Utilizing Google Classroom to be the teacher I want to be

I am always in search of the best way to run my class website and help organize student assignments. A couple of years ago our school became a Google school, and I started using Blogger to organize class. However, it wasn't quite doing everything that I wished, so I started looking for another solution. When I started hearing about Google Classroom, it seemed like a natural step. I began using Google Classroom for my school website last year, as a test to see how it would work. 

I found that I really loved Classroom, even though I wasn't using all of the available features. Students were able to easily get on the site, access assignments, and complete them. I could create an assignment in Google Docs or Sheets and have a copy created for each student. I loved that I could make students load presentations in one place that was easy to access quickly when they were giving in class presentations. No more flash drives, emailed presentations, the "I emailed it, didn't you get it?" That feature alone was a huge time and sanity saver. 

I found great sites that work with Google Classroom to make assignments even easier. EdPuzzle is my favorite for listening activities. Quizlet also works with Classroom so you can assign vocabulary practice. I also found some Google add-ons that are helping me better utilize students time and research. My current favorite is Insert Learning, which enables me to take a live web page and add questions, notes, and even word/phrase translations to make it comprehensible for all levels. 

This year, I have more consistent access to computers, so I am trying to incorporate even more online. I have created Google Forms for practice and quick mini-formative assessment checks. This will enable me to set up automated grading so students can get instant feedback. I am also using Forms for student goal setting and reflection for each unit, semester and for the year. I can schedule everything to make sure it is delivered on time. 

All of this will hopefully give me more time for what really matters, one-on-one time with the students. I want to be able to not only more purposefully help students, but also to be able to better monitor their work, especially conversations. I also want to be able to have individual meetings with students quarterly to discuss their progress and make plans to help them to continue to grow. Basically, I am hoping that I can focus on what I should be focusing on, helping the student move up the fluency. Updates to follow.

Every teacher struggles, even me.

My 2014-2015 school year was probably my worst. It has taken me a long time to write this. Even seeing it now, I feel like a bit of a failure. Don't get me wrong, kids learned, papers were graded, I had parent conversations, worked with peer teachers. I think that only now that I know I had a good year am I comfortable enough to really write this post.

However, I was trying new things professionally (not in the classroom). Our school had lost its focus after a search for a new principal came up empty. We operated the whole year with no principal. I knew that the curriculum needed revamping.....I have the blog posts to prove it. But, I didn't do it. I usually work hard over the summer to make tweaks, find PD and improve the curriculum. However, two summers in a row, it didn't really happen.

I coasted in the classroom, which is not like me. It is so upsetting, even now, to think that I let it happen. I have always driven myself to succeed - as much as I like gold stars, it is intrinsic motivation that keeps me going. I have thought and thought about it, and I can't pinpoint where it all went wrong. I think it was just lots of little things that I let slide by. Was it the 7 year itch? Was it time to move on?

As confirmation that it was not my best year, enrollment in the upper level classes was down for the 2015-2016 school year. The students that I did have were more difficult to motivate to work independently and to strive for continued growth because I had let them slide the previous year. I did make some changes to the curriculum for this past year to help motivate the students. However, it seemed like it was too little too late.

Thankfully, it was my Spanish 2 students that inspired me to get it back in gear. I had some great students that really love the language. Students that started to find ways to take it further without me. I was also fortunate enough to be able to attend ACTFL last November. Being able to get ideas from sessions and have some great conversations with superstars like Amy Lenord, Sara-Elizabeth Cottrell, Kara Parker, Mira Canion and numerous others helped me find my spark again.

So I have learned a humbling lesson. Every teacher struggles and can lose their way, even me. I wanted to share this because I am betting that I am not the only one who has felt this way. The key is to realize it is happening. Acknowledge the "slump" and find a way out of it. Find inspiration again in your students, your peers and make the turnaround. I did it, and so can you.

Evaluations, goals and reflection tools, oh my!

Nothing makes me happier than having to do my teacher evaluation. I know pretty much every teacher feels the same way. This year has been very different for me because I was evaluated by our new principal. Not to delve into all the details, but it was so nice to have a frank and honest conversation about my performance. It really inspired me to find the way to move forward and continue to improve. There are elements of the evaluation where points were lost not because I didn't do things, but because I didn't have the artifacts to support that it is done. There are also places where I definitely need to improve - most notably in having students create goals and do reflections.

