The Beauty of the Grade Change Form

Ms. Brown, I redid that assignment, will you change my grade?

Ms. Brown, I still have a zero in Powerschool for the quiz I made up last week.

Ms. Brown, I finally submitted the assignment that was due two weeks ago, can you grade it please?

Late work, make up work, re-done work: I may get a notification in Schoology, but that doesn’t mean I will remember to update it in PowerSchool. And I certainly can’t stop in the middle of class to update a grade, nor can I be counted on to remember by the time my planning period rolls around.

“Would you please fill out the grade change form?”

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  Students enter their email, name, class period, the reason for the error, and the title of the assignment.

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The grade change form puts the responsibility on the student to notify me of the issue, and sends me an email I can deal with on my planning period. It lives at the top of my Schoology page, so it is easily accessible to students. Between distance learners, classroom learners, and quarantined learners, I have a lot to keep up with, but the grade change form gives me an easy way to keep up with make up work, and makes one less thing to keep track of in my overworked brain.

Gracias to Elsie Ratcliff for sharing this idea in her fabulous webinar with Jamie Vega. You can find the link to their presentation “Tips for Easy Unit Planning during Digital Learning​” on the Georgia World Languages Professional Development page.

How to Annotate a PDF

I have been back to school for about two weeks now, teaching students live in the classroom and online concurrently. This unique setting is certainly stretching my skills this year, and pushing me to learn new technology skills (and this from an avowed technophile!). I recently showed students how to annotate a PDF using the Chrome extension Kami, which led to a student showing me an even easier way to annotate within Adobe Acrobat. So, when you just can’t find the editable Word file for that handout in your unit 1 binder, or when you want to use an awesome workbook page, scan it in, and let your distance learners fill it out digitally.

 

Method 1: Annotating a PDF with Kami

Skip to 0:30 for the good stuff. You can also use the shape and underline tools, which will probably turn out neater than freehanding.

Method 2: Annotating a PDF with Adobe Acrobat

Lesson Ideas: Nugget + Question

I am on week three of digital learning/lesson planning. This week, my students will be working on some nuggets from Señor Wooly. I have assigned one nugget a day, paired with a question. The question gives me a chance to interact with them, gauge their reaction to the song, and also highlight some of the linguistic structures in the lyrics. Here’s what that looks like:

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If you can’t see the images, here are the questions:

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Spanish 1- Qué asco

1. “Qué asco” means how gross.  What is the grossest food you see in the video? Upload your answer to the submission box.
2. Do you like any foods that other people think are gross? Upload your answer to the submission box! Personally, I really like kale, when it is prepared right! ¡Qué delicioso!
3. What normal/common foods make you say “¡Qué asco!”? Upload your answer to the submission box! Personally, I hate peas – ¡No me gustan nada los guisantes!
   

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On Friday, they have a discussion post:
The man and woman in ¡Qué asco!  like a lot of gross foods. Change one of the lines of the song so that the food isn’t gross – change 1-2 words so that when you say “Me gusta”, it’s true!

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In Spanish 2, they will be watching La confesión de Victor. Here are the questions I’ve given them:

1. In the song, Victor tells us, Yo era guapo pero ya no lo soy. – I was (used to be) handsome, but now I’m not. How have you changed since elementary, middle, or preschool? Rewrite the lyric, changing guapo to an adjective that describes how you used to be. Upload the new lyric (Yo era _______ pero ya no lo soy) to the submission box.
2. Victor tells us many things he can’t do without hair – sin pelo. What if we changed the line to sin escuela (without school?) Or, con corona? (with corona?) What would you say you can’t do? Upload your response to the submission box.Sin escuela, ya no puedo _________. (Without I school, I can’t ______ anymore).

   Con corona, ya no puedo _________. (With corona, I can’t ______ anymore.)

    

3. La confesión de Víctor is just the second song in the Victor trilogy – the third video is called Feo. Go watch Feo on SenorWooly.com. Between Guapo, La confesión de Víctor, and Feo, which video is your favorite? Why? Upload your answer to the submission box.
   

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One of the most challenging parts of quarantine teaching, is, for me, not interacting with my students. Students have always inspired and motivated my teaching, and it’s really hard to teach without seeing and talking to them every day! By adding a question to the nugget assignment, I get to see their response to the material, comment back on it, and get a bit of that student-teacher interaction we have been missing out on.

