The days before a holiday...

When I first started teaching I totally ignored the holidays.  Part of that is because of my personal beliefs: I don't celebrate Christmas and I think it's fundamentally a Christian celebration, and in a public school, I don't think it has a place.  I feel deeply sensitive to students of other religious backgrounds who are forced to sing about Jesus. I certainly don't begrudge anyone's beliefs or spirituality, I just don't want to feel forced to celebrate it, nor do I want to force it on others.  I don't mind taking a stand.  I feel the same way about most holidays, but for different reasons.   I also completely ignored the fact that the kids are wound up and unfocused.  I tried to just go on with class.

Guess what? It didn't work.  At all.  I got a lot of negativity from kids, from families, and the work the kids produced was a waste.

Luckily, I started getting smarter.  My first year teaching elementary school, I had a read-in the last day before break, where the kids brought sleeping bags, pillows, and stuffed animals, and we read.  ALL DAY.  Parents donated and served tea and healthy snacks, and it was truly one of the greatest days of my teaching career.  I think it worked because a) It was in line with my values as a teacher, b) Who doesn't love to read with tea and stuffed animals?  c) Because it acknowledged the holiday without impinging on anyone else's values.

As a middle school teacher in a school that is culturally and ethically Jewish, Christmas is not an issue.  It's great.  However, there is still the issue of kids being wound up and it not being a great time to do assessments or present new information.  I'm trying this year to be more responsive and aware, so in my planning I decided to do some activities that are still CI but maybe not aligned exactly with what I'm doing in each class.  One lesson worked out particularly well because I had a sub and the kids could work on the activity without any language support from me.

Activity 1- ¡Yo Soy Original!
Novice learners- This is a follow up for ¿Qué te gusta? mini-unit from Martina Bex:
(This activity has been adapted from this blog post and Pinterest.)

Students (as homework or with a sub) made drawings of their bodies out of things that they like.  They had to label them in Spanish.

In class, we reviewed me gusta(n) and a él/ella le gusta(n) using our notes from a prior lesson and my beloved stuffed animals.  Students first told me what they like and got to hold that stuffed animal, then in order to keep it for the rest of class they had to give me one correct sentence about someone else.  To scaffold, they got to use their notes, try several times, and there was LOTS of repetition.  AWESOME!

To follow up, I took their "original" drawings and put them on the document camera and discussed a few.  Students wrote sentences using the examples on the document camera that we did together, then I put up all the drawings around the room and students had to write 8 original sentences about their classmates, guessing whose paper belonged to whom.  I told them that if they couldn't guess, to just use él/ella (he/she).
Here are the directions for the activity:  (click on image to download)


 For an editable word version with rubrics (6 directions to a page), click here.


Here are the directions I gave the students for the writing/follow-up activity:

Directions: Write at least 8 GREAT sentences about your classmates and what they like. 

Example:                                                 A Juan le gusta esquiar.

A Julia le gustan gatos.

Challenge: (Do these in addition to the previous 8.)

Write about two people:                                 A Juan y a Julia les gusta esquiar. 

Write about you and someone else:               A Juan y a mí nos gustan gatos. 

Click here for an editable word doc.  

Activity 2- Strip bingo about Hanukah  
(I have only done this with my more advanced classes, but I'm going to try it with my 1Bs.)

I found this great free story on Teachers Pay Teachers.  I created a document to project and had kids choose six words to write down on their strips.  See here for an explanation of Strip Bingo from The Comprehensible Classroom.  The kids LOVE this game but the best part for my level 2s is that they try to trick me into saying the words before I get to them (so they can win).  This generates a ton of language and laughter, and sometimes they even succeed.  By the way, I used it with my 1Bs and it worked!
Click below for the projectable document and "strips".  (But really...use recycled paper from the paper cutter, please!)


Activity 3- Un sapo de otro pozo
This is another of Martina's great games.  I do not know how well it would work in a novice classroom, but my level 2s ate it up and had a blast.  Please follow this link for more information.

Ready-To-Go Embedded Reading

Earlier this year, many of the 8th grade girls in our school applied and were selected for a Young Women in Science program at the Teton Science School.  It sounded like an amazing experience.  However, it left me with one class of 5 students.  I had no idea what to do with that class, so I looked around on the wonderful internet and found an embedded reading + a video.  However, I wanted to make it a little fancier, with comprehension questions, and targeting the structures that were causing my students some frustration.

Target Structures:

• (no) puede bailar
• tiene que
• le ayuda

Yep, these structures are from the Castellers de Terragona unit from The Comprehensible Classroom. However, I found that the students needed MORE REPS!

So this is an embedded reading based off of one from embeddedreading.com.  The original is linked here.  Here's the video:


Click below for a pdf of the booklet.  Note:  The 2nd page of the booklet is reversed because that's how to get it to copy correctly on my school's machine.  Please use the "rotate" function in your pdf viewer if you need to!

Starters (Bell Ringers) and Objectives

I recently posted on the tprs listerv (moretprs.yahoo.com) about my Bell ringers (I call them Para Empezars: PEs) and was startled by how many people wanted to see what I use.

I thought I'd take a moment to explain.  They are a great way for you to assess the previous day’s topic.

1) I use PEs to ease the transition from one class to another.  Since I am almost always at the door to greet my students, this gets them working right away.  Also, we don't have bells so holding students accountable for being on time is nearly impossible.
3) I do a variety of types, but they are all 2-5 tasks/sentences/errors to correct. Most fall into these categories: translate sentences (from L1 to L2 or vice versa), correct the errors, answer questions for PQA prep, fill in the blanks using target structures.It should be noted here that I use many of the PEs from Martina Bex's Somos curriculum, except when I don't. The example shown is from the La Universidad unit.


