Highlights from ACTFL 2014 / Social Reading

Image taken from: http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/11/11/social-books-hopes-to-make-e-reading-communal/

Another great benefit of attending ACTFL was the exposure to a number of different teaching tools that I was previously unaware of. Before going any further, I think it's important to admit that as far as using technology in the classroom is concerned I am woefully behind. I began teaching with CI/TPRS two years ago and I have, since that time, have concentrated almost solely on the effective delivery of comprehensible input. However, I do understand the importance (and value) of taking advantage of the tools that technology has to offer and sought out sessions in San Antonio that would shed some light on some of the more effective apps/websites out there. The first really mind blowing (again, I'm new to this tech stuff) strategy/tool I learned about was social reading. Basically, the idea behind all social reading applications is that you provide a space for students to read, annotate, and comment on a text together thereby helping one another to decipher meaning and understanding. These tools are an obvious asset in the English Language Arts classroom but, I would argue they're even more valuable in the Foreign Language Classroom, especially when students are exposed to authentic texts. There are a number of social reading applications out there for you to explore in order to find which works best for you and your students. Some allow you to upload your own text and others require you to choose from a selection. Below are some of the social reading apps discussed at ACTFL (if anyone knows of any others, I'd love to hear about them):

• Classroom Salon 
• Subtext 
• Ecomma 

(I've also included this June 2014 article on the best apps for classroom use. Many of which I'm unfamiliar with but hope to blog about my successes with them later!)

All of the presenters at the session on social reading I attended were World Language faculty members at a universities around the country and because they are in higher education not all of their ideas seemed to me to be readily adaptable to the middle school level. However, one of the panelists, Joshua Thoms from the University of Utah, described a project he and his students completed using classroom salon that I thought would be really fun to try with my own students.

(1) The activity is a group project and so the first step is to assign groups of four.
(2) Each group was assigned a different text and had to read the text using the Classroom Salon app. They were also instructed to annotate the selection and to comment on each other's work. (This step requires getting author's permission to use their text on Classroom Salon.)
(3) Groups then had to generate 10-15 different interview questions for the author of each text.
(4) Finally, the groups conducted Skype interviews with the author in the target language and those interviews were later played for the entire class.

I remember reading a blog post long ago about Cynthia Hitz doing a skype interview with her students and Mira Canion and thinking then how cool that would be to do with my own kids. We will be reading "Hija del sastre" by TPRS publishing later this year and I'm planning on bringing in some authentic texts about the Spanish Civil War and having students do the activity described above.

Highlights from ACTFL 2014 / Higher Order Thinking

I've just gotten back from ACTFL in San Antonio and I have a notebook full of ideas I wanted to share here for future use. My first session was given by Carol Gaab and was entitled "Inspiring Higher Order Thinking." I work in DC public schools and an entire section of our evaluation rubric is devoted to higher level thinking in class and so I was eager to attend. As always I found the presenter full of energy and with some excellent ideas. For this session, Gaab used her biography about Felipe Alou.
(1) She first discussed how she selected particular vocabulary words from the text by looking both for the major themes of the novel and the highest frequency vocabulary words. For this text, Gaab chose the word "dream."
(2) To reinforce the vocabulary, she gave students five examples of different types of dreams and asked session participants to distinguish between "waking dream" and "sleeping dream." For example, "Felipe dreams of joining the major leagues" would be classified as a "waking dream" or a "goal" and "Felipe dreamt there was a monster under his bed" is a "sleeping dream."
(3) In order to give students more opportunities to practice the vocabulary she gave students various sentences about the main character and students had to decide if each statement were "probably" or "possibly" true. I like this strategy which is very similar to Martina Bex's "This or That" activity and can be modified in a variety of different ways.
(4) Gaab then suggested personalizing the vocabulary. Asking the students questions like "Do you have a dream?" "Do you always dream the same thing?"
(5) Next, Gaab asked participants to indicate which of the following words could be used to describe a dream: Event, Opinion, Goal, Wish, Reality, Future. She suggested distinguishing between long-term goals and short-term goals and, to demonstrate, showed us an impressive video of one of her own ESL students discussing his long and short term goals on video.
(6) After this last activity, Gaab transitioned from talking about dreams to talking about stereotypes (all of this in preparation for the students listening to Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I have a Dream" speech). She introduced the word "judge" and asked students if they thought they were a judge. Anticipating that most would answer in the negative, she showed the audience several pictures depicting various stereotypes (an overweight woman, two goth kids, etc.) and asked us to write down three words describing each picture. She then asked us to share comments in order to see whether we commented on economic status, looks, age, etc., proving to us that we do in fact judge one another.
(7) Gaab followed up with a selection from the "I have a Dream" speech. She suggested giving the students a transcript while they listened and, ultimately, taking the script away after the second or third listen. I would also try to personalize the speech as much as possible and circle key vocabulary after each listen.
(8) As a post-listening/post-reading activity Gaab gave us several sentences and asked us to distinguish the sentences as either something MLK would say or would not say.

All and all I thought it was an excellent session and took away a ton of ideas. We are gearing up to read "Los Baker van a Perú" after the holiday and I'm looking forward to developing some higher order thinking with this text.