AirPano

Just came across this awesome resource from AirPano. It's a collection of 3-D panoramic photos taken from around the world. Since we're studying Perú right now I can't wait to use this panoramic shot of the Nasca Lines:

Ten Word Summary

Image found at: http://www.skypeenglishclasses.com

The ten-word summary is another strategy from Reading Rockets. Here's how I used it in my classes:

1. I put students into pairs and handed each student one of the ten-word summary sheets below.

2. Students number each paragraph.

3. Student A reads the first paragraph. Student B summarizes what Student A read. Students alternate roles until the selection is over.

4. Review the passage by using equity cards/sticks to ask questions to check for understanding.

5. Combine pairs of students to form groups of four. Have groups compare their summary sentences and then decide on who wrote the best summaries and why.

6. Pass out poster paper and have students write up their group summaries.

7. Use the posters to do a gallery walk and have students compare summaries and decide on the main events or crucial details of the selection.

Love to do this activity to ensure comprehension of a chapter before moving forward in a novel.

Ten Word Summary

Storyasking

Image found at: http://www.brandstories.net/2013/07/27/what-makes-for-an-exceptional-brand-storyteller/

Since I began teaching using Comprehensible Input teacher a few years ago, by far, my biggest struggle has been “story-asking.” I’ve identified a few things that I think have made this activity particularly challenging:

 1) Large classes
 2) Off task students
 3) Maintaining student attention throughout a ten or fifteen minute story-asking session
 4) Keeping it simple and not deviating from the target structures

As a result I’ve been especially eager to find activities designed to keep students engaged and participating in story-asking sessions. Years ago, at the iFTL conference in San Diego, I attended a workshop by Ben Slavic and he had a variety of jobs that he assigned to students during Story-asking activities. (Some especially popular jobs with my students are the “human dictionary,” “artist,” and the “English police.” You can read more about them here.) Unfortunately, I’ve found that with classes of 25+ students of varying degrees of ability, there are simply not enough jobs to go around! In a recent search, I came across Cynthia Hitz’s post on Guided Story-asking and I think I may have found a solution (absolutely one of my favorite blogs and I had the great pleasure of meeting her and attending one of her awesome sessions at ACTFL 2014)!

Yesterday in class, I started out the story-asking session by reminding students what the purpose of the activity was. I explained that we were working towards “acquiring” new vocabulary and that in order to be successful we needed to hear these new structures at least 250 (a completely made up number but it gave the students a goal!) times in a meaningful context. I asked all students to be mindful of the number of times we used each structure (another one of Ben Slavic’s strategies). I then began by handing out the guided story-asking grid and asking for “sugerencias.”

I pulled out a huge roll of raffle tickets as an incentive for active participation. I proceeded by taking three suggestions from the class and then voting on the best answer. My target structures were "Debe avisar," "se le acercó," and "le dolía." The grid I used is below:

Guided Storytelling Grid

Unfortunately, I think my story was a little long and taking three suggestions and voting on each one took way too much time. I teach 50 minute periods and getting through two rows of the grid took two class periods. I ended by having the students finish the third row as homework. (We will vote on who has the best story next week in class.) I think the trick for next time will be to simplify (maybe even shorten) the grid and take fewer student suggestions.

Four Corners

I love Four Corners for a variety of reasons. It's great for reviewing, to get a reaction, to help students process information. I like to give students a somewhat controversial statement that I know are going to generate varying opinions and have students defend their opinions to one another. They're also just great for getting students up and moving or mixing it up. I have the ones below are those that I have up in my classroom and I use them all the time.

4 Corners En español

Reciprocal Reading / Reading Rockets

Image from: http://www.clipartpanda.com/clipart_images/guided-reading-clip-art-32431625

Since we are reading a number a number of novels this year, I’ve been trying to build up my repertoire of reading activities. These activities need to fulfill the following criteria:

1) Won’t bore students;
2) Activities will engage students in active reading;
3) And, will facilitate language acquisition (aligned to a specific learning objective)

So, when I learned about Reciprocal Reading Groups from Reading Rockets, I was pretty pleased to find a strategy that was student-centered and that fulfilled all three of the above criteria. Reciprocal reading groups are an activity designed to allow students to guide and instruct the reading in small groups. Each student is assigned one of four roles:

Predictor: makes predictions before and after the selection
Clarifier: keeps track of and helps to clarify any unknown vocabulary
Question Generator: responsible for coming up with comprehension questions (great idea here from Martina Bex in getting students to write comp questions—In French and Spanish)
Summarizer: responsible for summarizing the selected passage

The trick in these groups is to have students use their roles to interact with and teach their classmates. In order to do this, I started by explicitly explaining that the idea behind this activity was to get students to help one another to understand the passage. I then assigned each role an order. I had the students read the passage out loud to one another (paragraph by paragraph) while everyone followed along, indicating any difficult vocabulary. After every second paragraph, the group worked together to perform each of their tasks. I stressed that while each student had a specific role the entire group could and should help with each task. So far we’ve used this strategy twice in my classes and I’ve found the biggest challenge so far has been getting the Questioner to really use the questions to discuss the selection. Modeling this for the students helps and I also believe the more familiar the kids get with the activity the more effective it will be. Modeling the templates found on Reading Rockets, I created the bookmark and graphic organizer below: Bookmark

Reciprocal Reading Bookmarks Español

Graphic Organizer

Reciprocal Reading Group Graphic Organizer / Grupo de Lectura

Audio Activities / Resources

I have been absent from the blog for a long time. My intention was to organize and perfeccionar all of my resources before posting (this being sort of my online filing cabinet) but I've been running across too many that I want to use in the future and I'm worried that if I don't put them somewhere they'll get away from me. Below is a resource from Audio-Lingua that I want to use when I teach "Esperanza" next year: