True Confessions

As I often do before I present at a conference, I am sitting in my hotel room and gathering my thoughts. I am here outside of Pittsburgh, at the Flipped Class Conference, and trying to decide what questions I want to try to find the answers to in my own classroom. I feel like I have really been neglecting my personal reflections and really want to take this time to recommit to my original ideas and goals from my first Flipped Class Conference 4 years ago:

• I want my students to increase their fluency in class.
• I want students to WANT to learn not just the language, but more about the people and culture of the world. 
• I want to facilitate my students' learning, not dictate it.
• I want to love my job every day, no matter what other things are going on in my school.

In so many ways, these four things sound so simple, and yet they are often difficult to achieve. I have fallen into the trap of tweaking minimally and not really trying to continually improve my curriculum to adapt to the needs of my students. I work hard for my students, always have, always will. However, I think I need to turn the focus back on their thoughts and ideas. How can I continue to move to the more student centered classroom? How can I help them to love learning and build on their abilities and interests to keep them learning beyond the requirements?

I don't have the answers to these questions.....which is ok. But, I think I haven't been continuing to search for them, which is not ok. 

I am very fortunate to have such a great PLN to turn to for advice and encouragement and so many of them are here with me at this conference. I need to focus not just on the social side of this conference, but try to look at the sessions and speakers through the eyes of the teacher new to flipping trying to find the path that will help students achieve success.

I want to move to more creative assignments, inspired by me, but created by my students. Shall I give more choice boards to show the students their capabilities and help them understand how to express their knowledge on their own? Should I reject all grammar practice and have students instead approach everything from a cultural perspective? Should I model some of my colleagues and find the right way to have online portfolios and true student interaction online?

I sit here tonight full of questions that I have no answers to. It is the search for the answers that helps me see things from my students' eyes and helps me be a better teacher. Join me on this journey.

Time to start gathering the ideas for next year!

As a mom of four who is working on a huge new project, preparing for a conference, and supposed to be cleaning my house......I figured I would put all of that off to start working on some of the cool ideas I am seeing and looking at implementing next year. (Who says teachers don't work over the summer???)

• Pen Pal News - This has been completely revamped and I am so excited about it. They connect you and your students with classes across the globe based on your language, level, and maybe age (?). They give a free trial, and after that it is $1.99 per student. I am able to easily cover this cost with the fees students pay to be in Spanish class. It utilizes video tools to give some lessons and, of course, students are expected to write to their pen pals. It also helps meet some of those Common Core goals with 21st century learning and literacy.You can choose when your session is and for how long. I chose a six week session beginning in October, because I thought that would give me enough time to get the kids going. Check it out for yourself. 
• History Pin - This is a resource I found on Free technology for teachers. I think this looks like a great idea to find information, and classes can create lessons as well. Here is the description from Free tech for teachers - 
• Historypin is probably my favorite service for locating geo-located historical imagery. After writing my post about Views of Venice I explored Historypin for the first time in a few months and enjoyed exploring some of the Historypin channels and tours of geolocated imagery. On all of the Historypin channels you will find, at a minimum, galleries of historical images geolocated onto Google Maps. Many of the channels also include a tour that you can flip through to view connected image sets. Historypin is largely a crowd-sourced effort. Your students could contribute to an existing Historypin project or create projects of their own. Historypin allows anyone with a Google account to place images within the setting of current Google Maps Streetview imagery. Your students could create a Historypin project of their own by going to your local history society, scanning historical images, and placing them into a map. (Try using the CamScanner app for iOS and Android to scan images without having to use a dedicated scanner).
• Classroom blogs - I have been using a classroom blog, but not to its full potential. I am looking at increasing student usage for next year in meaningful ways. I think this is a great intro/rehash of why classroom blogs are so important. You can use Blogger, Wordpress, Edmodo - just remember to use the format that makes the most sense for yourself and your students. For example, we are a Google school, so Blogger made the most sense for me since our students already had the login information and can upload easily. Here is my blog from last year. Students in lower levels were not required to comment on others posts, and you can see how well that worked. I always choose prompts based on what we are learning, current events, or school activities.
• Using music in the classroom - Do you love music? Do you wish you could use more in your class, but don't have time to sift through lots of songs to find the right one? Then do I have the link for you. Thanks to El Mundo de Birch, here is a database of over 1200 songs!
• Here is a post that just came up with some great Ed Tech tools, especially for videos and engagement. Can't wait to try these out!