Goal setting and reflection is something that I always try to do, but the process is very time consuming and by October I always seem to let it fall away. So, now, I am searching for a solution to make the process easier and allow the students to do their portion more independently. I have written out what I want this document to look like, however, I am struggling with finding the right tool to create the form. I am hoping for something user friendly and "pretty". Here is a basic outline of what I am thinking for students to complete:

Yearly Goals

• What will I do?
• What do I need help with?

Unit 1 goals

• PreAssessment results
• Use to create Unit 1 goals
• How will I meet?
• What do I need help with?
• Formative assessment 
• Peer review
• Student reflection
• Teacher feedback
• Goal adjustment
• Unit summative 
• Peer review
• Student reflection
• Teacher feedback (with rubric)
• Goals met?
• How to remediate (if necessary)

So, now all I need is to find the tech method to be able to make this all happen. I want students to be able to complete and me to be able to give my feedback and comments without bringing piles of paper home. I have fixed it so I have to figure this out this summer because I have also told my principal that a tool like the one I want for my students would be a great way for teachers and admin to share artifacts, to collaborate and to help make the teacher evaluation process simpler for everyone. I promised this knowing that I would make sure that I found a workable tool this summer.

I thought it would be easy once I figured out what I wanted, but alas, it is not so. The problem is I can't find the right tool - I was thinking I could create something on Google Docs, but that isn't working. I have searched for ideas online and am not finding what I want. That is why I am throwing this out to my fantastic PLN. Do you know of something I can use? Have you used a good tool in the past? Any ideas and comments would be greatly appreciated!

Planning for more!

Reflecting at the end of another school year is one of my favorite things to do. I have been working hard to revamp my curriculum (so happy to have a school district and principal that gives me that freedom!) to make it have a more communicative focus. I want students to have more interest in the topics that the units cover and therefore be more interested in learning the content that goes with it. Most of my work this year was done in my Spanish 2 curriculum so this summer I am focusing on how I can build on that with a revamped Spanish 3 curriculum.

For example, in Spanish 2, we always do a unit on food (as many WL teachers do). Instead of just another boring food unit, I changed the focus to living a healthy lifestyle. This enabled students to ave a focus for choosing their own vocabulary - we did this as a class for the first time (I was inspired by Amy Lenord, but have to find a better way for this because it took almost an entire class period!). Students chose many words and activities that I never would have thought of putting on a list. It had the added benefit of having each class have different lists so the cross-class copying for practice couldn't continue. ;)  We then did a variety of activities, interpretive reading with infographics. Like this one and this one. I also used this Coke commercial as a CI listening introduction to the unit.

What I found was that by changing the focus of the unit to a question - "How do you live a healthy lifestyle?" - Students naturally wanted input on vocabulary and activities. They also always had an opinion and had something to say so conversation practice came more naturally. They were at first freaked out by some of the TL activities because they didn't know every word and in some cases, couldn't even find a translation for words and had to use their brain to figure out what some words meant. The summative for this unit was open to student choice. They did a presentation about healthy lifestyle. For some this meant demonstrating how to play sports, for others, a cooking demonstration of a healthy recipe, ideas to replace junk food with healthy alternatives, etc. It turned out to be one of the best units I have ever planned and some of the best work from the students. As if I didn't know that things went better this year, my enrollment for Spanish 3 tripled for next year. Yea!

Of course, in hindsight, I realized we never talked about ordering in a restaurant and asking about items on a menu, which is something "real world" that students want to be able to do, but next year, I will make sure to add an activity to help them practice this as well.

So, with this success, the question is how to I work on the other units to make them as engaging for students? I have long wanted to change my Fairy Tale unit in Sp 3 and really need to make my Future life and decisions unit better, but how.? This is part of my summer homework.

Frustrations follow-up

First, I wanted to thank everyone who responded and commented to my earlier post about my frustrations with Google Translate and in particular one of my students. I was really at the end of my rope and it was wonderful receiving so much support and great ideas from so many teachers. Now that I have had so time to reflect on everything (and calm down), I am ready to rationally think about this issue.

So, my school does have a cheating policy. However, since most administrators aren't familiar with World Language classes, it can be a bit tricky. When these issues occur, I have learned to try to handle it myself as much as possible. I employ some of my parenting trickery, and ask students not "Did you use a translator?", but "Why did you use a translator?". Then, it eliminates a lot of the angst and we skip right to the tears. I always reiterate to my students that I never give them an assignment that I don't think they can do......that I have prepared them for. Usually, students confess that they didn't really work on it like they should have and were in a panic at the last minute.

