, push files to the web as individual webpages with links and more!
Drive has an intuitive “incoming” folder that keeps a list of any files shared with you, almost like an “inbox”.
As mentioned in my previous post about Google Classroom, Classroom actually creates and manages assignment folders and files in your Drive. When a student “submits” the assignment, it magically appears in your folder!
Any file can be added to drive. I have uploaded tons of videos and sound files that I use for listening assignments in my Spanish classes, and Google opens them with the web-based Google Play. This is amazing, since teachers often have to fight with quicktime and windows based systems that may not agree in file type.

The best part about this tool, for me, is that it’s free. Most of the things I can think of that would save me some time or chaos… cost too much money. Everyone knows teachers only spend money on Bills, Students, Their kids or their “other kids”… rarely on something that is just for the purposes of making their lives better.

Are you using Drive? How has it changed your world? Leave a comment 🙂

-CL

Missed part of this series? Get caught up!

Part 1: Google Voice

Part 2: Google Voice (cont.)

Part 3: Google Classroom

teaching, Uncategorized

Language Learning: The New Math

Posted on February 24, 2015June 9, 2015 by @cwilsonspanish

(Don’t worry, this is just a Google Series intermission!)

As I was cleaning the kitchen, a thought occurred to me: “Write me a problem whose answer is 4.”. What an amazing application this type of backwards learning has in math.

Scaffolded: “Write me a polynomial which can be simplified to 4x + 1.”

Scaffolded again: “Write me a polynomial which can be simplified to 4x + 1 in more than 3 steps.”.

Again: “Draw me a line with a slope of ___ and write the equation (f(x))”.

You may have noticed that I’m not a math teacher. But I am. And, if you are a language teacher reading this… chances are, you are too.

I hear from parents (and students) all the time: But, my child is SO good at English! Well, that’s great, I reply, but the problem is, learning a second language has more in common with Calculus and Algebra, than it does with English Class.

Sure! I teach transition phrases and how to write a paragraph or how to write a sentence instead of a fragment (where is your verb?!?!?!?). Sure! We read literature and analyze it and look for cultural connections. Sure! We do all of that. In Spanish.

BUT, you see, we also look at grammar. Sometimes, explicitly, sometimes implicitly. Those explicit moments are sometimes needed, but often, they are the reason kids end up hating their language class as much as they hate their math class. And, they can’t figure out why.

This is why. A new theory is on the rise in the world of linguistics, that, as far as I have researched, I happen to agree with. It is the mathematical analysis and comparison of linguistic structures to the math of the world. You see, math makes the world work. Science is math applied. Math makes it all make sense. Languages have to end up making sense in order to communicate a message, and it turns out, that is a job math can do. Grammatical sentences are complex formulas, and just past that equal sign (=) is the message you communicate. When your formula is bad, your message is too.

All of these revelations and random thoughts of math while I clean my kitchen, bring me to a few points.

Just as language teachers are moving away from the explicit teaching of Grammar… and seeing amazing results… math teachers are going to have to do the same. Unfortunately, this means that this change will need to be reflected in the standards as well. Just as language standards have become communicative (answer based), math standards will have to do the same. Instead of process based, we’ll need standards like, “Students will engineer a bridge… ect.”; because they can’t meet that standard without implicit math. Math standards will need to be results based.
Language teachers need to be cognizant of their students who struggle in math and communicate with these students’ parents. This will prevent the poop-storm that ensues when said kid struggles and their parents are blindsided–because they thought Spanish was an English class.
The example problems I mentioned above are similar to the ones language teachers use in their classroom every day. Compare:
1. “Tell me 2 things you like to do.”
2. “Write me a paragraph explaining what you would do if “X” happened.”
3. “Tell me your favorite memory as a child.”

In each of the above examples, we give the kids a product, and they must fumble with the pieces to come up with an answer. Like in math, we give formulas, functional chunks, that kids use in the gap to achieve the task.

What do you think?

-CL

Google, professional development, teaching, Uncategorized

Google Series Part 3: Google Classroom

Posted on February 21, 2015February 21, 2015 by @cwilsonspanish

I can only compare what I know. I know that about 2 years ago, I was introduced to the world of Flipped learning, and as a teacher who had interned with Florida Virtual School, the idea of putting part of my teaching life online appealed to me.

Think about it… Students are online anyway. Most of the time, they really don’t mind adding a school website to the list. They end up doing what they do on all the websites… in fact, they probably are doing what you did to get here. They scroll; they get lost; they read mindlessly; they click on links and learn stuff unintentionally. Its almost osmosis.