4) Students see it at the beginning of class every day. It’s got objectives, target structures, class jobs, homework, my office hours, and a place for me to write the starter.

5) I use my starters to let students get feedback on our objectives, and students track their understanding of the objectives and create their study plan almost every day. That’s the homework. The students who study progress. FYI, for me, studying means re-reading/retelling the story, unless they missed a class. Then, it’s quizlet. I also created a tracker for their notebooks that they use to record their progress. Here is what it looks like:

Please remember to share, attribute, and not profit!  (See copyright permissions on the right.)

 Click here for an editable version of the objectives.

Click here to see an example of the Para Empezar board.  Sorry, I can't provide an editable version. Since I modified it from a TPT purchase (many years ago, before I knew about things like citing), I still have to protect copyright. Thanks for understanding. But do what I did- look at my example and make your own. It will not take long. I promise! 

Update: A lot of folks requested an editable version of the Para Empezar board. Hey folks! Since I modified it from a TPT purchase, I can not share it! That would be violating copyright. Thanks.

Update: Helpless learners and the opposite

Today, after yesterday's frustrations, I sat down with two of my most motivated, unafraid-to fail at anything classes and asked:
What do you do in your head that allows you to get past your initial fear (of seeing something that you don't understand) and just get to work?  What's your process?

The answers were fascinating and led me to almost cry in joy.  These answers came from a class of 7th graders that I have only just started teaching in October, and 8th graders that I have been teaching since last year.

• I looked at the words I know and just wrote those down.  The others came to me.
• I remembered what I know about (Italian, French, from last year) and tried to figure it out.
• It's fun to figure it out.  
• It's fun to have the challenge- like a puzzle. 
• I read the words around the hard words and figured it out.

Then I asked why it was fun- what was happening in their heads or in the class to make it something that they wanted to do.  (This was where I almost started crying.)

• It's not a competition in this class.
• It's ok to get the wrong answer in this class.
• If it's challenging it means I'm learning.
• How we learn in this class isn't stressful.
• You make it fun.
• I appreciate how you make it ok to be wrong, and we get to do fun stuff.  
• We are all on the same level here.
• Even the homework is awesome.  

So, my big question is:  what did I do with those two classes?  How can I recreate that feeling of love, support, trust, fun, and safety so that all my kids feel like that?  

And also, how do I celebrate such a mind-blowing success???  WOW!!!  

Are we creating helpless learners?

My gut reaction is YES!  Especially those who are "high" academically.  And I'll tell you why:
I have a class of "faster paced" students.  They are mostly girls, mostly with great handwriting and organizational skills.  They always bring their materials to class and meticulously write things down in their planner.  They almost never forget assignments. (The fact that they are mostly girls who got accelerated is a whole 'nother post, or possibly rant.  I'll save it.)

But they can't actually do much.  No- that's not fair.  Let me rephrase:  they really, really struggle with tasks such as inference, breaking down large tasks into smaller ones (and not in an organizational way), and problem solving.

These are the students who are so afraid of getting a wrong answer that they are unable to make a guess. Or, their brain gets completely overwhelmed with anxiety that it shuts down.

 I've seen this dynamic play out a few times in one particular class, and I vacillate between being incredibly frustrated ("Where do  I put my name?"  "Where it says Nombre!" I know, not fair of me but true.) and terribly saddened (What do you mean you don't know where to put your name?  How is that possible? What have we/I done wrong?)   What I notice is that often they don't know where to put their name because they are so terrified of putting it in the wrong place and...? Getting eaten by the no-name monster?  What role have I played in creating this fear of doing anything wrong?  Or how am I allowing it to continue?

I stopped calling tests and quizzes tests and quizzes.  I made my assessments short and sweet, 5-10 questions, and usually unannounced, in the middle of the class period.  That helps reduce anxiety, but I wonder if I am helping them (by reducing their anxiety, thus allowing them to demonstrate the language that they have acquired in a low stress situation) or doing them an injustice (by caving in to their absolute lack of resilience).  I am of two minds.  On one hand, everything that I've read (see sidebar for some links to great books about assessment) and come to believe about assessment, humanizing students, and recognizing that they are only 12 years old, indicates that they don't need more stress and that stress won't help them with my goal: to acquire language.

But I have to wonder: am I helping to create their helplessness?

There is also the question: are the tasks I am giving them too hard?  If they are not being successful, one would think that yes, I haven't adequately prepared them.  However, if I, for example, ask them to translate a sentence and ask them to explain it, most can do it 100% of the time.  Today I was using the Tweetly Deet assessment from Martina Bex's Las Novias unit.  I love this formative assessment because she has done an amazing job of finding authentic text (tweets, in this case), that use the targeted structures in context, and asking great questions that involve both knowledge and inference.

I discovered that my "helpless" kids absolutely panicked.  For instance (and this is not an example from the text in order to respect copyright), they had to read Mi hermano va a la iglesia.  (My brother goes to the church.)  The question was who goes to the church (in English)?

When I pointed out that they could translate mi hermano va (my brother goes), they were able identify the brother.  The iglesia could only be a church.  Right?  So about 70% of the kids got it, but the "helpless" couldn't think past the word that they didn't know.  And those kids are the "academically advanced" in our school with high grades.

Later, we were doing a sheet that asked them to look at a diagram of a bull and answer some questions about it.  Again, total panic from the helpless, and the kids who can problem solve were finished.  Some kids couldn't get past the first question.  I tried to give some hints:  "What do you think that word indicates on the diagram?  Which body part are the words near?  Is it a cognate?"  I tried to reduce the fear:  "This isn't graded. " Still, after 20 minutes, I called a halt because some were almost in tears.

How do I teach problem solving? That inference/trusting one's instincts/lack of fear of getting it wrong? How am I not teaching it?