School Unit Videos

The school unit in Spanish 1 offers tons of opportunities for incorporating culture and making cultural comparisons. I made a playlist of videos around the topic of school that I’ve been using with my Spanish 1 students. Here’s some ideas for how you can use them:

1. Movie talk the What a Classroom Looks like, School Lunches, or School Uniforms videos. Ask simple questions: ¿Qué es esto? ¿Cuántos años tiene? ¿Quién es el profesor? ¿De qué color es? ¿Tienen mucho dinero o poco dinero?
2. Use as a warm up or closing activity. Watch and discuss what you see. Have students write down thoughts, or ask a guiding question before watching – what is simliar/what is different? What surprises you? What questions do you have?
3. Examine bias. This is a great cross-curricular connection. Who made this video? Why did they make it? Are they biased or neutral? Remind them that even if they spot bias, they can still learn something about life/school in that country.

I’m also loving the music video for “La Magia” by Little Jesus. Kara Jacobs shared a wealth of resources on her blog, including a story based on the music video. I recommend that you read the story before watching the video!

For more ideas for the school unit, here are all my school unit posts. What are your favorite school unit resources? What videos should I add to my playlist?

Web-Filter Woes

Y’all, I love teaching with music. Spanish pop music has been a part of my classroom since year 1, and my use of music for increasing student engagement, reinforcing grammar and vocabulary topics, and touching on cultural issues has only increased over the last ten years. Many students tell me that music is their favorite part of my class – “Yes! It’s Wednesday! It’s song day!” They beg me to play songs on Wednesday, and every other day of the week, give me song suggestions/requests, and tell me they’ve added their favorites to their personal playlists.

Over ten years of teaching, many things have changed, and other things stay the same: my students still love listening to Spanish pop music, and I still have to do battle with the internet filter every. freaking. year.

Admittedly, it has gotten better: at my previous school, I emailed the tech guy every single week with a list of videos to unlock. I think he got a real kick out of Mi novio es un zombie! And there was a stretch at my current school- I believe it was during the “Youtube for Education” era – where just about all my music videos were blocked, and I had to remember to download my videos at home so I could show them in class. Currently, I can access most of my music videos, and occasionally, when one is filtered, I can usually find it on another site with a video search excluding youtube (protip: search with -youtube to find videos hosted on other sites).

My current beef with the web-filter involves one of my favorite sites for extension, enrichment, choiceboards, and early finishers: LyricsTraining. I have talked about LyricsTraining in presentations to world teachers at FLAG, SCOLT, and within my own department, and it never ceases to impress. If you’ve never used it, it is a fill-in-the-blanks-in-the-lyrics activity. Students watch the video and, as the lyrics scroll underneath, they enter the missing words. It is a great listening activity, exposing students to accents of native speakers, and also gets them to engage with speech at native-speaker speed in a non-threatening way. But don’t get too excited: LyricsTraining relies on embedded YouTube videos. If your school filters videos the way mine does, you might find that many of your favorite, school-appropriate, teenager-pleasing Spanish pop songs are blocked for students. Songs like Te mueves tú, Corazón sin cara, Soy yo, and Tengo tu love.

The 2001 Child Internet Protection Act requires schools to install filters that block “sexually explicit” content. I absolutely support that, and I understand that no filtering software is perfect. However, schools need to choose web filters that empower teachers to choose age-appropriate educational content, with means to whitelist websites and YouTube videos that are being unnecessarily filtered out. Schools also need to differentiate between how the internet is filtered for students and staff members, but I think that is a post for another day. For now, I’m stuck pondering the latest email from my school’s wonderful technology support person, telling me there is no way to selectively enable blocked YouTube videos, and mourning the loss of my beloved Lyrics Training activities for my students this semester.

My Spanish 1 Playlist:

Te Mueves Tú Song Activities

 

Just a quick post today to share some resources I put together for Te mueves tú.  It’s an oldie but goodie!

Click here for the PDF and click here to download the editable word file.  You’ll find a cloze activity, artist bios, and ideas for cultural connections. Enjoy!

Learning Portfolios in Spanish 1

Do you follow Bill Ferriter (@plugusin) on Twitter? I had the pleasure of meeting him at a conference this summer and attending his sessions on EdTech and self assessment. Here’s one of my favorite Bill Ferriter quotes:

Why is the toaster that you are currently using exactly the same as the toaster that you used back in 1983? Answer: Because it does exactly what you want it to do. Use that same filter when making technology choices.

