Wednesday, 05 August 2009

  • Curriculum overhauls: What to DO?

    I have intricately styled an entire Spanish I curriculum based on self-directed learning.  (Please note: I started this endeavor BEFORE mt principal sent us the e-mail with this link.)  Also, I cut out tests entirely.  Well, I cut out tests as much as I could.  There are still quizzes, which I'm using more as more formative assessments before portfolio projects for each unit.  There are 2 chances per unit to take each quiz, stations for those who work better with worksheets and those who work better with games and interactive stuff, and 3 choices of portfolio project for each unit, mostly in Sternberg's "creative" and "practical" veins, as are most of my students.  I have made this all fit on the alternating schedule for the entire school calendar, along with quarterly in-class writing assessments for writing across the curriculum purposes.

    All I have left to work out for Spanish I is about 1/3 of the portfolio project options and the writing prompts.

    Spanish 2, however...

    I have figured out a basic structure for what I want to do as far as grammatical concepts and cultural projects, but I may have over-extended my abilities and/or resources trying to tie music in to all of it.

    The goal was to have a song for each concept and get the unit's vocabulary from the song.  After all, isn't pop music vocabulary much more relevant for conversing?

    Then I decided that the concepts like irregular preterit might not come across well enough in just ONE song, so I decided to make it two.  This after I had catalogued approximately 150 of my 500+ Spanish language songs with the grammatical concepts demonstrated therein.  I did not make it through all 500 before I decided I could listen for key things rather than writing down EVERYTHING used at least twice in a song.

    At this point, I have about 20 songs for my 12 units and may or may not be able to find good examples for indirect object pronouns or stem-changing preterit.  I therefore may or may not be able to pull off this pop-song curriculum thing.  I don't know whether to abandon it or try it anyway. 

    I would really like to have some kind of predictable pattern to the year, especially since we're getting pressure to be more specific on how grades are measured.  Right now I have a vocab quiz, grammar quiz, portfolio project (and writing across the curriculum test thingies) structure in mind, and I have time slotted for the cultural stuff to work up to the children's book at the end, but how this will go day-to-day, I know not.

    And then there's another twist to the plot: epals.com.  I got a bite as soon as my account started working, so it looks like we'll have connections in CHILE!  I had started fishing after attending a workshop at the NPBTS conference in Atlanta a few weeks ago (I decided to pursue National Boards when I heard that they'd be cut from NC's budget pretty soon), and this could lend a whole NEW structure to the whole course.  I just wish I had someone with whom to hash it all out!  I might try to pick my principal's brain at school tomorrow.  You know, go in and surprise him.

    I have a lot of contemplating to do, and then, most probably, a lot more overhauling.
    Currently
    El Hijo De Nadie: (No One's Son) (Harlequin Jazmin (Spanish)) (Spanish Edition)
    By Caroline Anderson
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Wednesday, 03 June 2009

  • Last-minute differentiation

    As Mr. Willard, my fearless leader, says, "There are some kids even God couldn't get to pass."  These are the only ones I am to permit to earn an F in Spanish I or Spanish II.

    And so, I have cobbled together a few maneuvers to see if I can play God.

    Maneuver uno: allow those who pretty much never pass a test but in tutoring can often put 2 and 2 (or subject and verb) together at least to tag-team the test.  They put their brains together and collectively eliminate wrong answers with what they know between them.  This maneuver has been in effect for certain parties in Spanish II since mid-term, and is now being applied to some of the more resistant cases in Spanish I for finals purposes.

    Maneuver dos: it is not enough to tag-team the test for the aforementioned Spanish II parties, but some of them have decided that they do better with written tests than multiple choice/matching tests, and so have opted to take a 20-question, form-your-own-answer-to-totally-random-questions-that-use-a-potpourri-of-vocab-and-grammar-from-the-whole-year.  I give them 25 questions ahead of time, they carefully translate them, formulate answers, then translate the answers (still working together.)  I call this maneuver malice aforethought: they know what they're getting into, but they also know it's a lot of work.

    Maneuver tres: for those who can pass tests now and then and really need a crutch, I return to the cheat sheet, wherein they can put whatever they want on one side of an 8 1/2" x 11" page--in their own handwriting.  The catch is they have to know how to use it, and they're inadvertently studying as they make it.  Oh, and they also sacrifice a letter grade for the chance to use it, which is not so bad, unless you get a D...which one did today.