These are some of the things that I am checking out so far. If you find great info, please comment and share. Hopefully in July I will have another list of some of the great resources I have discovered in my curriculum planning and from FlipCon14.

Out of this world flipping in Mars and other PD

As FlipCon14 draws near, the excitement is building. As I have mentioned before, this is my favorite There is still time to register, and even if you can't make it, virtual attendance is a great option. If you are already registered, plan on attending all the great networking events through the conference. It will give you a great opportunity to meet the "Stars" at FlipCon and learn from the best as well as meet other people beginning to flip. Growing your PLN is a HUGE part of this conference. We all need support and someone to turn to who really "gets"  the flipped class.

I am excited about the opportunity to presenting "Planning for Flipped Class Success" which is geared toward all beginning flippers. This session is Wednesday, June 25th at 8:30 so get your coffee early and join me! We will be discussing getting support, choosing curriculum and teaching students to be successful. Here is the link to the pre-session homework since this session (and the whole conference) is flipped. Additionally I am going to be part of the panel of authors for Flipping 2.0 which will be Tuesday, June 24th at 2:15 here is the pre-session homework. Finally I will be moderating the content area session for World Language which is Tuesday, June 24th at 10:45.

If you have not starting planning your schedule, or if you are looking to register here is the link for FlipCon14. If you are unable to attend, I will post a recap of the sessions that I attend and my thoughts and ideas, so stay tuned!

If you are looking for some other WL PD to keep yourselves busy, how about LangCamp? Click the link to complete the form and be a part of this great sharing ideas. Want all the details? Check out Sra Spanglish's blog.

As far as some other cool innovative educator conferences and PD, Lisa Nielsen has compiled a great list of upcoming conferences for this year. You can see them on her blog post.

If you know of other great WL PD, please comment and add all the pertinent information. I will add as well as I see more come my way!

The big finish

I can't believe that it has been two months since I have written. I have so many things that have gone on this year that there will need to be lots of reflection and journaling as we wrap up. After today I will finish the last of my final exams. I am glad to put this school year in the books because it has probably been one of the most challenging ones I have had so far.

Trying to change the culture with Juniors that were able to skate by and get good grades last year has been a huge challenge. Some of my students really rose to the challenge, but too many were happy with mediocre grades and middle of the road work throughout the year. No where was this more apparent than in the final exam project.

For the Spanish III final exam, students completed the "Choice" projects that we did last year. On the advice of students last year, I moved this from being a regular project and made it the final exam. Many of my students this year did use the class time to do the research necessary on their topic of choice, but when it came time for the final presentation, it seemed like the majority of them were still put together the night before. I even had a few students that moved to English when they got stuck presenting.

I love the choice project because students do get the opportunity to work on something that is interesting to them. This year I had a wide variety of topics. Between all of the classes I had environment, math, culture, food, sports, music, etc. I have to say I was so proud of the kiddos that did math. They went over different vocab, how to do problems, the history of math. It was awesome!

My grades were a little lower this year than in previous years, and although my students made good strides in increasing their proficiency, they are behind the proficiency levels that I have seen in the first two years of my flip. I believe some of this is a result of the lackadasical Spanish II, but I also think that I missed too much school this year to be as effective as I normally am. So, I am cutting back on my presenting for next year and cutting back on my Student Council duties to be more available for my students next year.

I have a ton of new goals for next year, but they need to marinate a little more before I write them down. I hope all of you are enjoying your last days (or month) of school. ;)

On a personal note, my oldest is graduating this year, and I am looking forward to it and dreading it at the same time. It is hard to imagine my daily life without him in it. So, I am still running around like crazy for the next week as we prepare for the influx of family.