Distance Teaching: I Feel Like a First-Year Teacher Again

I think this is probably the longest I've gone without writing on my blog. I just got so overwhelmed when all my teaching switched to online. All these amazing teachers were sharing all of these great resources, and I was ignoring it all. My brain shut down, and I did not want to think about it until I had to. 

Teaching online has made me feel like a first-year teacher again, which is both infuriating and relieving. I look back on the way I taught my first year and regret it with every fiber of my being, so it's nice to kind of feel like I'm getting a do-over. I had a great mentor and was beginning to dabble in communicative language teaching, but I still had no clue how languages are acquired. So, being a new teacher again, it would've been really easy to resort back to grammar practice and language-based units. 

I'm too stubborn for that now, and I am grateful now more than ever that my units have changed from units on indefinite/definite articles, direct object pronouns, present tense, etc. to units on pollution and resolutions in Mexico City, human values with regard to sports/entertainment and education, etc. If I were to resort back to units based on a specific grammatical structure, I would've lost way more students than I did (because, let's be real, many of them are not doing the work now that it's optional and online). My students would've picked up on the inauthenticity (whoa, what the heck?! Did I make this word up?! Why are there red lines under it?!), and they would not have done the work.

The Interpretive Mode

I've always learned that speaking and writing are not necessary for language acquisition (that's not to say that they're not important for skill development). However, throughout this process, my goal is for my students to ACQUIRE as much Spanish as possible now that I am down to two days a week of teaching (and hours more work than ever in planning!). 

This has been a great opportunity for me to focus on the interpretive mode (listening and reading). It's honestly the only thing I can do right now because I cannot really monitor the use of Google Translate and other resources from home. Thanks to the help of Ronie Webster for sharing many resources, I have gone further in depth than ever with my unit on pollution in Mexico City. It's also been great because listening has always been the lowest for our students on the STAMP test at the end of eighth grade, so it's given me a lot of chances to develop listening assignments.

The 6th graders have been emailing me saying how much they're enjoying learning about solutions to pollution (I really believe these kids will change the world someday). It's cool to see that they're this engaged and lots of them are asking questions! They're also thinking critically and criticizing the possible solutions as well; every idea is flawed and can be improved! 

One of the things I teach about in this unit is how Mexico City has strict laws as to when people can drive. For example, if you have a yellow sticker, you cannot drive on Mondays. I'm sorry but isn't learning colors and days of the week by learning about driving regulations in Mexico City much more interesting than having a "unit" on telling the days of the week at the beginning of the year??? I really think so. I cannot imagine spending so much time on language that barely helps my students communicate about real things anymore. I want to meet my students at their cognitive level--not just their linguistic level. 

Teaching Online

Not being in class to deliver this content has been so challenging; I'm not going to lie, though, I've enjoyed the creativity. I, like many other teachers, was convinced that my students were not acquiring much language. However, I did a Google Meets with my 7th graders the other day and was really happy to see that they were having no trouble understanding and producing the language from the unit. It goes to show that engaging content really makes a difference. It also goes to show that input has so much power--even if it's only two days a week. They were using phrases like "le da" which includes an indirect object pronoun. I know that phrase is so "teachery" but just trust me that, if I had a unit specifically on indirect object pronouns, they would not be using them today. 

The technology part has been kind of fun for me, and I am so grateful to all the companies that are giving teachers free access to their stuff during this pandemic. It's made my life so much easier. I have found some really awesome ways to deliver my lessons even when I am not actually there in person. This took me so long to get good at, but I can actually say that I still feel like I am being a great teacher right now, and I DO believe that my students are acquiring language (just not as much as before). I found ways to embed videos of myself teaching the materials into interactive lessons thanks to Pear Deck, Screencastify, EdPuzzle, and many more. For example, my students can watch a video of me telling a story, interact with it, and then see the correct answer. Here's a quick sample below:

Although this is not my IDEAL way of teaching, I have still enjoyed doing it. I think if I had not stayed true to what I know about language acquisition, this would've been torture for both me and my students. 

The cool thing about all this is that it didn't happen overnight. That's why I felt like a new teacher again, exploring new tools again, figuring out what works, keeping track of student work in different ways, etc. And just when I feel like I am getting the hang of it, it's coming to an end! haha! That's life, but all I can say is that my sub plans are going to be bad ass from now on! 

Anyway, thanks for reading. It was nice to do something different for a change. 

Timothy

Kahoot, Fortnite, and Interpretive Tasks

Hola Hola:

I am in a much happier place than I was in my last post! Most of my additional responsibilities have ended, which is B.E.A.U.T.I.F.U.L.

As a result, this post is a wee bit long. It is going to be a bit teacher-y because I want to share what I have been doing with interpretive tasks, and the new rubric that I developed. However, before that, if you cannot stand the teacher talk, I am going to talk a bit about how I relate my life and the lives of my students to my teaching.

