Categories
Educational Teacher's Tool Tips

Looking for an Effective Way to Learn Spanish for Kids?

Reading Time: 2 minutes

Most teachers, parents, and grandparents understand the importance of learning a second language in our globally connected world. The problem is that it is difficult to find good programs that facilitate the learning experience for kids. At FL4K, Foreign Languages FOR Kids, this is our mission. 

We have gathered a team of teachers with over 100 years of combined experience in the classroom to help us develop a state-of-the-art program that truly helps kids learn Spanish. With a long-range goal of having our single digital platform available in many languages, we have started by developing an innovative way for kids to learn Spanish. 

We know that kids love interactive learning with games, images, audio, and instant feedback, as well as the opportunity to record themselves. We have considered that learning vocabulary and grammar in a language vacuum can be a very boring and ineffective way for many kids to learn Spanish. In order to captivate the interest of kids while at the same time helping them to learn Spanish, we created a culture program that includes eight different Hispanic cultures. 

Each unit features more than 50 social media-like posts with gorgeous images, thought-provoking questions, and real-time interest polls about the geography and climate, people, sites of interest, nature, foods, indigenous groups, and global challenges of each culture. Language structures have been scaffolded in a way that naturally builds language proficiency through repetition, much like true language acquisition. 

With FL4K, kids learn Spanish at their own rate, reading and listening about all the fascinating points of interculturality designed and developed by a team of teachers. They learn ser, estar, tener, querer, poder, and me gusta while at the same time learning about the fascinating blue whale of Chile and the pink dolphin and hairless dog of Perú. 

The most effective way for you to witness the exciting features of our program which include a built-in language lab experience and games developed specifically to help kids learn Spanish is to go to our website and watch some of the demonstration videos. 

Share what you find with your students and family members! Help them to discover a brand new way to learn Spanish for kids!

Categories
Uncategorized

Just out! Cathy Duffy’s 103 Top Picks for Homeschool Curriculum

Reading Time: 4 minutes

An icon in the homeschool community

Cathy Duffy began homeschooling her three sons in 1982. Unlike today, homeschool resources were scarce then, and Cathy was dedicated to finding and reviewing as many materials for homeschool families as she could.

Cathy Duffy

Four decades later, the homeschool scene couldn’t be more different, but Cathy’s expertise is needed more than ever.

Cathy authored several books during these years. Her first, the Christian Home Educators Curriculum Manual, was published in 1982. It’s had several new editions, ultimately split into separate books for elementary and secondary grades. More recently, she started her Top Picks series, starting with 100 Top Picks. Her last edition, 102 Top Picks, was published in 2015.

Cathy notes that “the market has changed a lot” in these seven years. “More resources use technology or digital delivery, and many use creative mixtures of physical and digital content. The market has continued to broaden with resources for secular homeschoolers in contrast to the first few decades of homeschooling, when so many resources were Christian.”

One of the beauties of homeschooling is that it allows us to recognize and nurture each one or our very special children. We have the glorious opportunity to help them find out who they are, what they want to be, and how they might get there.

Cathy Duffy

103 Top Picks

With the incredible quantity of resources — some more credible than others — it’s difficult for parents to ascertain which are high quality, which are the right fit for their children, and which will work well together in a cohesive curriculum and schedule. Parents today also need to understand the role technology plays in what they’re purchasing.

If you’re facing any of these issues, you’ll want to check out Cathy’s brand new work, 103 Top Picks. 103 Top Picks is an in-depth analysis guiding parents, particularly new homeschoolers, with strategies to identify the learning styles of each of their children as well as recommendations of Cathy’s 103 top curriculum choices. It’s an essential resource for navigating through the overwhelming number of choices available to homeschool families.

Cathy explains, “if you are a new homeschooling parent…where on earth do you begin? There are far too many choices. How do you know what your child needs? How can you figure this out? That’s the purpose of this book.”

In the second and third chapters of 103 Top Picks, Cathy guides you through hands-on activities to help identify your specific homeschool needs, academic goals, and determine your family’s philosophy for education. Once identified, you can easily sort through the chart of programs to find the ones more likely to be a good fit for your family’s homeschool approach.

