Simplify: A blast from the past

Image:Light pink background with a cassette tape.
Text reads:Blast from the past: An unpublished post from 2019

BLAST FROM THE PAST

I was digging around in my blog recently and found this post. Whoa! It is from late October, 2019. Pre-Covid. Yeah, remember that? 

I was teaching 5th, 7th, and 8th grade- exploratory Spanish, Spanish 1 Honors, Spanish 2 Honors, and Spanish 1B. I was also mentoring a new teacher and teaching a graduate methods class as an adjunct. I think I was too busy to actually publish this! So I am publishing it now, almost 2 years later. 

Interesting fact: I didn't change anything in the post, other than to do a bit of light editing and add some images and links. This is one way in which I don't think my thinking has changed.  Except to add this:

If you love any of the things that I recommend against, it's ok! You are the expert in your life, in your community, in your classroom. My suggestions are based on my years of mentoring teachers who are trying to implement comprehension based teaching in their classroom, observing trends and common concerns from teachers. #NoJudgement. 

Now, in 2022, as I have transitioned to a formal training role, I am trying to create resources and trainings to support teachers. Thinking about these things continues to be a good use of my energy.  As we move into the 2021-22 school year and yet another year of unknowns, I hope that the idea of simplifying might help someone out in making their teaching and lives more joyful. 

October, 2019

I have a lot of half finished posts, and a lot of chores on my to-do list.  In fact, I am leaving to go camping for 5 days with the whole 7th grade...tomorrow morning! And I haven't started packing.

But today, instead of focusing on that, I want to offer a #mindset shift for those of my colleagues who are feeling overwhelmed.

Because, frankly, starting anything new is overwhelming.  And hard.  And rarely 100% successful.

I recently responded to a post on the SOMOS Collab facebook page from someone who's admin wants data to back up their new approach.  I wonder..would the principal ask the math department for data immediately after adopting a new text?  Would the principal expect significant gains in writing directly after adopting a new program, or would they invest in training, time, and let the teachers do their best?  Why is language any different?

Anyway, here is my advice: Simplify. Simplify your planning.  

Image:Light pink background with 80's geometric shapes. 
Text reads: Simplify.

Stop creating more work for yourself- we have so much to do already!  Here are some things that I see teachers doing that seem to make things harder:  

1) Powerpoints (or Presentations)

Feel like you have to have a powerpoint for every minute? Reconsider. Making powerpoints is a huge time suck. What would it be like instead to step away from the projector and sit down with your students? What would it feel like to give them a text and read it with them, without projecting? What would it be like to orient your room away from a screen? Can you just project the page that you want to share instead of putting it into a slideshow? What would the time savings be?

Image:Light pink background with 80's geometric shapes.
Text reads: Do you really need that presentation?

Note: I did make a master powerpoint for one class, for a book study. I did it to see if I liked it since it seems to be the main format for so many teachers, especially language teachers. While it is nice to have that resource now, the time investment overall seemed to be not really worth it, for me.  Others are different, so take this with a grain of salt.  

2) The search for more resources

First, I suggest that you find a curriculum. Or if you are teaching a novel, get the teacher's guide.

Then teach the curriculum.  Unless you absolutely MUST add content because of things you can't control, just teach it.  Live with it for a year or two.  See how that goes. Do some reflection.  Then...start adding.

Don't like the song that was suggested in the curriculum? Consider skipping it or, try teaching it.  I mean, it was put in the curriculum for a reason.  Decide if your gut was wrong- later.   Rather than spending time looking for or creating new materials, maybe just don't.  It won't kill the students to not listen to a new song every week. (We do one song about every 3-4 weeks. My kids are ok!)  Of course, use your professional judgement and don't use materials that will get you in trouble.

Image:Light pink background with 80's geometric shapes. 
Text reads: Pick a resource. Stick with it.

Feeling overwhelmed by resources? Take a look at this blog post that I wrote with some helpful links (I think!): CI Overwhelm: Practical Tools for Coping

3) Theme days

Joke Thursday, Cat Wednesday...they are great ideas!  But wow, the amount of work to collect those resources, and then make them comprehensible to different levels...that sounds absolutely overwhelming.  And if you use them in every class, then you have to keep doing it- day after day, year after year.   