    All in all, end-of-course testing has been fruitful for the state-mandated tests.  Only my juniors have taken a test so far, and all but 3 passed the test, and of those did Mr. Willard and I agree God could not get to pass.
    Currently
    Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance
    By Barack Obama
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Wednesday, 13 May 2009

  • 5 things I did to demonstrate my devotion to my beloved school and students in the past week

    Dropped another $30 on an A string for the cello I hadn't touched in 3 years so I could play Pomp & Circumstance with a couple of students for graduation (bringing the total to almost $90 for strings since getting my tax refund...the first to go was, of course, the G string).

    Spent two hours after school on a Friday to get a student who's ADHD meds had worn off up to passing in my class.

    Bought 13 yellow shirts at $3 apiece plus t-shirt paint so my "family," now dubbed the T-rex-araptors, could match on the family field day next Monday.

    Went in to work with a debilitating headache and general malaise, crossing my fingers that the expired Advils would kick in.

    Stayed at school until 6:15 PM (minus a lunch outing for Excedrin and a quick trip to retrieve my son so students could babysit) for a "self-assessment" meeting for the school, where in students, parents, and teachers assessed the school's standing according to New Schools Project rubrics.
    Currently
    ANGELS & DEMONS (ROBERT LANGDON, NO 1)
    By DAN BROWN
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Saturday, 21 February 2009

  • Mid-project, post-project

    Mid-project: Bilingual picture book
    My Spanish 2 kiddos are in the midst of creating a bilingual cultural picture book with partners.  I'm a little off-schedule as far as getting them to turn stuff in as well as the concepts they'll need to know in order to write the story in Spanish.  They've researched their designated cities and are writing the English versions of their stories.

    If I could start over, I'd tighten up the celebrities requirements, for one, so there would be fewer "super models" and telenovela actresses being worked into children's stories.  I might switch it to historical figures or add historical figures in the future.  Also, the kiddos are not being very geographically specific with their landmarks, which was the whole purposes of having them not just pick a Spanish-speaking country, but a city.  And there's got to be a way to get them to zone in on REAL landmarks without allowing ski resorts.

    Maybe I'll have a whole research paper before they write the book in the future...

    I do think this is going to be an excellent way to put everything we've learned this year to work in a meaningful way in the end, even if the culture is a bit lacking in other ways.

    Post-project: Cultural wikis
    I updated an old assignment by putting it online, thereby averting having to hear about Shakira, Sammy Sosa, and tacos eight zillion times, since once a topic's claimed on the site, no one else can use it.

    The single biggest problem with this project is grading it.  That or getting them to finish it.  Back when kiddos could overlap, there was a lot less whining about how hard it was to find 10 topics.  You'd think they'd get the message and choose different categories, but no, everyone had to do food and wildlife, it seemed.  In the meantime, I have approximately 400 pages left to grade with progress reports due next Thursday.  I thought it'd be so much easier to grade online, but if I'm going to hold them accountable for linking, that's a lot of extra clicking around that powerpoints and "scrapbooks" did not require.

    Next time around, I do believe I'll require fewer topics, BUT, I'll require students to conduct research on what's already there--maybe make a map for the different categories?  Instead of or as part of the play dough map early in the year.

    Post-project: Differentiated lyrics response
    In keeping with the school's goal of differentiating for creative, practical, and analytical learners, I came up with still another way to respond to the lyrics that we had spent 2 weeks translating beforehand.  I think this went better than the video option simply because the responses were less time consuming, and I divided the labor, so each stanza of "Llore, llore" was translated.  More kiddos understood more of the song that way, and so COULD do something with it.

    The vast majority went with the response poem option or compare and contrast essay option.  The poems got sticky for guys who had to pretend they were girls, and some people got hung up on how much the guy was crying in the song, neglecting that it was past tense and the whole song was about how he wasn't going to be so torn up anymore.  People got caught up in the essay with being able to parallel specific lines; it was almost harder to analyze the English than the Spanish!  I'm very pleased with the quality of thinking that came out of that one, though.

    For this next song, I'm going to be hard-pressed to come up with new ways to respond, but I'm thinking I might like to do something with using lines from different songs to create a whole new poem or dialogue, or maybe a dialogue between two of the singers.