Vote for the #fliplang chat topic

Please choose from the list for the #fliplang chat on Wednesday, August 14th at 8pm EST. Can't wait to see you there!

Where have I been?

As teachers, we all know that this time of year is a crazy one. To add to my usually insanity- four kids, two dogs, husband, teaching, preparing for vacation - I have been doing webinars and podcast interviews. Therefore, I am woefully behind on my flipped class musings. I have been reading some of the latest blogging....and some is making me crazy....such as the Flip is a Flop. I won't even begin to discuss how much I disagree with the Innovative Educator. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, and I know what is working for me and my students.

So, look forward to class updates and all of the great things the students have been doing in my classroom. It should come sometime next week as my kids are finishing finals!

While you are waiting, check out the recorded webinar from the Flipped Learning Network last week:

Flipped Learning Webinar Foreign Language

Here is a link to my podcast interview with Troy Cockrum (a great English flipper!)

Flipping foreign language podcast

Hope you all have a great finals and end of the semester!

Flipped for Fluency Webinar November 13

Thanks to everyone who attended the Flipped for Fluency webinar courtesy of www.sophia.org on November 13. As promised, here is the link to that webinar. If you missed it live, please check it out. I would love any feedback you could give me in the form below.

Thanks
Heather

Cultural activities across the levels

This time of year is the worst for teachers. Students have realized that their grades are not what they should be and are in full panic mode, and parents are on alert as well. The holiday season is also around the corner, and even though Christmas decorations have been up in stores for weeks, I am not ready for the work that comes with the holidays! With all of this going on, it is easy to focus on the negative and the frustrations in the classroom, but I am doing my best to focus on the positives.

This past week was a crazy one, with our fairy tale unit ending. As I have mentioned before, I have been working on a cross-level project between the Spanish 1's and Spanish 3's. I have felt that we spend so much time focusing on the harder vocabulary and more difficult conversations that the upper level students forget how to say some of the most basic things...the conversations that would be most important if they were in a foreign country.

So, the idea behind this project was to have the upper level kids create stores and sell to the lower levels. We planned and wrote assignment sheets and talked about vocabulary. I let my students choose what type of store to have, because as I have mentioned before, I firmly believe we need to give students choices whenever possible. Here is a copy of our assignment sheet. (I also put a copy in the Helpful Docs tab.) We also gave the kids a handout to practice key phrases, and add phrases of their own that they thought necessary.

The students created all types of stores, including music, movie, cafe, clothing, and a party store. I was so proud of my students. They stayed in the target language, even when the principal tried to talk to them in English. They were so generous, giving juice, soda, cookies, party favors, etc. to the lower level students. Since we were using Monopoly money, I had assured students they would get all of their items back.

Now, my PreAp class is during a time when there is no Spanish I, so we tried something  little different. We did a "Tourist Day" between Germany and Spain with the German III students. In this project, some of the students set up stores, and other students were tour guides. The tour guides were in charge of teaching key phrases and helping their groups at the stores. The stores were based on what a tourist would need: a hotel, souvenir shop, tour/ticket office, and cafe. The students then took turns leading the tours and shops.

The kids were excited about this and it went very well. The students learned a few new phrases in a new language. They were also exposed to situations where they didn't understand what someone was saying, or how to respond and had to figure out how to get what they wanted. It was a great communication exercise for all of the students.

I was liberal with the assessment scores. I felt that if they were communicating in the target language during the duration of the activity (about an hour), and they helped the lower level students communicate as well, that was A work.

For me, it was a good week. Students did tons of communicating and had a great time. Hopefully this will be an annual tradition and something the students can look forward to. Now all I have to do is figure out how to do it again in the Spring. I think I will put my students on it! They have the best ideas.

Flipping for Fluency Webinar Follow Up

First, I wanted to begin by thanking Taylor Pettis and www.sophia.org for hosting the webinar on Tuesday. I think that the webinar went really well and hope that all of the participants got what they were looking for from it. I know some people were looking for more information about assessment and video creation, but I followed the poll from the blog to create the content. They have asked me to do another webinar, and maybe I will be able to focus more on those topics then.

I know there was some time confusion since the time was CST, and there were some of you interested that just couldn't make the webinar. Good news! Here is the link to the recorded webinar.

***I have just added some documents discussed in the webinar under the "Helpful Documents" tab above. This includes our unit planning document, and the assignments and project for Unit 1 - Challenges in Teen Life I use in my level 3 classes.

I am always interested in feedback, so if you attended the webinar live or if you view the recorded version, please fill out the following survey.




Thanks so much for you time!

Listening Training

Sorry I haven't updated in a while, but it is hard to keep up with the family, class, and the blog. I will try to do better going forward.

We are two weeks into Unit 1. The students are finally understanding the process of the class, (although I did have a student ask me yesterday if class was going to be like this every day). Now, students are learning not about the flip, but about working to my expectations. Since I allow students to work at their own pace through the material, they can do activities when it works for them, and as many times as necessary.

Nowhere is this as apparent as the listening activities. Listening is an area where students struggle. It is something I struggle with as a teacher. How do I help the students progress and improve their listening without them getting discouraged?  I have spent much of the last two days explaining to students that they have to "train" to listen. Just like a kid isn't going to become a star football player without practice, they aren't going to become good listeners without practice.

Today students are working on a listening where two girls are describing their daily routines to each other. It is a slightly longer listening, about 2 minutes, and a little faster than what we have done before. So many of the students listened two or three times, threw their hands up, and just wrote whatever on the comprehension worksheet. As I was checking work, many of them were shocked that I wouldn't give them credit unless they went back and tried again.

It just reminds me of why I love the flip. In previous years, we would listen two, maybe three times, and their either got it or they didn't. I never really got a good handle on who understood what, and some were lost forever. Now, they are able to take a listening, listen to it in little chunks, discuss it with their classmates, and then move on. Obviously listening to conversations fifteen words at a time isn't ideal, but baby steps must come before they can run!