In my placement school, we are all about sharing. The Spanish teachers are incredibly creative, and they're eager to share their activities, from questionnaires to TPR (Total Physical Response) stories and powerpoints. In fact, I often have to turn my colleagues down so I can get more practice in creating my own activities. In any case, I have already taken advantage of many of the wonderful resources they create and share with me, and I look forward to sharing my own activities and powerpoints with them in the coming months.
I believe that this is how teachers should be. If an activity successfully teaches our students important language skills, we want to share it far and wide so other students (and teachers) can benefit. This is one of the great things about the current internet culture. Not only do I have access to the minds of four amazing Spanish teachers, as well as a plethora of amazing teachers of other disciplines, at my placement school. Teachers around the world are sharing what has worked for them and offering it to the teaching community, often for free! I looked at two edublogs in particular for inspiration.
The first blog I looked at was Zambombazo, an amazing resource website for Spanish teachers. I first saw it when my classmate wrote about it, and enjoyed a few hours exploring the site. When I went to my placement the next day to rave about it to my mentor teacher, I found that she already knew about Zambombazo, and in fact was planning to use an adapted version of one of their activities that very week! The activity was a musical cloze (fill-in-the-blank) focusing on the preterit tense, with some comprehension and interpretation questions on the side. I thought this was a great activity because it practiced multiple things at once - reviewing the preterit tense, listening on a phonetic level, and interpreting the written and spoken (actually, sung) Spanish. The questions also focused on different levels of understanding - literal understanding, inferences, and bridging to world knowledge. Zachary Jones has a TON of these cloze activities, and many of them focus on specific grammar or thematic points, so the class can do a fun activity without having to take time away from core content. In fact, the fun and multi-sensory nature of the activity reinforces the grammar and vocabulary because it's so much more emotionally engaging than flash-cards and rote memorization, so it sticks in students' minds.
One of my favorite sections of the site was Doblado Doblado (doubled dubbing). Dialect and accent are always issues in teaching a second language, especially in areas with very limited contact with the target language. I learned a dialect similar to the one my mentor teacher speaks, so our students get a lot more exposure to that dialect than to other ones. We balance this out by using resources from a variety of countries, and dialectal differences is even a theme in one of the upper level classes.
Doblado Doblado looks at movie scenes and trailers dubbed in Latin American and European Spanish. There are cloze activities for the two versions, and often there are questions comparing the two. This is a great way to introduce the concept of language variation even at beginning levels of Spanish instruction. Not to mention the fact that students get to watch part of a favorite movie in class, but rather than turning their brains off for movie-time, they focus extra hard on the dialogue so they can hear the differences between the two versions. It's a win-win!
Another blog I looked at was Work-Life Imbalance, written by an amazing teacher I met at the Michigan World Languages Conference last month. Her blog is much more personal, and rather than providing specific resources, it serves as a source of emotional and philosophical inspiration. One post in particular really struck me: Making my Students Uncomfortable. Teaching languages is about so much more than teaching grammar and vocab - it's about teaching culture, and intercultural interactions. This post addresses the importances of pushing students outside their comfort zones in order to get them to really think - but not pushing them so far that they disengage. As a high school teacher, I can really relate, and I hope to hear back from her with some stories about what has and has not worked out in her classrooms in the past.
What other blogs have you all read that inspired you, either in terms of content and activities, or in terms of revisiting your philosophy of teaching and learning?
I believe that this is how teachers should be. If an activity successfully teaches our students important language skills, we want to share it far and wide so other students (and teachers) can benefit. This is one of the great things about the current internet culture. Not only do I have access to the minds of four amazing Spanish teachers, as well as a plethora of amazing teachers of other disciplines, at my placement school. Teachers around the world are sharing what has worked for them and offering it to the teaching community, often for free! I looked at two edublogs in particular for inspiration.
The first blog I looked at was Zambombazo, an amazing resource website for Spanish teachers. I first saw it when my classmate wrote about it, and enjoyed a few hours exploring the site. When I went to my placement the next day to rave about it to my mentor teacher, I found that she already knew about Zambombazo, and in fact was planning to use an adapted version of one of their activities that very week! The activity was a musical cloze (fill-in-the-blank) focusing on the preterit tense, with some comprehension and interpretation questions on the side. I thought this was a great activity because it practiced multiple things at once - reviewing the preterit tense, listening on a phonetic level, and interpreting the written and spoken (actually, sung) Spanish. The questions also focused on different levels of understanding - literal understanding, inferences, and bridging to world knowledge. Zachary Jones has a TON of these cloze activities, and many of them focus on specific grammar or thematic points, so the class can do a fun activity without having to take time away from core content. In fact, the fun and multi-sensory nature of the activity reinforces the grammar and vocabulary because it's so much more emotionally engaging than flash-cards and rote memorization, so it sticks in students' minds.
One of my favorite sections of the site was Doblado Doblado (doubled dubbing). Dialect and accent are always issues in teaching a second language, especially in areas with very limited contact with the target language. I learned a dialect similar to the one my mentor teacher speaks, so our students get a lot more exposure to that dialect than to other ones. We balance this out by using resources from a variety of countries, and dialectal differences is even a theme in one of the upper level classes.
Doblado Doblado looks at movie scenes and trailers dubbed in Latin American and European Spanish. There are cloze activities for the two versions, and often there are questions comparing the two. This is a great way to introduce the concept of language variation even at beginning levels of Spanish instruction. Not to mention the fact that students get to watch part of a favorite movie in class, but rather than turning their brains off for movie-time, they focus extra hard on the dialogue so they can hear the differences between the two versions. It's a win-win!
Another blog I looked at was Work-Life Imbalance, written by an amazing teacher I met at the Michigan World Languages Conference last month. Her blog is much more personal, and rather than providing specific resources, it serves as a source of emotional and philosophical inspiration. One post in particular really struck me: Making my Students Uncomfortable. Teaching languages is about so much more than teaching grammar and vocab - it's about teaching culture, and intercultural interactions. This post addresses the importances of pushing students outside their comfort zones in order to get them to really think - but not pushing them so far that they disengage. As a high school teacher, I can really relate, and I hope to hear back from her with some stories about what has and has not worked out in her classrooms in the past.
What other blogs have you all read that inspired you, either in terms of content and activities, or in terms of revisiting your philosophy of teaching and learning?
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