The real question is how am I handling the translate issue going forward? It is clear that it is not going away, and since I encourage students to use all the resources available to them, am I doing a disservice to them by forbidding translators? And for me, the important question is why are they using translators? In the past, students have reached for these resources because assignments were too hard and/or they were desperate to be successful. Is this still the case?

Here are some of the issues, both mine and my students:

• One of the issues remains that students are still trying to write in English first. This results in students trying to match their level of Spanish to their level of English, which for most of them is not possible. So, how to address this issue?
• Students are overwhelmed by high expectations and the idea that they need to always put forth their best effort to be successful in class. Are expectations too high?
• Students are not understanding the expectations of the assignment. They are not understanding that I know their ability level and I want them to push themselves, but I want their work. How can I fix this?
• I am unwilling to spend entire class periods dedicated to students completing a writing assignment because a few students can't do the assignments themselves. I hate punishing the masses for the mistakes of the few. How can I show my students how to achieve success without having to waste tons of valuable class time?
• Have I been so worried about including more listening and speaking in class that I have overlooked the time I need to spend teaching students how to write?

So, I think solutions require some real thought, not just about how to prevent the use of Google Translate, but knowledge of the students and why they feel that GT is an acceptable way to complete assignments.After some great feedback about my earlier post and really thinking about what some of sources of the problems are, I have come up with a few solutions that I am implementing in class.

1. I am going to give more feedback on all of the writing that my students do. This is going to be time consuming, but I am hoping that this will be a good way to reach more of the students and make them understand that using translators to complete any assignment is not acceptable. I am going to use online feedback and writing conferences to make sure that the students hear me.
• I am really focusing on my online journal assignments with this one. When I read them and know that students used translator, not to look up one tricky phrase, but to complete the majority of the assignment, we will be having a face-to-face chat. My hope is that if I call them on it enough, they will get the idea that they have no hope of using a translator and I won't know it.
• In addition to the conversation with the student, I will be contacting parents. By working together, I think we can put an end to the consistent translator use for the completion of assignments.
2. I am going to go back to graphic organizers. I always hated having to do these when I was in school, but I know that for many, they are a valuable organizational tool. This will be due well in advance of the assignment, and even though I may not give "detailed" feedback, they are another tool to make the students think about the assignment early and give their writing a more organized layout.
3. I am going to require students to write the first paragraph of every assignment as a formative assignment. By putting this work in their usual packet, they won't be as focused on it as a separate, "valuable" assignment and therefore are less likely to use translators to write it. 
• I am going to grade and give feedback on these paragraphs and have students re-write and submit them prior to the final writing assignment being due.
• In talking with the students, many of them turn to translators because they have left the assignment to the last minute and are trying to write it at midnight the day before it is due. Hopefully by having completed part of the assignment in advance, this will have them on the right track to completing the assignment on their own in a timely fashion to avoid the "last minute bad choices".
4. Honestly, I am not sure what else to do about making the students more aware of the expectations of assignments. They do not seem to hear me when I go over the directions and rubrics for an assignment, and they seem to never read any written directions on their own. Where I can, I am going to give them more samples of projects and writing to help them understand what I am expecting from them.
• On the final exam last semester, students had to write a letter. As a quick review this week, I had students (anonymously of course) read letters written by their peers from the exam. I had them decide what grades they should have received and then correct and rewrite the letter. It was a shock to many not only how bad the grades were that they gave on the letters, but how bad some of the Spanish was. (It really quieted the few that thought I graded them too hard on the final as well!) The rewrites were better, and I saw some great peer review conversation going on about how things were worded, conjugation, word choice, etc. I think I need to create some of these "bad" writings and have my students evaluate them and correct them more often. Maybe it would help them see the errors that they are making in their own writing.
5. I do think students need to have the freedom to choose what they need to work on during class. I am planning on having more preliminary steps for students to complete as well as using class time to do feedback sessions with students to help them achieve more success. I do think that I have maybe been focusing too much on trying to get every mode of communication in every unit, which has resulted in being able to do more but not doing it well. I think the students need a more comprehensive session on all the modes to really reinforce what they have learned and the expectations I have for them and their writing.

I love the kids, and I hate getting a paper that I know they did not write. I think I need to spend more time working with the students individually on their writing (or maybe in small groups) and having them understand that I am not expecting the same quality of writing as their English teachers. I will continue to try to drive home the point that they need to write the paper in Spanish, not English first. Hopefully by implementing these strategies, I will avoid the frustrations that I have felt about the students using translators because they will understand that I know how they write and that they will only improve when they do their own work.