So I began my portfolio experiment last year. I chose Seesaw as our portfolio platform on a whim after reading a blog post raving about it. As the semester went on, issues began to arise highlighting the fact that Seesaw was not passing the toaster test – while it had lots of nice features, it was not doing exactly what I wanted it to do. Here’s what I wanted in a portfolio:

1. A place to collect student work and reflections on their learning and growth, including audio, video, pictures, and text
2. Privacy – the student controls who sees it, if anyone, other than me
3. Ownership – the student shares it with me, but it is their collection of work and they retain control of it to look back on later, or to share with others to show their growth

Seesaw checked off number one, and we figured out how to adjust the post settings so videos were not automatically shared with the class (oh, the teenage horror!), but the ownership aspect was non existent – I was in control of all content submitted to Seesaw. Students didn’t have a username and password to sign in, but needed a QR code or passcode from me every time their browser data was erased. Oh, and the codes expired every hour, so I couldn’t post the code on Schoology for all time. In practice, this meant that once they compiled their artifacts in Seesaw, they might not be able to access them again. I’m not trying to hate on Seesaw – it has a lot of cool features, and the privacy settings and login system would work really well for elementary schools. Just, for me, it wasn’t meeting my needs.

Cue Powerpoint, the classic presentation tool teachers love to outlaw. Honestly, one of the most useful skills I learned in the EdTech class I took for my masters degree was how to create a narrated PowerPoint and export it as a video, but PowerPoint has been banned for every single assignment I’ve had for my EdS in Edtech. For why, professors? For why??? I mean, I get it, you want me to learn a new tool, but if Powerpoint does exactly what I need, why do I have to do a project in Hyperstudio when literally no one uses it, it requires a special software download, and I’m not allowed to install software on my work computer? <endrant>

Powerpoint allows for video, audio, images, and text (although inserting the video may require a rinse cycle in CloudConvert), and allows students to share with me and anyone else they choose, while still retaining control over their work. Toaster test? Passes with flying colors. Sorry, grad school professors, but in this case, PowerPoint really is the best tool for the job.

If you want it, here is the PowerPoint portfolio template I gave to my students. For unit 1, they have a video, two Explora Español activities, and a learning reflection.

Template – Learning Portfolio (1)

Vocabulary Charades: Quick & Easy with Quizlet

Charades is a great way for students to review vocabulary in the target language while building classroom community. My secret for making it awesome while preserving prep time? Quizlet!

Step 1: Assemble your list of words. I like to throw in some challenge words that may not seem immedaitely pantomime-able (“It’s 2:10” and “apple” were ones that surprised my kids, but they eventually figured out how to act out). Maybe you already have it in Quizlet, or maybe you want to type it in a Word document and import it as a new Quizlet. Or maybe you just want to use mine? Here ya go:

Realidades Para Empezar Pantomime-able vocab

Realidades 1A Pantomime-able Vocab

 

Step 2: Print as flashcards. I’ve written before about why I love Quizlet, and the printing feature is a big reason! Print your words on the large or small flashcards. Check the two sided box so it prints the Spanish all on one page, but if you don’t want the English on the back, just adjust your printer to print one sided and skip the even numbered pages.

Step 3: Cut out your flashcards, or have a student do it for you. Assemble into baggies. Add directions, if you like. charades instructions (word)

Baggies are great for storing, while the buckets are great while students are playing – draw from one bucket and discard to the other.

 

Step 4: Divide your students into groups and play! Three groups of 8-10 players worked well with my students. 

Need some ideas for gestures to use? Here’s a video:

 

Explora Español – Choice Board Language Exploration Stations for Spanish 1

Last year I implemented portfolios in Honors Spanish 1, with choiceboard exploration activities as a major component. I’m back at it again with a fresh batch of students, with my ideas from last year ironed out and refined. Here’s what we did:

Choiceboard instructions – PDF — WORD

 

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Option 1 – Magnetic Poetry – play with the words

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Last year, I kept my magnets on my mini fridge all year. It was awkward because students had to sit on the floor for the activity, and my magnets got bumped off the fridge all year. The overhead cart may not be pretty, but it worked great for this activity!

Option 2 – Spelling – play with the letters

Option 3 – Lyrics Training – play with music & lyrics

For lyrics training, students had a choice between La Gozadera (really difficult!) and Tengo tu love. Unfortunately, Tengo tu love was blocked by the school filter, so La Gozadera was their only option. Here are some of their reflections:

I found it very difficult to find the lyrics to the song. They speak very fast, and you have to listen very carefully in order to catch it. However, I found it as a good brain workout, and it became much easier at the end.

After doing the lyrics training, I started to make connections in my head. I was able to distinguish between Spanish words more easily and hear words at a faster rate than before. After making several attempts, I noticed patterns and picked up the pronunciation of specific words. I definitely would like to do this with different songs.

Option 4 – Book browsing – read the books

I have a pretty good selection of easy readers & children’s books in my classroom library. Even though I tell them the novels will be easier, they always gravitate toward the children’s books! Here’s a reflection:

The title of the book I chose is called, “Oh no! It’s Hippo!” The short story I read was about a hippo, who was made fun of because he was fat. The other animals in the jungle make fun of him, and scare him away from the pond. I learned that ‘hipo’ in Spanish means hippo, and hiccup. This activity was hard, because I had to translate what the book said. This was a valuable learning activity for me, because I learned a lot of new words. My goal going forward is to comprehend a page in the book.

 

Reflection

After the activities, I have students take a picture or screen shot a write a reflection on their learning and their language goals. I really enjoy reading these! We repeat these activities a couple times a semester, and it’s so exciting to see how much they grow over the course of the class. Especially in honors, I want to empower students to use Spanish for enjoyment, and not just see it as something they are doing for a grade. I think these activities also support state standards – Students will identify situations and resources in which target language skills and cultural knowledge may be applied beyond the classroom setting, for recreational, educational, and occupational purposes. (MLI.CC5) – As well as ACTFL standards – Students show evidence of becoming life-long learners by using the language for personal enjoyment and enrichment. 

Conference Takeaways: Prioritizing Remediation Time

CNN: Collaboration Needed Now!

Holy smokes. It’s been an intense three days of learning. I attended Solution Tree’s PLC At Work Institute this week, and I’ve got to say, it was the some of the best PD I’ve attended, particularly considering it was not grade or content-specific (hello, SCOLT and FLAG, you will always be my #1 for PD! 😘).

PLCs (Professional Learning Communities) encompass a lot of big educational ideas: differentiated instruction, standards based/mastery grading, common formative assessments, and data-driven teaching. A PLC must identify the essential learning outcomes, develop common assessments, and then analyze the assessment data as a team. Assessment data informs and drives assessment; if students have not mastered the essential content, they need to be re-taught and re-assessed.

I attended a fantastic session with Michelle Marrillia titled, Do Your Common Formative Assessments Really Change Your Practice? Turning Data Into Successful Secondary Classroom Instruction that gave me some practical ideas for how to integrate remediation into regular class time. She talked about the importance of guaranteed recovery systems – tutoring before or after school is not a guaranteed option, because not all students have transportation to attend tutoring outside of regular school hours. In my school’s case, remediation during our study hall time is not guaranteed either, because many of our students attend the career academy for half the day, and travel between the campuses during study hall. In order for the recovery system to be truly guaranteed, it has to be integrated as a regular in-class routine.

Option 1: Pull students for short & sweet recovery sessions several times a week. Identify the students needing remediation based on your common formative assessment (CFA) data, and pull them for some small group or one on one instruction during independent work time. I’ve done this before with quiz corrections: I give the class an assignment to work on independently (or in partners, or in groups – something they don’t need help/guidance from me on) and I call up everyone to look at their grade and make corrections. We talk about what they missed, I give them a remediation assignment to work on, and we schedule a retake. Michelle suggests giving CFAs weekly (formative assessment should be frequent with data used immediately to inform instruction), with the retake for the previous week’s assessment copied on the back of this week’s CFA.

As you reteach, you are probably still moving on with new material. Copy the retake on the back of the new assessment the next week. pic.twitter.com/bFbHHWkMTM

— Andrea Brown (@andrearoja) July 9, 2019

Option 2: Schedule a longer slot of time for remediation once a week

Michelle suggested reserving one day a week as a “no new information” day for remediation and extension. Some teachers at her school use a red-yellow-green color coding system, with red meaning not mastered, yellow meaning approaching mastery, and green meaning mastered. On the remediation day, students get a sticker corresponding to how they did on the formative assessment and are assigned to a group according to their needs. The following points surprised and intrigued me:

• The color coding system sounds like tracking. However, at her school, she found students didn’t get their feelings hurt by being in the red group, as it meant they would get the instruction they needed to meet the standard AND a chance to improve their assessment grade. She also shared hearing comments like, “I am NOT going to be red next week!” I think the key here is ensuring that you actually follow through with the remediation in a timely manner and truly provide a path to mastery.
• The year this system was implemented, standardized test scores went up at her school. I would like to see more research on this point – does less content deeper result in higher scores on state tests? This does kind of make sense – particularly in subjects where success in Unit 3 depends on building on the skills learned in Units 1 and 2, ensuring that students master half the content will show up as growth on the end of the year tests, even if you don’t even skim over the rest of the standards.

I teach on a block schedule, and while I don’t see myself devoting 20% of my class time to remediation every week, my classes are long enough I could reserve half a class period for recovery, particularly if it’s not every week.

Takeaway: I need to prioritize grading CFAs quickly and using that data to provide remediation for students who are red on essential standards. Remediation/enrichment time needs to be a regularly scheduled activity.