While I love the idea of using the same resource for each class (and I have done this), what that means is that each year, you have to find new resources. That is  lot of work! 

Image:Light pink background with VHS tape.
Text reads: Are theme days worth it? What could you do instead?

4)Assessment Data Tracking for Planning

I am not saying that we should eliminate assessment. (But imagine! What would that look like???) I am saying that some of the things we do, e.g. some kinds of data tracking, and using that information to plan, may not be a good use of teacher time.

I have written a lot about assessment.  I really like talking and thinking about assessment.  
(Most of my assessment writings are linked here, and here.) But really, I feel like we spend WAY too much time talking about assessment when we know it doesn't really help with language acquisition. In fact, it doesn't even help for us to see what the students don't know- not really!  

Since language acquisition is stage-like and ordered, there is pretty much nothing to do but...give more input, and make sure it is comprehended.   That's it.  So, again, try to simplify.  This is a video I made with Martina Bex about how I simplify assessment- and more. Take a look! Assessment Hacks and Hope in SOMOS.  

In all seriousness, I used to use a data tracking form where I listed an objective at the top (e.g. uses time indicators correctly- son las 3:00, es la una, a las 2:00) and then listed the kids who could do it and the kids who couldn't. It looked great in terms of admin data requirements. And took a TON of time. Like SO MUCH TIME.  And that time- well, I can say with all seriousness that it was wasted time. Wasted for me, wasted for student learning. 

And this is why:  The present-practice-produce-assess-reteach cycle that is drilled into teachers doesn't fit so well in a comprehension based framework.  We know that explicit instruction does not lead to implicit language. And those features will develop in stages, in a particular order, and those features will be developed independent of instruction! So, tracking that information *only* shows me what students can not yet do.  

Re-teaching how to use time indicators is not going to help students use it in the long-term. It will certainly be boring and not really affect their language system at all, except maybe to impede acquisition of that form.  There might be some short term effects for some students. If I re-teach it, then re-test it, how much time am I spending? How much time am I giving up that could be spent doing something that does help them acquire? And what about the kids who have brains that are not yet ready to get it (which is NORMAL)?  What will it feel like for them to fail an assessment-again? Ug. I feel kind of gross just thinking about that.  

If you are in a district that requires you to read every word that students write, assign fewer words!  Instead of a 10 minute freewrite, do a 5 minute freewrite. Don't assign them to every class at the same time! Interested in reading more about freewrites? Take a look- Timed Freewrites: One Practice that Serves Many Purposes

If your district requires you to track data, here is an article that might help: Teacher Goals and SLOs.

Image:Light pink background with a cassette tape labeled Tea with BVP: Ordered Development and a walkman. 
Text reads: Keep SLA principles in mind when using assessment data. 

People are often surprised that I don't bring work home with me.  I don't, even with having fewer planning hours and more preps, because I am trying to keep things as simple as possible.  I found a curriculum.  I like it, I teach it, and I rarely supplement it because it's pretty robust. If I do supplement it, it is because I have something I really want to try out, or I am really passionate about something, and it only takes a little bit of time and effort to prep. 

How can you simplify? What are the time sucks in your planning process?

Image:Dark pink and black background with 80's sunset, cityscape, and palm trees.
Text reads: How can you simplify your teaching?

This post was inspired by the book Fewer Things, Better, by Angela Watson.  I *HIGHLY* recommend her work, and this book in particular, for focusing on what matters.  I am not an employee or in any way recompensed for recommending this book.  

A week in the life of a comprehension-based classroom

I had a pretty good week.

Not a great week- in fact, I went home sick one day with a migraine- but the rest of the teaching went pretty well.

Here are some of the things that I did- maybe you all can find inspiration here!  This is just a list with links of things that I did with all my classes!  

Spanish 2 Honors 

Monday: We started with Weekend chat, then we co-created a story from SOMOS 1, Unit 14.  After class, I typed it up.  
                                  