Our current Academic Dean and a team of others in our district introduced me to Edmodo. I’m an all or nothing person (for better or worse!) and a dove right in. Within a few weeks, all of my classes were signed up, students were completing assignments, and we were rolling. I flipped some, but for me, the value of the online medium was the potential for the increase in the language production.

In a matter of weeks, my students were:

Commenting on things in Spanish.
Presenting stuff to me (writings AND videos) in Spanish
Communicating with me openly about their grades, questions, concerns
Sharing relevant content.
Making up absent work
Completing other assignments, notes and more on Edmodo!

Believe it or not, I didn’t have the commonly feared “inappropriate” posts, even with nearly 200 teenagers 14-19 years old enrolled! In fact, I even conducted part of my maternity leave last year on Edmodo.

But… I did have these problems:

Constant log in issues. (Thankfully, on edmodo, teachers can reset student passwords, that is a huge plus!)
Problems with the “feed”. Edmodo is modeled after a social network style, and the feed brings up the most popular “posts” in their “network” or classes… meaning that since some students didn’t actually click on my class, they missed out on important posts.
A confusing interface… for teachers AND for students.

Of course, neither of these lists is exhaustive. Edmodo has served me well, and my students are still currently enrolled… but over the past few months, we’ve transitioned away to the sleeker, simpler: Google Classroom.

Google Classroom Vs. Edmodo

Google classroom is accessed by students through their own Gmail accounts, or through school created ones, if you school has “gone Google” (as ours has). This means, students will have to set and reset their own passwords… BUT since they probably already have gmail accounts, they likely already actually know their passwords…. unlike the password for the random educational thing they were forced to sign up for….

It is also a simplified version of blackboard, essentially. Instead of a lame (sorry, Edmodo) version of Facebook, the interface actually mirrors a system they will hopefully be using in a few short years, if we do our jobs and prepare them for college.

The feed in each “classroom” is sequential, meaning the most recent posts appear at the top, instead of the most popular.

Students can turn in assignments, teachers can edit those assignments, and return them with comments. Its amazing. Providing feedback is at the core of constant improvement; Google Classroom make it easy.

The most amazing part of Google Classroom, for me, is its integration into the rest of the Google world. For instance:

Students can attach content from Google docs/ Google Drive directly to their assignments.
Assignments are automatically organized into folders in my google drive by class period.
Students log in with Gmail
and more!

Although some would complain that the tools Edmodo offers (such as Snapshot, quiz making, and the Apps) aren’t available in Google, I’m glad. In fact, this is part of what contributes to the simplicity of the tool… which directly contributes to my student’s success. AND I am simplifying as a result. For instance, I have been using tools like Kahoot or Google Forms instead of quizzes by edmodo. Additionally, as a language teacher, production really is my ultimate goal, and encouraging interaction instead of participation in automatically graded quizzes, really is more inline with my goals.

Are you using Classroom? What are your thoughts?

-CL

Google Voice Part 2: In Any classroom

Posted on February 20, 2015 by @cwilsonspanish

Google Voice: In Any Classroom

Ah, the dreaded exit ticket.

Really, it sounds like such a great idea at first. Hold the kids accountable. Use those last few minutes of class productively. Get a quick snapshot of student understanding. Have something quick to grade for a daily grade. Have kids actually apply the standard you just covered.

Win-win, right???

Ha. Wrong. You see, first you have to cut out all those exit tickets. Pass them out. They have to do them. <–All of that is the easy part. People suggest these exit tickets as a regular part of the routine. Several times a week or even every day. The only problem is: there are some things that paper clips can’t fix. i.e.: my desk. See sample below.

You see, for teachers like me, who are moms and wives and department chairs and, you know, 12 other responsibilities to mention, we don’t have time for that. I don’t need another tiny slip of paper (or stack of them) to try to remember not to lose.

How can Google Voice help?

With Google Voice, you get a phone number. Not only can students leave you a voice message (as mentioned in Part 1 of this series), but they can also text the phone number as well! The messages collect in your Google Voice account, and are also sent to your email account.

This is life changing.

At the end of class, kids put their things away, and I ask them a short question. For me, usually, this is a short production task (in Spanish), perhaps, a question to answer or a topic to write about. Students text the phone number and the assignment comes to my email.

Why is this so awesome?

Sometimes kids need more time to finish than time allows. They can take the cell phone with them.
You can provide feedback! Text back!
- Are you worried about the privacy implications of that? Well, worry a little less. Texting through Google Voice creates a paper trail. All messages to and from the account are saved. Its the ultimate teacher “CYA”.
Students without phones can still complete the assignment on a sticky note, or from the phone of a friend.
It eliminates (or nearly does) the tiny stacks of paper ravaging your desk.