**I am looking into how to use Google Translate as a tool. I am interested in the idea that students use GT for colloquial phrases and then input them into a class Google Form not only to share the knowledge with the class, but to document that they have used GT to find the information. -------but that will probably not materialize until next year. ;)

Reflections & AATSP recap from 6/10 & 6/11 sessions

Sadly the AATSP 2013 Conference is now over. I am sitting in the lobby of my hotel enjoying a margarita and reflecting on the great sessions I attended, and maybe even better, the connections I made with other teachers. The conference was wonderful and challenging for me. I was not prepared for most of the presentations to be in Spanish, and all the great conversational Spanish. I have to admit, by the time the Spanish part of my brain kicked in, the conference was practically over.

My biggest complaint for the conference is not a complaint about the conference at all, but an admonishment to myself for being so lax this summer. How can I expect m students to practice over the summer, or at least do a little listening and reading over the summer if I am not doing the same? Yes, I am reading an Isabelle Allende novel in Spanish, but other than a little "Dora the Explorer" Spanish to m three year old twins, I hadn't spoken Spanish since the third week of May. This is something that needs to change. So, I am asking my Spanish speaking friends out there to help me. When you write, send me emails in Spanish. If you talk to me, make it be in Spanish. Sure, I may have to think a bit more before I speak, but wild that really be a bad thing? ;)

Now to the sessions.

I did take it easy on the 10th to gear up for my presentation. I had planned on the AP session, but sadly, I found that I was so exhausted, I just couldn't get there at 8am. I was pleased with how my presentation went and had many good questions from those in attendance. I also found that I was now known, not as the "flipping woman", but "that woman with the blog". Strange to think that my musings here are how people think of me. (I must be more careful about what I write!)

At the end of the day, I attended a session I was happy to find as a last minute edition to the program - STEM in the language classroom. This is something I was very excited about because with. The new Colorado teaching evaluation, I need to find ways to incorporate Math in my classroom. (Yes, it terrifies me!)  the session had a small but mighty audience and we were presented with lots of ideas for incorporating Science and technology in the class as well as some Math. As often happens in these sessions, my fellow attendees had some fantastic ideas as well. Here is a list of ideas and websites from the session:

• Puzzle of the day - Math word problems translated (possibly taken directly for lower level may classes)
• Temperature conversions- use in conjunction with weather and clothes. (Explaining temperature to a foreign exchange students with proper attire.)
• The Very Hungry Caterpillar book - incorporate life cycle of butterfly
• Magic school bus - I had forgotten about these, which are often very scientific in nature - not sure about this for high school, but elementary or middle could use this
• Using current scientific happenings - volcanoes, floods, hurricanes, etc. in various countries
• Planets with days of the week - planets are aligned with days
• El Niño/La Niña - weather cycles which originate with Ecuadorian fisherman  
• Correlation between space station and houses - different parts of the space station owned by different countries - The space station idea is really cool because it can also include time, clothes, body parts... Check out http://www.spaceflight.nasa.gov/station/
• Incorporating constellations and astrology in superstition unit with horoscopes, calendars, etc.
• Globe Program which has resources for data reporting and experiments for things around the world. 
• Nighttime lights of the world shows the world map as it is seen at night with lights. This map is a great way to talk about culture - why are there no lights in some places? Why are some lights highly concentrated? Which  countries have the most lights? How does electricity, or lack of it, effect the life of the people into those places? These are all great higher level thinking questions.

Basically, once I really started putting my mind to it, there are many ways to incorporate STEM in he language classroom the best point made was that we need to try to surprise our kids and help the. Think about some of the basic content on more unusual and fun ways. Why not teach body parts and clothes with an astronaut?

Flipping Spanish your way - Good presentation by Ruth Valle, a college and high school teacher from Tennessee. She highlighted many video tools such as Jing, www.duolingo.com as well as the iPad apps Show Me and Markup. 

I then attended the Bridging the Gap session about writing in the target language. much of the information, although obvious, is good to hear periodically. We must work with our students on HOW to write. Students need to be reminded to stay away from complicated techniques they use in English. we as teachers also need to remember that many of our students struggle with writing in English, so how can we expect them to excel in the target language? Two highlights from her presentation were 1) to always keep in mind what you want to convey and 2) how you want your audience to react. This is great advice for video creation to help keep on track and focused.