Here are some resources for co-creating stories:  

• Summer SOMOS Fun Club episode on Story Asking
• Handout and resources
• Blog post and more info (From Martina Bex)
• If you are coming to ACTFL 2019, I will be presenting on this very topic!  

Tuesday: We reviewed the story- students read it out loud in pairs than worked to create their 
Top 8 events, then we reviewed those events as a class.

Students reading!  

Wednesday:I went home sick, so students read for 15 minutes (Free Voluntary Reading/FVR), did a 10 minute free write, and worked on Sr. Wooly or Garbanzo for the remaining time.

Thursday: no class

Friday:  Free voluntary reading, short discussion about upcoming all-school service project, then Running dictation with their Top 8 Events from Wednesday.   (My directions that I post are here.)  To finish, we reviewed upcoming hard deadlines and filled out daily engagement for the week. This class was shorter than usual due to a special schedule. 

Spanish 1B

Monday: Weekend chat, read and dramatized biography of Barrio Zumba from a resource from Nelly Hughes.  (It looks like the resource is no longer available, though.)  We played a short Pencil Grab game with the true/false questions included in resource.  Then we listened to the song Mexicano.

This was the starter for our discussion about food

Tuesday: We briefly discussed favorite foods, then listened to the song Mexicano again and tried to fill out the cloze lyrics included.  We listened to the song at regular speed once, than at 75% speed (I love youtube when it works!) a second time.  For a brain break, I taught them the basic steps to a zumba routine set to the song, and we danced for a few minutes.   Then we reviewed the lyrics (with L1 translation) and discussed them briefly.  Students independently read a text (also from Nelly's resource) about Mexican food, and then responded to comprehension questions by coloring a glyph that I created.  


Wednesday: I went home sick, so students read for 15 minutes, did a 10 minute freewrite, and continued to work on their glyph.  

Thursday: no class

Friday: Free voluntary reading for 10-15 minutes, then short discussion of our all-school service project.  Students then got into teams for the Lucky Reading Game!  We played that until it was time to review upcoming hard deadlines and fill out daily engagement for the week.  One section had an extra 15 minutes of instructional time, so we spent some time doing a Write and Discuss about the service project.  

Spanish 1 Honors 

Monday: Weekend chat, then we started a new unit today, SOMOS 1 Unit 04, so I introduced the core vocabulary and students put those and our unit objectives into their interactive-ish notebooks.  

Rare homework, from The StoryTeller's Corner

Then I taught them gestures for the core vocabulary and we reviewed gestures for other words. (Click here for an example of what that looks like, from a different class.)   We used the resources included in the unit to see the words in context and then did some personalized questions and answers.   (Here is a video of that process, but with a different unit, if you are curious about what that looks like.)  

Although I *rarely* assign homework, I assigned an activity from this resource from The Storyteller's Corner, where they had to draw and color what they want to be when they grow up.  

Tuesday:  We discussed more personalized questions to start- including "what class do you want to take that is not possible at our school?" I learned so much about them!  Then we spent some time on the song "Quiero Ser", by Nubeluz, which depending on how you introduce it can be loved or hated.  

I LOVE this song and kids seem to respond to that!  First, I told them how much I love it, then I gave them the lyrics to follow along with.  The second time we watched the video, and the third time (no joke!) the kids wanted to try to do the dance that the singers do.  Finally, there is a short comprehension-based activity that they worked on that is included in the unit.  

Wednesday: No class.  Before I went home sick, I took their colored pictures and put them into a slideshow for Card Talk on Thursday.

Thursday: We started with the question "What do you not want to be?" and "Why?" and that discussion lasted for a while.  We followed up the discussion with a Write and Discuss, because the previous night, one of my fellow PLC members said she was trying to do more W&D and I realized that I should try to do that as well. (I love my PLC, even if this year we can only virtually meet through voice messages.)  

Then, we listened to and danced to the song Quiero Ser again, and finished the class with Card Talk about their desired future professions.

Slide for Card Talk about the future...