This past weekend, I went to Lake Winnipesaukee with some of my greatest friends from college. I am currently working on providing input for my students in 8th grade on past tense, so I thought these two events would be perfect. So, I decided to make a Kahoot.

Here's how I have made Kahoot communicative:

It's rare for me to use Kahoot because it's hard for me to use it without it simply being grammar practice. However, every once in a while, I come up with something like what I did today. For those of you who don't know what Kahoot is, I pose a question/statement on the projector, and the students have to click on the right answer on their devices.

So, I created a Kahoot about my trip to Lake Winnipesaukee with my friends. The students would see four statements such as: "Alyssa swam in the lake. Alyssa went kayaking. Alyssa made breakfast. Alyssa slept in a tent." The students have to click on the statement that is true. The reason I consider this to be communicative is because they are all grammatically correct sentences, but the students have to make a logical guess and focus on the meaning. It really is just a matter of guessing which statement makes the most sense the first time around, and the second time around, it's more of a matter of remembering what they learned about my friends and me from the previous round. It's not always my favorite site to use, but the students love it.

Fortnite:

If you are not living under a rock, I am sure you have heard mention of this videogame Fortnite. It is taking over my students' lives, and, to be honest, I am so sick of hearing about it. Howeverrrrrrr, I was listening to The Cult of Pedagogy Podcast, and someone was talking about the importance of relating what we teach to our students' lives. I know we hear this a lot, but it is always nice for me to be reminded of just how important this is. The first thing that popped into my head was Fortnite when I was listening to the podcast. I thought, "okay. I need to see if I can find a way to incorporate this into my teaching." I got home, and I did a quick Google search in Spanish.

I learned wayyyyy more about Fortnite than I wanted, but it ended up being one of my favorite decisions this year to incorporate it. I learned about these "skins" or "trajes" as they called them in Spanish. Basically; these are costumes (my students would kill me for calling them that) that you can earn/purchase in the game. I am currently in the clothing unit with my students, so I thought this was perfect! I decided to create an interpretive reading for my seventh graders using this publication about the top ten best skins of Fortnite (according to the author's opinion).

Let me tell you, this is one of my favorite assessments that I have ever given. The Spanish in this reading is NOT easy because it is very colloquial, but the students were SO engaged that they did not even notice. Students who are a bit more difficult to keep engaged in class were asking for permission to continue their answers on the back because they ran out of room. I am smiling just thinking about it!

The criticism I have gotten/given myself about this reading and Kahoot game is that I may not be able to use it again next year. This is so valid, and so true. However, if I want to keep my teaching relevant, I need to be adjusting my practice/assessment methods every year anyway. Isn't that what keeps teaching interesting? I really do not want to become one of those teachers who is so burnt out from teaching the same thing the same way year after year.

Interpretive Assessments:

The development of this interpretive reading on Fortnite also made me sharpen up my interpretive rubric. In my last post, I shared a rubric that I developed, and I said it was a work in progress. It was a work in progress, indeed, and it has changed SOOOO much and so many times since then. I have been meeting with the AMAZING reading specialist at my school over and over again to learn about the different skills and ways one can demonstrate comprehension of a text.

Here is the link to the rubric that I developed.

If you have taken the time to look at this rubric, you will see that there is a lot in there. This has required me to totally reevaluate the way that I give interpretive tasks. Today, I am going to focus on how I've done it with reading.

I give them two parts to the test.  The first test has the reading without the titles/headlines and pictures. The reading specialist told me that this would give me a better understanding of what the higher level students can do. On this assessment without all the visual support, the students are asked to:

·       Create a new title

·       Identify the main idea and support it with information from the text

·       Summarize what they have read

·       Identify the author’s purpose for writing the text (not quite the author’s perspective) 

Then, I give the students the second part of the text. It’s the same text, but now they have the title and the pictures if there are any. On this test, the students are asked to:

·       Identify the main idea if they now believe it’s different from what they wrote on the first part of the assessment.

·       Identify supporting details 

·       Guess meaning from context (I don’t calculate this in with the rubric, but I think it’s an awesome skill that I want them to develop)

·       Make inferences and cultural perspectives

It’s not always easy to associate a grade with this rubric, but I have found a way to do it.

My biggest question is with the supporting details. I know that a good rubric should not refer to quantity, and for the most part, I don’t really look at quantity as much as I do their ability to identify the supporting details and support with information from the text.

However, my question for other world language teachers is: are there different types of supporting details questions that show higher skills? Like, open ended questions versus true and false questions? I’m wondering if I could adjust the rubric with reference to that? I’m just not knowledgeable enough about that to add it to the rubric at this point.

Conclusion:

Although this rubric is not perfect, it is so much better than what I was using before. I am proud of the feedback that it has helped me provide for the students, and I finally feel that I can see the students at all different levels in proficiency on the same assessment. This newer way of assessing reading attached to a topic that the students love has been so inspiring. Try it and let me know how it goes!

Muchas gracias por leer,

Timothy