My favorite idea from this session was making reverse outlines. Although the presenters suggested this as a tool for learning how to create an effective outline, I was thinking that this could be a good technique for an interpretive activity. It would show if students can choose the main idea and supporting points from an article. It was also suggested that students should not be given any content to read which would take them longer than ten minutes. This would be difficult in 4 and AP, but I see the value in this for the lower levels because when authentic reading takes longer than that, the students tend to get frustrated and want to give up.

The last two sessions for the day were the most exciting for me. First, there was a session on Incorporating Proverbial Language. I loved the ideas for using proverbs to help teach vocabulary and grammar points. My favorite idea was to teach a few proverbs to the students and then have them write a story where the proverb was the moral to the story. This would really help me include more authentic language and culture in my Fairy Tale unit. I am thinking that I will teach two proverbs a week during that unit and then have students choose one when creating their own story. First, I will need to acquire a few more proverbs myself! (Here is a site with some good ones!) It was suggested that for teaching purposes, short and simple proverbs are used. Some of the longer ones get very difficult for students to remember and use correctly. In my AP class I think this would be very helpful for them on the exam where utilizing colloquial language where appropriate can help to boost scores.

The final session of the conference was my personal favorite - Interpreting Art in Spanish. This session brought me back to my college days where I spent many hours learning about art in the Prado Museum. I teach an art unit in Spanish IV, and this session was a good refresher for many of the terms and easy ways to explain art in Spanish. **On another note, in the depths of my basement this summer I also found my books from the Prado which are written in Spanish and will be a great resource for my students during the art unit. ** The presenter has a "museum day" where students dress and pose like various famous works of art for students to discuss similarities and differences to the real piece. This idea may be a great addition to my art unit and I may include this as a choice for the final assessment.

I enjoyed all the sessions, and wished I could have attended more sessions. I was sad that I was unable to attend the first day of the conference, but it is difficult to be away from home for too long with four children. If anyone else has thoughts on these sessions or others from the conference, please share them!

If you are looking for more information about flipping in the language class, check out the new book Flipping 2.0. Ordering information is available at the top of the blog on the right!

EUKENMAV333Z

Tapping into peer-to-peer teaching with assessments

I am constantly looking at how I am assessing students and trying out new ideas to help the students do a better job of demonstrating their knowledge. With this in mind, I tried a partner test for my new level 1 class. It started as an idea from necessity...we had three snow days in five class days, and there just wasn't enough time to get everything done that needed to be accomplished before Spring Break. When I decided upon this partner test, I had no idea that it was going to turn out to be a great idea.

So, I had the students sit two to a table and let them use notes and their partner to complete the test. They were allowed to use any notes and their partner at their table, no one else and no other resources. (I was pleasantly surprised by how some of the pairings worked out - I had some A/B students with B/C students.) I had created the test so although there would be some quick, easy answers from the notes, there was quite a bit of long answer: translate the sentence, write original sentences with specific words, and writing an original paragraph.

Amazingly, what happened was not a furious copying down of material from the notes, but great dialogues about how and why some grammatical things happened. I loved watching all of the students work together to come up with the right answers. Some worked together the whole way, some each did what they knew and then compared and discussed what was missing. Others (mostly the A students) did the test on their own and then swapped papers to peer review.

Yes, I know that this is not necessarily a true assessment of what each student knew, but to be honest, I thought the dialogue that came from doing this was well worth it. The most interesting part was that when I finished grading the assessments, the majority of students performed the way they normally do on tests. The only exception were my lower achieving students, who, for the most part, did better than normal. The best part was that in the days since we did this, I have heard more students doing peer-to-peer teaching, even the lower achieving students.

Since this went so well with level 1, I thought I would try something similar with my level 3 classes. We are studying adverbial phrases with the subjunctive, which is really some tough material. So, what I decided to do was have the students take the assessment normally. Then I gave them 10 minutes to compare and correct mistakes on their tests. Again, there were some great discussions about some tough grammatical concepts. I did have two students (out of 80) that really made out because they clearly had not studied at all, but the majority were able to tweak and refine their answers.

I guess I am just a sucker for peer-to-peer teaching. The students all have so much to offer each other and it is very difficult to tap into all of their knowledge. I don't think it is bad for students to discuss the concepts and then make decisions about what is right. I wouldn't do it all the time, but with a really tough concept, thought it was a good idea.

What do you think??