103 Top Picks provides a chart of programs for language arts, math, social studies, and science, each broken down by ease of use, teacher prep-time, the amount of direct instruction needed, and if a program supports the Charlotte Mason or the Classical approach. If you aren’t clear on the differences between the Charlotte Mason and Classical approaches, the book explains both of them in the second chapter, as well as additional approaches such as traditional textbooks, unit study, unschooling, independent study, and working under a program.

This chart of programs also shows how each program fits with different learning styles. Cathy believes being aware of your children’s individual learning styles is a powerful tool that will help them learn more effectively. If you don’t know your child’s learning style, don’t worry! In chapter 4, Cathy explains the four learning styles, how to determine which styles work best for your children, and how to teach using the different styles.

‘Mental’ nourishment should take into consideration the strengths and weaknesses of each child — teaching to their strengths and helping to overcome weak areas. There should be extra nourishment for those areas of special interest, and it should be provided at a pace each child can handle — not too slow, not too fast.

Cathy Duffy

In other words, don’t let curriculum guide your homeschool methods; instead, be goal-oriented based on your child’s individual needs and find a curriculum that fits into that agenda.

Cathy also discusses all-in-one curriculums. Cathy discusses the merits and drawbacks of what she calls “packaged programs” that provide a curriculum as well as oversight and record keeping. Programs like this are generally very affordable, but they don’t offer a lot of guidance or flexibility.

There’s also what Cathy calls an “eclectic program”, which involves a mixture of educational approaches. While using an eclectic program would generally mean putting it together yourself, some publishers, such as My Father’s World, Timberdoodle, Sonlight, and BookShark, have put together eclectic programs for parents. Cathy notes that “any of these programs can be a great place to start if you aren’t sure what approach you want to use since they all give you the chance to experience a variety of learning methods.”

I asked Cathy if she had one message for homeschoolers. Her answer? “Set your own goals for what you think is most important for each of your children, and use those to measure your success rather than anyone else’s ideas.”

You can grab your copy of 103 Top Picks here to start learning about the best programs for your children. And learn more about Cathy and read her reviews on her website, CathyDuffyReviews.com.

Categories
Educational Teacher's Tool Tips

Learning with a Spanish for Kids App

Reading Time: 2 minutes

Teacher Tooltip Tuesday: While you are taking a break this summer, try a new Spanish for kids app to offer you a break throughout the school year, too!

It’s summer, and you are on vacation by now, hopefully! Time to take a break! A break is exactly what I invite you to consider in your curriculum planning for next year! Take a look at the features of a state-of-the-art Spanish for kids app called FL4K, to ease your workload and engage your students in learning Spanish in a challenging, engaging, and extremely innovative way.

Why choose FL4K?

There is no program that will supplant the importance of the teacher that reinforces the concepts taught online with hands-on activities, projects, pair activities, etc. Students always need a variety of activities to practice the real-world language skills that they will be learning with this Spanish for kids app.

Nevertheless, FL4K, a Spanish for kids app, includes Spanish games specifically designed to build language proficiency, dialogues with built-in language lab features, practice questions with images, audio, and instant feedback to delight kids and reinforce learning!

Cultural Activities

This Spanish for kids app also includes a culture program that teaches students about eight different Hispanic cultures using carefully scaffolded language structures that build language proficiency.

The app allows students to progress at their own rate, reading and listening about all the fascinating points of interculturality designed and developed by a team of teachers with over 100 years of combined experience in the classroom.

Students will discover interesting facts about the geography and climate, people, sites of interest, native animals, foods, indigenous groups, global challenges, etc. of each culture.

Culture and Language Learning Together

While they are learning about Hispanic culture, they are being challenged to build their language proficiency skills. Instead of learning Spanish in a vacuum, students are learning about cultures and language at the same time. The language learning is so subtle and natural that the students aren’t even aware of how successfully they are building language proficiency.

Three levels into the program, most of the language is in the target language because of how practical language is so carefully and repetitively embedded in the program.

We are a dedicated group of teachers and techies working to provide you with a Spanish program that has done all the hard work for you: we put all the resources that you and your students need into a single platform at your fingertips, plan lessons so you won’t have to, and provide the flexibility to teach however works best for you!