 
Friday: After a short discussion about our all-school service project, we did the lyric activity suggested for Quiero Ser by Amaia Montero, that is included in the lesson plans. Students have the lyrics out of order, and working in pairs, they had to quickly cut them up then listen to the song a couple of times and put them in order.  After, I briefly comprehensified some of the lyrics and reviewed the order, then we read the included biography of Amaia.  This was a super-shortened class, so that is all we had time for!  

Fifth grade: I see these kiddos for 45 minutes a week.
 As a warm up, we did a little TPR (Total Physical Response) and acted out a couple of sentences that were interesting.   Let me explain what I mean:  I had them draw how they were feeling, then I asked "Who is tired?" and "Who is hungry?"  They were all hungry so I gave them the phrase "wants to eat" and asked them "What do you want to eat?" and pulled a couple of props out as ideas. It turned out that one kid wanted to eat a dinosaur so we acted that out (with another kid being the dinosaur) and so on.  Of course, I was narrating it in Spanish and making sure it was comprehensible.  


We have been working with our own version of this simple beginner story (in Spanish!).  Last week, we did "all the world's a stage" with the story and I took pictures of the kids acting it out.  Then I put the pictures in a slideshow. (Description for that activity coming soon- sorry! For a longer read about Reader's Theatre, check out this resource.)

Click for an editable slide to show!

I passed out a copy of the story for kids to review with a buddy, then I showed them the pictures.  I wanted them to look at the picture and decide what moment in the story it was representing, then write that moment down on a whiteboard (using their copy of the text). 

Here is an example of the directions etc. only I used pictures of the students acting out the story rather than their illustrations.

 I had no idea how it would go, honestly. This is an activity I do ALL THE TIME with my older students, but I wasn't sure if it would be ok for the younger ones. 
It went...ok.  A couple of kids were really frustrated because it wasn't the kind of thing that had a clear-cut answer, but I think that is the kind of kid they are at this stage in their lives, and the rest of them seemed to enjoy it and read the story about 20 times.  

Then, we transitioned to another new activity.  A couple of weeks ago, I gave them a simple storyboard to illustrate with the text of the story, and then I cut up their illustrations and the words and put them in baggies (1 per pair of kids) to make some partner activities.  I wanted to try this kind of activity (also available in French) that I learned about from an excellent presentation by elementary teacher Alison Litten, so I tried it.  I did modify the directions to be in L1 to allow them to focus on the reading and re-reading of the story.  I was surprised at how quickly it went for the fast processors (who I grouped together), and how completely on task all the pairs were!  I will certainly be doing this one again!  

So, that's it!  I hope this was a useful read!  

Teacher Goals

One of the things I love the most about being a teacher is the expectation that I am always a learner as well.

I love getting better at things.  I love learning new things.  I love the challenge of figuring out how to do something well, or how to get better at something.  And of course, because I am human, I love that feeling of success. 

I was very lucky to attend a graduate program that required an immense, intense amount of self-reflection.  We were taught how to make self-reflection a habit, part of our lesson planning routines and our lives.  I am sure that I am a better teacher for that habit.

But it is easy to turn self-reflection into criticism, or even self-loathing.  Believe me- watching hundreds of hours of video of myself - to make videos for Comprehensible Online and to post here for others to watch- is really, really hard. But I am a better teacher because of it.  When I watch a video, or even reflect on the day or the lesson, it is very easy to go down the path of seeing only the things I did wrong, the things I could have done better.  It is hard to train myself to find the good.

I think this is a roadblock for teachers- when we take the time to be reflective, it is hard to get out of the habit of criticism, because that is how we are evaluated.  But it is imperative to shift our mindset to look for the positives, if we want to be better teachers through self-reflection.

The Coaching from the Heart model, as used by coaches at Agen, NTPRS,  IFLT, and now all over the country, is a great way to start.  

As coaches, we only look for the positive things that teachers do to make language comprehensible and make the students feel encouraged and safe to take risks.  It is such an amazing feeling to find out what we do well.  In fact, I think it was Angela Watson who suggested taking what you already do well...and getting better at it.  Isn't that a radical idea? 