Other ideas: I haven’t tried but really want to!

Give this phone number to parents instead of your regular cell phone number. Keep the conversation going via text.
Encourage kids to text questions about homework, projects and more.
Create lists in Google voice to text extra credit opportunities, links to important info and more.

Have any ideas yet??? Comment below!

-CL

Google, homework, professional development

Google Voice: Part 1- In The Language Classroom

Posted on February 18, 2015 by @cwilsonspanish

Google voice has rocked my world this year. I had previously wanted to see what I could use Google Voice for, but, like most teachers, I didn’t have time for another “tool” to add to my list and make my life harder. After attending the ACTFL Convention this year, however, my perspective changed.

I sat in on a session by one of the ACTFL teachers of the year, Carrie Toth, who runs http://somewheretoshare.com as she talked about different way she has added authentic assessment to her classes. She shared that when students have projects that many classes traditionally “present” (aka: waste 3 days of class time presenting), she instead uses Google Voice. In a room so crowded with people that I was in a corner on the floor, here I sat, suddenly engaged beyond measure. This woman had the answers to all my problems.

Any student who has ever sat in my classroom knows 2 things (ok, hopefully more than 2 things…)

Mrs. Wilson doesn’t waste time.
Everything we do has a purpose.

I literally refuse to waste even a second. And, if a student asks me “why” I usually have a dissertation like response of my thought process behind the request.

Presentations had always been an irritation of mine. They worked so hard… shouldn’t they present it? To be honest… these presentations aren’t going to be that great. Who listens to them anyway??? The class can’t hold their attention span long enough to hear more than one. UGH now we are a week behind 😦

Instead, Carrie explains, that she has students call and leave their presentations using Google Voice. Genius. Students are then able to:

Speak with a lower affective filter.
Practice several times before calling.
Call again to record a better version.
Not waste 3 class days listening to their Spanish 1 classmates repeat all 15 words they know (ahem, I mean…. um… sorry!)

I was anxious to try this, and I was amazed at the results. My students did fantastically. They even worked harder on their accents, because they felt that me having a voicemail was more “permanent”.

Tips and Ideas:

Carrie suggested using some of the time that would have been spent on presentations to do a “museum” style walkabout, encouraging students to interact in the TL instead (Interpersonal).
Use Google Voice for AP level classes to record their cultural comparisons.
Google Voice voicemails cut off at 3 minutes. When students don’t have much dead space… that is actually quite a lot of time! But, be careful about assigning something that can’t be recorded in the time limit. For example, during their celebrity family presentations, I graded their project as a written piece, but asked students only to share the 5 most interesting things via voicemail.
You can set up Google Voice to ring to a phone… but since the main use for it is voicemail (for a teacher), I recommend setting it to “Do Not Disturb”, so that it will automatically record voicemails.
In your voicemail message, remind students to leave their name…haha, seems obvious, but you are a teacher, so you understand.
Space your assignments out, so that your voicemail box isn’t clogged with too many assignments at once. One week I gave an assignment to Spanish 1. Once those voicemails had been graded, I assigned a Voice assignment to Spanish 3. A few late Spanish 1 assignments got mixed in, and there was a delay in grading them.

Have any ideas yet?

-CL

Google, professional development, teaching

#AllTheGoogles

Posted on February 17, 2015 by @cwilsonspanish

Google owns the interwebs.

This was my revelation about 2 years ago when I went to sign up for gmail, and I found that Google already knew my email address. It was a funny “conspiracy” theory then as I laughed it off…but since then I’ve discovered the world of Google–and more than just a search engine or email platform… Google is a set of tools beyond what I could have ever imagined. This year, Google has changed my classroom for the better.

Over the next few weeks, I’ll be detailing my Google adventure from the perspective of a language teacher, but so much of what I’ve found has implications for any classroom. This summer, I’m even planning to get Google Certified!

Check back to see my posts on:

Google Voice
Google Classroom
Google Drive / Docs/ Slides
Google Forms
YouTube
Picasa
Google Play

See you soon!

How are you using Google? Tell me below!

-CL

Uncategorized

A Spanish 1 Sale!

Posted on January 31, 2015 by @cwilsonspanish

As I’m getting back into the swing of things after having 2 kids… and the chaos of life… I’m starting out with a sale on some of my Spanish 1 products on TeachersPayTeachers!

http://goo.gl/EWbDUP

Here’s to more to come 🙂

-CL

Author: @cwilsonspanish