We want you and your students to be excited to start Spanish class in the fall with renewed ideas for how to make learning fun and much easier on you! Take a look and let us know what you think!

Categories
Spanish Language Spotlight

Melissa Mashura, Teaching Spanish and ASL Together

Reading Time: 3 minutes

Melissa Mashura, K-8th grade teacher at Estell Manor School in Estell Manor, New Jersey, uses her background in Spanish and her love for American Sign Language (ASL) to incorporate both languages into her teaching. Teaching two languages at once may sound daunting, but her ingenuity doesn’t stop there; she has also found a unique way to mix older and more recent technologies to benefit her students. 

About Melissa

Melissa first started learning ASL as a child through her cousin, who is deaf. While spending time together, her cousin would teach ASL to Melissa and her twin sister. Melissa was always eager to learn and practice back at home with her sister, taking the phrase, “if you don’t use it, you lose it,” to heart. 

As an adult and mother of five, Melissa has incorporated signs and Spanish words into her children’s daily lives. Two of her daughters, in particular, developed a love for ASL and joined the theater group “Hands Up Silent Theater,” which performs in ASL for deaf audiences. Two of the performances their group will be doing this year are Beauty and the Beast and Little Shop of Horrors

Teaching Spanish and ASL Together in One Classroom

Estell Manor School first hired Melissa to teach 2nd grade upon receiving her teaching certification. This was a heartwarming experience for her as she was a student at the school from kindergarten through 8th grade. After five years, she resigned from teaching to raise her children but was back again once her youngest started kindergarten at Estell Manor School. 

This time, she’s teaching in the world language department, teaching ASL and Spanish together. She finds it incredibly rewarding to hear her students repeat a word that she spoke to them in English back to her in both Spanish and ASL; it’s just as rewarding to her students as she tells them they are becoming trilingual!

Melissa’s trilingual classroom techniques

Some of Melissa’s methods of teaching both languages is to utilize a combination of new and old technology to work together with her students to find the answer when stumped on a translation. Online translator tools are an obvious method, but Melissa also likes to use a good old-fashioned Spanish-English dictionary to show her students that these methods still work even in a high-technology age. 

However, sometimes more advanced methods can be more effective, such as when trying to find the translation of a word in ASL. For this, Melissa will use an online video-based tool called Hand Speak which will demonstrate the sign back to them.

Teaching Spanish and ASL Together in One Classroom

Melissa also loves to use FL4K’s Spanish program in her classroom due to its full-immersion language component and fun videos that her students love. She will pause the videos frequently to go over vocabulary and discuss what is happening in the scene. Melissa will also take it one step further by working in ASL translations! 

The world language classroom does not have to be an intimidating place full of grammar rules and hard memorization. Just as Melissa shows in her own classroom, it can be fun and exciting to learn a new language – or two! Her creativity and letting her passions shine through her teaching truly make all the difference.

Categories
Educational Teacher's Tool Tips

Looking for Easy Spanish Vocabulary Words to Teach Kids?

Reading Time: 3 minutes

Whether you are teaching children or adults, vocabulary needs to be taught according to a communicative hierarchy and in a context. In other words, you need to teach chunks of language that lend themselves to helping students be successful at speaking Spanish in the real world. 

Outdated textbooks provide long lists of isolated vocabulary and grammatical structures, NOT functional language. In addition, teachers (sadly) aren’t trained in building proficiency skills that will serve their students in actually using the target language to communicate. 

Haven’t you heard many language students complain about how they studied a language for years and can’t say a word? This is the result that we want to avoid in teaching a world language! 

So, how do you determine what structures and easy Spanish vocabulary words to teach kids for practical use? 

Think about chunks of language that students need to function like:  Where is it? (¿Dónde está?), I like that (Me gusta); I am thirsty/hungry/tired/hot/cold (Tengo sed/hambre/sueño/calor/frío); I want… (Quiero); I have…(Tengo). 

The truth of the matter is that teachers need to be trained in the basics of how to assess language proficiency according to ACTFL oral proficiency standards. Once a teacher understands the criteria for the levels of development from Novice to Advanced, the process of teaching becomes much more effective. 