So here are some of the goals I have set over the past years as a teacher focused on communicative embedded input, aka comprehensible input, and how I measured my success. 

I believe in setting goals that are focused, achievable, and that will have big impacts. 

My big piece of advice: Pick just one resource to teach and one skill or goal to work on.  

Before I share these, I want to say one really important thing.  I see a lot of teachers trying to figure out how to use all the great resources that are available these days -all at the same time.  I get it- there are so many great things out there, but I think that is really hard.

I think it is better to focus on just one resource/curriculum.  That way, there is less worry about what to teach, so you can concentrate on how. 

I use the SOMOS curriculum for the most part.  For the first three years that I taught, I only used SOMOS (and only after the first year, a novel).  Then I started adding in bits and pieces from other curriculum creators- Señor Wooly, resources from SomewhereToShare and Placido Language Resources, and other resources from Martina Bex.  

These goals are written as SMART goals.

Year 1* goals: survival.  

I was just trying to figure out which way was up- new school, new level, new job, new career, etc.

Year 2: SLOW

Why: After being a student at NTPRS in a few demo classes and during coaching, I realized that the easiest, most impactful change I could make was to go slow.   I even made a huge poster of my cats being super lazy with the word "slowly" on the bottom and hung it where I could see it while I was teaching.  

Specific: My goal was to go slow- specifically, to speak slowly, with pausing and pointing to slow me down. 

Measurable: I filmed myself in 15 minute segments and watched how many times I pointed to the L1 meaning, and did my best to measure my rate of speech. I also did a lot of self-reflection, and my supervisor agreed to observe me for just this one thing. 

Attainable: Getting better at just one thing is realistic.

Realistic: It was very, very easy to focus on one thing.  It felt manageable.  Since I already knew, more or less, what I was teaching, focusing on just this felt like I could really do it.  

Time based: I actually gave myself the whole year to work on this skill but self-assessed regularly.

Focusing on just this has made the greatest impact on my teaching.  

Year 3: Survival.  

Because some years, that is what you have to do.  This was the year that we doubled the size of our middle school but did not hire any new staff.  I have very few memories of this year, other than crying a lot.  

Year 4: Brain Breaks 

Why: I spent the summer reading about boys, and how boys learn.  (Hmmm...that was the year that instead of having a whole school read, we were given a list and got to choose.  That was some good PD. Hint hint, admins!)  I read Boys Adrift by Dr. Leonard Sax,  and two other books about gender differences and education, and then I also spent some quality time with Annabelle Williamson, who is, of course, the Queen of brain breaks.  I decided that one very tangible thing I could do to make my classroom more boy-brain friendly was to do more brain breaks.

Specific: just brain breaks (not rethinking everything!) and managing them. My goal was to incorporate 4-6 brain breaks an hour, or more. 

Measurable: I measured by self-reflection, counting the number of breaks that I took in certain class periods, watching video of my teaching, and having my administrator observe me.  

Attainable: I felt like I had enough of a handle on my classroom, being comprehensible, school culture, etc. to be able to focus my energy on this.  

Realistic: I felt like it was reasonable to try this.  I thought it through and made a plan. (My plan was basically to teach the "get quiet and go back to your seats" procedure first, and to keep a running list in front of me with favorite brain breaks and USE them.) 

Time based: I gave myself the entire school year to figure this out.  Having that much time helped me feel like I could try, fail, reflect, and try again.  

Result: Brain breaks are such a huge part of my practice now that I can't even do a presentation with adults without doing brain breaks.  

Download my expectations here.

Year 5: Consistency in responses to disruptions 

 This last year, my goal was to consistently use the classroom management system in A Natural Approach to the Year, also referred to as ANNATY, to maintain consistency and better manage my responses to behaviors.  A key to this plan is to stay positive, so I added a sub-goal of being relentlessly positive the whole time.   