If a teacher has a group of beginning Spanish students (Novice Low), he/she needs to be able to assess what students CAN DO at this level and know what they should be able to do in order to move to the next level of proficiency (Novice Mid). 

Once the teacher is adept at identifying the skills required for each level (can do’s), the teacher can begin to teach more intentionally with concrete goals for the students to move them forward on the proficiency continuum. 

Training is the key! 

Easy Spanish vocabulary words to teach kids include putting the easy Spanish words in meaningful contexts that help students to become more communicative. It is a bit of an art to teach this way and totally wreaks havoc with traditional methods. 

The strength of this kind of teaching, however, is that students start developing confidence and skills right away. They no longer memorize long lists of vocabulary, prove their skills with grammar quizzes, and promptly forget everything. No! They practice speaking every day using functional chunks of language. Finally, proficiency is not based on talent, but on practice and hard work, the result of which is a practical skill. 

Language learning is for everyone, not just the gifted and talented.  

As a retired Spanish teacher trained in ACTFL oral proficiency standards, I began working for a company (fl4k.com) that was already doing a great job of teaching easy Spanish vocabulary words to kids within a context through videos, games, and practice questions, with hands-on activities. 

What was missing was the interculturality piece, so a team of teachers who are trained in teaching language according to proficiency standards gathered to inform the company about how to do this best. We have created a culture program that provides fascinating content about nine different Spanish-speaking cultures all presented to kids in a single interactive digital platform that includes dialogues with recording features, practice questions, real-time polling, and features carefully scaffolded language structures and vocabulary in a context. 

Even though the program includes a lot of bells and whistles that appeal to kids of all ages, the best feature of the program is the emphasis on helping students build language proficiency that lasts and actually functions. The easy Spanish vocabulary words to teach kids are all embedded in cultural posts in a social media-like format that is very appealing to the Gen Z student! 

The easy Spanish vocabulary is given context and therefore becomes memorable. Students need to learn to ask questions (Who?/¿Quién?; What?/¿Qué?; Where?/¿Dónde?; When?/¿Cuándo?; Why? /¿Por qué?; How?/¿Cómo?; How much?/¿Cuánto?) and connect sentences (and/y; also/también; however/sin embargo; therefore/por lo tanto; because/porque, etc. 

Sailing through textbooks with complicated grammar formulas and having students memorize long lists of words just are not an effective way to TEACH students to actually speak another language with lasting results. 

Check out what we are doing at FL4K to help you help your students truly learn to speak another language.

Categories
Educational Teacher's Tool Tips

How to Ensure a Rich Interculturality Curriculum

Reading Time: 2 minutes

Summer is almost here! Downtime is on the way! Refresh, relax, and find ways to enrich your interculturality curriculum! Is this often an afterthought that finally you need to do something about this summer?

Don’t reinvent the wheel

I am part of a teacher team that is creating an interculturality curriculum that can supplement any Spanish language program K-12. Imagine what fun it is after 43 years in the classroom to help write about Hispanic culture in the most appealing way possible for Gen Z students.

That’s right! This is an interactive digital platform with real-time polls, discussion questions, built-in language lab recording features, and social media-like posts that feature super fascinating intercultural information about nature, art, music, local artists and citizens, sites of interest, history, global challenges, adventures, etc., all with Novice-Intermediate language carefully scaffolded using high-frequency language that is repeated and repeated until it is like second nature for kids to use the target language naturally.

How long does the program take to work through?

Each level of study includes 40-50 intercultural social media-like posts that are short paragraphs about high-interest topics for kids of all ages. There are corresponding interactive practice questions and dialogues,  games specifically designed to build language proficiency, hands-on activities, discussion questions, music, recipes, and pertinent videos with each level of study.

Of the eight levels (Hispanic countries) in the program, a teacher could get through 3 to 4 maximum in a year, depending on the number of contact hours/per week in their school’s language program.

A Flex program for lower elementary students, for example, would only be able to tackle 2 to 3 of the cultural units in a year while a Spanish I and II class at the middle or high school level might be able to complete four units of study, two per semester.

The all-in-one tool for your teacher toolkit

The coolest part about our program is that it includes a curriculum guide, is customizable, is ACTFL aligned, and it is not a textbook! It is all in a single digital platform.

At the very least, check it all out at our website: fl4k.com, and see how we are trying to create the program that we have always wanted ourselves with the intention of saving you time – while at the same time ensuring that your curriculum is interculturally rich and engaging for students today!

Don’t reinvent the wheel this summer! Study our website and see what might work best for you! Reach out to us and schedule a demo or sign up for our free summer trial! Check out the perks for signing up now!

Categories
Uncategorized

How to Avoid Burnout in the Language Classroom

Reading Time: 3 minutes

Teacher Tooltip Tuesday: Avoid BURNOUT

May seems like a good month to address the pernicious result of working nonstop for an entire school year without taking time to breathe: BURNOUT!

Why is burnout common in the World Language classroom?

According to the American Psychological Association, burnout is defined as “physical, emotional or mental exhaustion accompanied by decreased motivation, lowered performance, and negative attitudes towards oneself and others.” 

Oh, dear! Our field is especially wrought with this kind of exhaustion because language teachers are among some of the most conscientious individuals I have ever known.

With 40+ years of experience in the profession, I have had the great privilege of knowing many world language teachers. Based on what I have seen, (literally dozens of colleagues at teaching levels from PK-college), our profession attracts a lot of earnest individuals with tremendous discipline, creativity, intelligence, perfectionism, perseverance, and great wonderment about the world! I consider myself blessed to have worked with so many incredibly gifted world language teachers. 

But, guess what? With all this giftedness, comes a strong work ethic and the endless quest to teach our students to actually speak another language and yet, that goal can continually elude us.

We get to the end of the year and aren’t always happy with our results. So, we wipe the slate clean and try again next year, all the while feeling completely burned out from the effort. 

Helpful resources for understanding burnout in our field

To get an idea of what we expect of ourselves to be effective world language teachers, peruse the Teacher Effectiveness for Language Learning (TELL) PROJECT this summer as professional development.

Take a look at the assessment tools and think about how you are doing according to what many professionals in the field have collaborated to define what effective world language teaching entails. I suggest looking at the Feedback Form Full Class Observation to see what criteria are important for best practices.

You may also want to look at the assessment tool for The Learning Experience. This will give you an idea of why our field attracts so many hardworking individuals.

Creating the best language experience without the burnout

Teaching a world language effectively is demanding! Here are just a few of the criteria for creating the best language experience for our students according to the TELL PROJECT:

  • I provide opportunities for my students to become more effective communicators
  • I provide opportunities for students to engage in cultural observation and analysis
  • I provide opportunities for my students to acquire language in meaningful contexts
  • I ensure that students receive comprehensible input.

How can we do all this without feeling burned out?

(Also to consider is the complication of the GEN Z student that is accustomed to the dopamine fix from instant and constant communication through social media. How can we compete with this phenomenon without ending up feeling burned out?) 

There is no panacea, no magical formula, to inspire in our students a genuine desire to learn another language for real-world communication. We can share all kinds of data about the job market advantage, the excitement of being able to know people of other cultures through knowing their language, and the way language learning trains the brain for other higher functions, etc. The bottom line is that it takes a lot of expertise to teach another language in a way that motivates and excites students, and gets results!

It can definitely leave us all ending up feeling exhausted, unappreciated, and with a negative attitude about starting it all over again in September! BURNED OUT!

The solution

At FL4K, I am part of a teacher team writing curriculum for you!

We have personally experienced burnout and are doing everything we can to create a platform that supports teachers in their quest to be effective language teachers without burnout! We actually help you to provide the highlighted criteria above as deemed necessary for effective world language teaching according to the TELL Project!

It will cost you NOTHING to take a look and see what we have created for you!

One of the most exciting features of our curriculum is a full interculturality program that includes social-media-like posts about Hispanic culture with carefully scaffolded target language progression, amazing images, interactive polls in real-time for your students, discussion questions, songs, games, hands-on activities, and more! 

Check this out to consider for your fall program. There are also some testimonials online that you can read. I, personally, met with a teacher in January who was completely overwhelmed with her teaching load from 1st-8th grade, and here is what she said after a few months of piloting our Fl4k program:

“Just wanted to check in with you all and let you know that everything is going awesomely with the program. The kids love it and my friends who are parents of the kids are amazed at how much Spanish they are speaking at home just having fun with it.”