Why: the previous year was a real bear in terms of classroom management- just a handful of kids, but they really worked me.  It is the only time I have told my admin that I never wanted a kid back in my class.  I felt like the plan outlined in ANNATY fit well with my philosophy about management as well as my teaching style,  and provided really clear, easy to follow steps that could be practiced and implemented with consistency. 

Specific: I was going to use the A,B,C, D levels of responses to disruptions with positivity. I wrote them out for myself and posted a mini-version next to my computer, so I could see it at any point. 

Measurable: This was a little harder to measure, but I filmed myself and did a lot of self-reflection. And as far as measuring the positivity, it really came down to how I felt at the end of the class.   

Realistic: Because I believed that this was going to be a good plan for me and my teaching style, it felt very realistic. And again, it was ONE thing.  

Time-based: I had a check-in with myself at each mid-term and term end (6x). But again, I did it for a whole year.

Gaining consistency and maintaining the attitude of Relentless Positivity, (credited to master teacher Paul Kirshling but I first heard it from Annabelle) made another huge difference. I had the best year of my career.  It wasn't because I had great kids (I didn't, ask all the other teachers!) nor was it because it was easy year (Oh, it really, really wasn't).  I think it is because I was both consistent and positive.

Year 6: Responding to Anxious students 

Big goal: I would like to better support high-anxiety, anxious students in my classroom.   

Why: Let me be perfectly honest: I have little patience for these students.  They are the ones that get under my skin and that I have to work very hard to not just dismiss them. And I know that I can do a lot better at meeting them where they are at and helping them develop a sense of efficacy and agency.  It is a real area of growth for me because I just don't understand why they can't ....anyway, I know I need to work on this. I teach an honors class and I have a LOT of these students. They drive me crazy and I KNOW that I am not always meeting their needs.  

Specific: I want to recognize my own lack of patience and respond in a way that will support these students- with kindness and understanding, not impatience and frustration.  My plan is to identify when I start feeling frustrated and impatient, and take a deep breath, then think before responding.  And when I respond, I want to respond with love.  

Measurable: I plan on asking my admin for some ideas on how to measure this.  I know that I can train myself to respond better, but I would like some feedback.

Time Sensitive: I want to give myself a full year for this.  

What are your goals for the upcoming year?  

Do you need some ideas?  Here is a blog post I wrote about CI overwhelm, and also about goals- but at the bottom, there is a graphic organizer that might help categorize what you want to work on, and a little bit more about why I believe picking ONE THING is more powerful than many things. Please feel free to take a look.

*This was actually my fourth year teaching, but it was my first year really committing to input based teaching.  

Mindset reminder: as the new trimester starts and pressure to get kids "ready" ramps up

Backstory:  

Shortly before the grapefruit knee

I decided to get knee surgery after 2 years of PT, tons of doctor's appointments, and a grapefruit-sized knee after our second day of bike touring in southwestern Utah.

When I started paddle boarding because cycling was getting to be too much, I realized that I really needed to do something about it.  (If you don't know me, it might be helpful to know that I started teaching cycling in the public schools, and my previous career was as a cycling educator and advocate. So not being able to ride is major. And I ride to work every day possible.)

Back to school:
I sat on a stool, I put my knee up, and I tried to teach. I tried to follow my plan. I tried not to cry.

I sort of mostly succeeded, in that I didn't usually cry until I actually got home.  Usually.

Some days, the pain was so overwhelming that I could barely form words in English, and the thought of trying to do anything hard in another language brought those tears back.


So I let go.


I let go of my plans.  Instead, I did lots of card talk- only I would give the kids like 10 minutes and sometimes colored pencils to draw, and then collect their papers and make a slideshow for the next time I saw them. (Sounds like a lot of work- it's really, really not, with airdrop and a phone. Here is an old post about how I do this.)

These, plus some other pictures, ended up being an hour of lesson plan
in 2 different classes!

I decided to try Special Person interviews, something I had tried 4 years ago and hated.  The kids loved them and begged for them.  I tacked on some Write and Discuss, and voila, that was the lesson plan.  For an assessment, I had them write about themselves.  (And the results were mind-blowing.  Not a single student said "Yo es 13."  (I is 13).