Isn’t this what we all are looking for? A support program to help us fulfill our lofty goal as world language educators to have our students enthusiastic about and actually SPEAKING another language without BURNOUT

I’ll be back next week with another tool tip! In the meantime, check out FL4K and take advantage of their free summer trial. Try out the entire program for free all summer long!

Categories
Educational Teacher's Tool Tips Uncategorized

Once n’ Done Not Effective Teaching for Language Proficiency

Reading Time: 4 minutes

Now that you know the stages of group development: forming, storming, norming, and performing, let’s consider the effectiveness of the curriculum in the language-proficiency-driven classroom. 

A long time ago, I used to use a product called, “Once n’ Done” to keep the shiny veneer on my kitchen floor. Well, that’s just what it was, a refresher veneer. I feel like a lot of textbooks promote this kind of teaching, teach the grammar once, have students show off what they know on a quiz or test, and move on, “Once n’ Done.” 

This is simply not effective for language acquisition. Just think how many times a young child needs to hear and repeat words and structures before he begins to come up with words on his own. If we are truly going to promote language proficiency in our classrooms we need to guide our students’ language development in very intentional ways that promote language acquisition versus memorization and regurgitation. 

Covering a chapter in a book does not typically count toward this end, especially if the book lacks proper scaffolding of vocabulary and structures to offer a sufficient amount of repetition. What is difficult for students learning Spanish are the intricate regular conjugations of verbs and the many irregular ones. If we don’t continually give them the opportunity to converse using these structures, they can’t possibly retain them for practical purposes. 

This is why so many students seem to say after several years of studying a language that they can’t speak it. How unfortunate this scenario is when most of us would say that our purpose in teaching a second language is for the real-world use of it.  

How can we teach in a way that our students will learn to speak? 

When I was subbing for a former colleague this last week, my former Intermediate Low students who are now in Intermediate Mid, rattled off their connectors to me: sin embargo, por eso, mientras que, también, porque, y, etc. 

They told me that even when they forget their verb forms, they know these words and can use them effectively to connect sentences. They still seem to be loving Spanish and working every day on SPEAKING. 

The subs lesson plans were astoundingly effective in having students SPEAK! They were partnered up conversing about a simple question that they had written a paragraph about the night before.

(¿Eres aventurero/a? ¿Por qué sí o no? ¿Hay otros aventureros entre tus familiares y amigos?) 

During this drill, however; they were not using any written words to communicate. They were simply sharing all about this topic with 10-12 different classmates in a speed dating format where students are in two circles and either the inside or outside is moving every 3-4 minutes. 

I simply walked around the words listening, interjecting questions, and ensuring that the students were only speaking Spanish. Their current teacher and I were both trained and certified in the Modified Oral Proficiency Interview and we use the tenets of the ACTFL Proficiency Guidelines for Language Acquisition

These guidelines drive most of what we do with our students! We follow rubrics for the different levels of proficiency that we teach and guide the students in very specific ways. As a result of our MOPI training workshops and certification process, we understand more specifically how to help students build language proficiency skills. 

Our rubrics include the following categories as adapted from ACTFL Performance Standards for Language Learners: 

  1. How well do I maintain the conversation?
    – the quality of interaction 
  2. What language/words do I use?
    – vocabulary in context
  3. How do I use language?
    – function and text type
  4. How well am I understood?
    – comprehensibility
  5. How well do I understand?
    – comprehension
  6. How intercultural am I?
    – interculturality

The rubrics show students how to progress in their language skills. A textbook that shows these “analytic growth rubrics” well is Wayside Publishing, the EntreCulturas series in Spanish and French. While some more traditional teachers find the books lacking in a drill for structure, this textbook series is one of the first that I have seen that truly scaffolds language for proficiency, building in lots of room for speaking and listening practice, practical vocabulary in limited amounts, repetition of structures and intentional focus on interculturality! Check it out. It may be just right for your purposes. 

And please check this website out for another amazing way to engage your Gen Z students in a fully intercultural, ACTFL-aligned, proficiency-driven curriculum

In my first year of retirement after 43 years of teaching Spanish, I am working for a company that is developing a complete state-of-art intercultural language curriculum on a single platform. 

Tailored for Elementary and Middle School students the curriculum includes dialogues with recording features, interactive practice questions, games designed specifically for language students (contextualized vocabulary), and a complete leveled (Novice version, Intermediate version, and Heritage speaker version) interculturality program.

The program comprises songs, hands-on activities, polls with real-time results,  and discussion questions. For all students, including High School students, we offer a toolkit subscription that includes basic grammar structure and vocabulary games, dialogues, and Instagram-like culture posts that cover the following topics for eight different Hispanic cultures: nature, food, sites of interest, adventure, citizens, geography and climate, global challenges, products, and arts. 

The program is customizable and can be adapted for your own curriculum needs. Honestly, I have never seen anything like it on the market and it is astoundingly popular with the students who are piloting the program this year. 

This is a company that listens to teachers and tries to develop a curriculum according to what we need that the textbooks aren’t providing to teach students to truly build language acquisition skills for real purposes! 

What is “Once n’ Done” in this language curriculum? You will be amazed at the success that your students will have and how much the program will help to de-stress you and your classroom!

Categories
Educational Teacher's Tool Tips

How to Improve Group Participation in the Classroom

Reading Time: 4 minutes

In the last three weeks I have explored the first three stages of group participation and development: forming, storming, and norming, all essential developmental phases in preparation for the final phase, performing!

Most of us have been doing this throughout our teaching careers in the form of group projects or presentations at the end of a unit to give students the opportunity to show what they CAN DO!!

However, if teachers are not careful, this phase can be wrought with complications. Students need to be shepherded through the stages of getting to know each other (forming), wrestling with different personalities (storming), and learning to accept their differences (norming) in order to maximize their ability to be successful as a team. Once a group of students has figured out how to work together, a teacher can assign group projects and presentations.

Group Participation

The age-old problem will still be ensuring that each member of the group participates equally in completing the work. Inevitably, there are some group members that care more about their grade than others and end up doing all the work while resenting less productive group members. I hope that it will not be discouraging for me to admit that I never mastered this issue after 43 years of teaching! Rather, I hope you will be challenged to find new ways to tackle this inequity.

One idea is to make sure that peer evaluation is an important part of the group grade. Help students hold each other accountable by requiring them to evaluate each other anonymously. Build in time elements that require each group member to speak for a certain number of minutes. Consider as many parameters as possible that ensure participation from all!

Presentation Engagement

Even after you have your groups engaged and performing, there is the additional problem of keeping the rest of the class engaged. I have found that group presentations can kill overall Gen Z student engagement in a heartbeat.

Since an important part of building proficiency in a language is learning to ask questions, I suggest requiring every student not presenting to ask follow-up questions. Keep track of how many they ask and factor this data into their participation grade.

You might have students in their seats fill out information about the presentations to keep them focused and engaged. Questions could be general: Mention 2-3 things that you learned; What was good about the presentation?; How could the presentation be better?, etc.

Group Projects

Here are just a few of my favorite group projects ideas:

  1. Have a small group of students plan their version of “El Camino de Santiago,” a well-known pilgrimage that ends in Santiago de Compostela, Spain.
    1. Students have to research which route they will take, how long they will walk, describe two people they met on the trail, the food they ate, and 2-3 experiences they had, and present their walk to the class. This can be such a fun project for creative students!
    2. What is sad about Gen Z students is they don’t tap into their creativity. They just want to get this project done and get into reading their next social media posts. Be sure to frame this project as an amazing opportunity to learn about “El Camino” and plan a trip that may very well be a reality for them one day when studying abroad during their college days! ( I take every opportunity to entice them to do this!!!)
  2. Create a campaign for a cause and compete for financial support like the TV show “Shark Tank.”
    1. In small groups, students decide on a cause (actual or original) and present the rationale for supporting their cause. Each student has fake money to put toward the cause that interests them most.
    2. This results in a competition for which group is able to promote their cause most successfully.
    3. The project can be adapted to a product that relates to a particular unit. For example, students could be charged with creating a fitness program as a culminating activity for a health unit.
  3. Hispanic murals and muralists from different cities around the world.
    1. Each group could present their research with a slideshow that features this amazing form of street art and an explanation of the symbolism.
    2. As a final step, the group has to create their own mural and explain its significance.
    3. This can be a digital creation or a sketch, depending on the artistic talent of the group!
  4. Creating stories around famous Hispanic artwork.
    1. I especially liked to do this with Frida Kahlo as a way of introducing a whole study of her life and works.
    2. Small groups choose one of her paintings and without knowing anything about her, they create a story around the images. After learning more, the same students present the real story behind the same work of art. It’s a fun way to stimulate creativity and engage students in art appreciation.
  5. Famous Families.
    1. In small groups, students research a famous person’s family to introduce to the class.
    2. There can be a certain amount of intrigue with this since many times we don’t know much about the family of a famous actor, singer, artist, or sports figure.
    3. I like to make sure that students find out about pets, too, if possible.
    4. There are many variations on this project, too. In small groups, students can create their own families and present them to the class.