I even showed funny videos, and used them for input, but I didn't always do a reading afterwards.  (The copier is a LONG way from my classroom.)

I leaned very heavily into FVR.  And Sr. Wooly.  And Weekend chat.  And small talk.  And whatever I could do to keep the language flowing, minimize trips to the copier, or even trips that involved standing up and writing a new word on the board with a translation.

I got REALLY GOOD at keeping my vocabulary in-bounds- and I was already getting good at it!

I'm not counting down. You're counting down.

I guess I want to write this for myself- to remind myself as I stare down the calendar at 40 more days of school, 8 of which are Mondays (at least according to the daughter of the kindergarten teacher, who is good at knowing things like how many days are left), that input is input.


Input that kids are interested in listening to and input that they understand and are interacting with is all good.  In fact, it's the best thing I can do for them.



There is no rule that says I have to follow my scope and sequence. (Thank goodness.)

There is no rule that says I have to cover this or make sure to teach that. (I am very fortunate.)  

There are only the constraints and demands I place on myself, and I really want to cultivate a different mindset.

I am incredibly lucky, I know, and I think I need to remember and acknowledge it.

I know myself.  I know that if I am not careful, I am going to look back at January, February, and March of this year and ask myself what the heck I was even doing those months.  There is hardly anything glued in our interactive-ish notebooks, and if it weren't for Anne Marie Chase's quick quizzes and weekly timed freewrites, there would be no assessment grades in the gradebook.

But you know what I was doing?  Getting to know my kids.  Exploring their interests, and mine.

Shooting the breeze with them, in Spanish.  Watching videos of cats and sloths and penguins and then talking about it. We literally spent an hour discussing the gross things that pets do and eat.  It was one of the funniest hours of my life as kids shared horribly funny stories of their pets bringing them dismembered bits of other animals.  We spent another hour talking about their class trip and what they saw, felt, and experienced in the nation's capitol, which led to an intense discussion about what is feminism, what is sexist, and what is culture.  I could not have planned that if I tried.

I want to remember that some of the fastest and best hours of teaching have gone by when we just read, or chat, or look at interesting pictures and talk about them.

I want to remember (in May, when the pressure to have my 8th graders "ready" is really building up) that I am preparing them to communicate, not to conjugate.

A review of Plickers: low-tech edu-tech

I decided to test-drive “Plickers” in my classroom, if anyone else wants to know about it.

https://www.plickers.com

I decided to try it because it sounded intriguing, and there were no computers available for me to do a Kahoot on.  Why the kids love Kahoot, I do not know.  But they do, so once in a while, I give them what they love.  I like the idea of trying out new things, and the idea of using something both low tech (printed cards) and high tech (phone cameras, apps) was interesting.  I sometimes use comprehension questions about readings as more input, so the multiple choice format works well. 

Overview of Plickers:

Basically, you print out cards, create a class list in the app and assign cards to kids,  create a quiz in an app or online,  project the questions, then use the app and your phone’s camera to “read” the student answers that they display the cards. You can only ask T/F or multiple choice questions with Plickers.  Each card has an A-B-C-D side, and kids respond by rotating the card to answer the question.

Here’s my quick and dirty review: 

(TL:DR-Not worth it) 

• The interface is pretty much horrible- the web and mobile versions are both difficult to use, confusing, and time consuming.  The only easy thing that plickers does is that it was easy to import a class list.
• I printed up the cards, made a quiz in the interface, and tried it.
• The “live view” function barely functioned, it took forever for the camera to “read” the results, and students were sitting around waiting.  This could be because the printer was running out of toner, so the cards are not super dark, but the camera could read the cards, just not quickly.  The interface was so bad that it took me (a lot of) time to load up the next question, which did not help.
• Multiple choice or true/false questions leave something to be desired anyway, although for a quick formative assessment they are useful.  Supposedly, you can actually track answers and create graphs and score reports, but that did not work at all for me.  
• I was really hoping the novelty factor would be worth something.  It was not.
• The kids hated it- especially compared to Kahoot or quizlet live.