There are endless project and presentation possibilities that can be designed to promote both interculturality and language proficiency in a way that is fun and engaging for today’s digital natives. Start imagining a few of your own as a culminating activity for a unit that incorporates vocabulary, structures, and cultural knowledge!

And one more bit of advice… be sure to structure the project with specific criteria and expectations. Review exactly how the project will be graded. I like to use rubrics that outline what is entailed in order to get the A, B, C, etc. This is the secret to getting stellar products!

FL4K

If you are interested in an amazing way to supplement your curriculum with rich interculturality, check out FL4K. The toolkit that includes culture posts in an Instagram-like format and proficiency-based games and dialogues serve as a great preparation for discussion, research, and projects or presentations! 

We’ll be back next week with another tool tip. In the meantime, sign up for a free trial with FL4K!

Categories
Uncategorized

4 Activities for the Norming Stage of Group Development

Reading Time: 2 minutes

Tuesday Teacher Tooltip: Take advantage of the norming stage of group development to allow students to enjoy pair work in the World Language Classroom

During the last two weeks, I have addressed the first two stages of group development, forming and storming, where students become acquainted with one another and wrestle with all different personality types. In the “norming” stage of group development, students have developed enough respect for one another that they can engage in pair work effectively. In this stage, students begin to cooperate and engage in partner activities.

Here are a few ideas to consider for this phase. 

Peer Editing

Students can now comment on or edit one another’s work with maturity and respect.

Teachers can use Padlet or Flipgrid, both apps that allow students to critique each other’s work. These are platforms that allow students to post their own work and then comment on each other’s work. The students can’t wait to both respond to their peers’ work and then, read the comments about their own work.

Students can tease each other and have fun interacting. This kind of feedback exchange is healthy and motivating in a class where students know and respect one another!

Role-Playing

Once students have built trust in the classroom with one another, they begin to become much less intimidated. They will more likely volunteer to play a role with each other and practice their language proficiency skills while hamming it up! 

Pair Work

In the norming phase of group development, you can begin to randomly pair students using the Class Dojo app or traditional methods of creating pairs.

Mixing it up really helps students to become better acquainted with one another and prevents any student from feeling excluded.

I always had sticks or notecards with every child’s name on a card. Just to create drama in the classroom, I would throw them up in the air and pick them up two at a time to create pairs. The kids always loved this method and had faith in the randomness of it due to this ancient, but very transparent method!  

Dice Games

You can make a dice grid for students such as this sample for teachers.

Use real dice in the classroom or students can use a dice generator online. If they roll a 2 and a 6, they have to find the two possible questions in the grid for that combination and answer one of them. The one who rolls answers the question first and then asks the same or the other question to the partner.

Make dice games for every unit of study. This is the way to truly give students a chance to practice communicating. Kids love to express their opinions about everything! This activity gives the teacher a break, too. After 15 minutes of play, randomize the partners again and continue having the students work in pairs. 

Norming is a wonderful stage of group development that allows for natural exchanges in the classroom that provide real world language exchanges.

With FL4K, our single platform program with a built-in culture curriculum for 10 different Hispanic countries, we provide dice games and ideas for pair work activities for every unit! Please check out our website to view samples of our state-of-the-art way of teaching World Language for real-world communication!