My head is spinning

We are back at it! It is only my third day of school, and since we're on a block schedule I have seen most of my students only one time. It's the perfect time to reflect on how the first day went!

I was nervous having my seniors again for the third year as I wrote about in my post about fears I have about the year. The first day was exciting. I started in English talking about the two THEMES I want to have this year. I did not want to talk about rules and policies because they were hearing about those in all of their other classes on the first day...well, all of the classes with teachers who haven't read Teach Like a PIRATE anyway. We talked about RESPECT and CHALLENGES. I had them brainstorm "What does respect look like?" and "How can we feel good about challenges?" Since I'm a technology freak, I made sure to use Polleverywhere.com to collect my answers. The students were thoughtful and gave a nice range of responses. In my opinion, with these themes I don't really feel the need to go over RULES with them. If they are not doing homework-they're not rising to the challenge. If they're being too silly or teasing a classmate they're not being respectful to me or their peers. Some kids really make an extra effort to BREAK the rules and if I don't have any that are explicit, then they're kind of hard to break, right?

The next phase of class was to roll out the new "NO ENGLISH" policy to my juniors and seniors. I could see their anxiety level rise when the Keynote slide appeared on the screen:

Here, I pirated the idea from Cristy Vogel (@msfrenchteach).  First I made them a bit nervous, and then I slowly gave them tools and "blankies" to make them feel more comfortable in class. I explained that each student would need to bring in a dry erase marker because they would all have a sentence strip on their desks in the future. They cannot SPEAK English, but if there is a question they cannot say, they may WRITE it down for me to see. I also gave them a laminated Pink and Green post-it note for me to use as formative assessment. If they don't understand something, they can turn the card over from Green to Pink. I demonstrated how some students may like to make it obvious when they don't know something to be funny, but the point of this is really to be more subtle about it. As one of our 3 teacher inservice days this summer, we had Christine Fulford (@cfs19009276) speak to us about formative assessment in the classroom. It was NOT what I was expecting at all. I was ready to play Words With Friends with the guy next to me, but I was interested in everything she had to say. She made the analogy of formative assessment being like a gas gauge on the car. How important is it for us to know how much gas we have at ALL times? Pretty important!!! My post-it notes are the cheap version of the poker chips idea she had. Green chips-I'm good. Red chips-I'm not understanding. Black chips-I want to die. This is going to take awhile for me to get accustomed to LOOKING FOR the gas light, but when it becomes routine for me, I think it will be awesome.

NO INGLÉS: Students keep tabs on their peers and if they hear them speak English, they say "¡PÁGAME!" and I will keep a tally next to their names on my clipboard. When a student gets caught speaking English 10 times, they need to clear their account by either writing me a 1 page letter about how awesome I am and how much they enjoy my class or they need to bring something Spanish into class. I suggested that if they go to a Spanish-speaking country for February vacation that they bring home a bunch of free stuff with Spanish written on it to sell on the "Spanish class black market" for their friends who frequently need to clear their account. The first day was kind of tough for my seniors to get into it, but the second day went a bit smoother. 

Students then got right to it!  They completed a Tic-Tac-Toe board by filling in answers about themselves. As they finished, they chose 2 Pipe Cleaners to create something that represents them. I did not get to use this time to talk to kids about what they were making because I had to answer language questions about the game. I will probably change this next year so that I can dedicate that time solely to getting to know my students and having them get to know each other. 

Back to the game: I wanted them to be able to find people around the room who have things in common with them. For example, they would have Soy ________. If they wrote RUBIO, then they would need to ask a question in order to get a SÍ or NO response. (Eres rubio?) If the person says SÍ, they can put an X in the box. If not, they need to ask someone else. When they got 3 in a row, they needed to yell "Gané" to get a piece of hard candy I brought back from Costa Rica. 

In some classes we did not have enough time to get to the game part of Tic Tac Toe so we did that on the second day. I also tried an alternative way of playing where students just sat with partners and took turn asking the questions-that way they were actually playing the game against each other. They assigned themselves either an X or an O. If they got a SÍ answer, they put their own symbol on the board, if their partner said NO, they had to put their partner's symbol on the board. I think this way worked a bit better because they were asking many more questions instead of just 3 to make their 3 in a row. 

How did your first days go??  I am interested in hearing ideas about community builders to do in Spanish. I want to keep them talking in Spanish but have them get to know each other a bit better as well. 

Los primeros días...

I'm reading and re-reading the Rapport section of Teach Like a PIRATE and getting excited about what I can do on my first three days of school. I wish I could just take a Dave Burgess pill and have his persona flow through me for the kids. I wonder if he speaks Spanish??

The language part is what is holding me back a little bit. I definitely did NOT hit the 90% target language goal set by ACTFL in the classroom. I don't think I even hit 30% on some days. It is what I am going to strive for this year, so some of the community building activities I've been reading about in the book and on the Livebinder for the first 5 days are challenging me to think about how I could do them in Spanish. The problem is this: how deep can I really get with the kids if they're guarded about using a language that is not easy for them? I want to know more about the kids other than "Me gusta el chocolate." 

The ideas I've been throwing around seem to be pretty good, I just need to focus on making them fit together with a seamless transition. I thought of having a party theme for the first day back. I designed the invitation and I'm hoping the kids don't see it as lame!

I thought I'd get some balloons to have around the room and maybe give some out as prizes for something...Do I want to spend the money over two days to have the balloons though? I teach a block schedule and would need for 2 days. I don't want to leave a class out, but doubt my husband will go for the idea of me spending $30 on balloons. What else could I use or make for the same effect? 

I want to try putting the kids in a different seating arrangement every day based on various line-ups like the ideas from this article. It will be interesting to see how the students work together to find their seats. I think it might be fun to keep up at regular intervals throughout the year as well. 

I've created QR codes with 4 questions about myself that I do not expect the students to be able to answer easily. I've done it before as a quiz format, but I think the QR codes will bring more excitement for the kids who really like to use technology. I will post the questions on each wall of my room and I will have the kids up and rotating around to the different codes. I think I will then have them enter their responses in a Google Form or use www.polleverywhere.com so that we can see them all on the SMARTboard when the activity is over. I have the questions already in Spanish and English so that both my upper and lower levels. 

In order to get the kids playing, I do want to use the Play-Doh idea from the book, or perhaps the Marshmallow Challenge. They both seem really fun, and they are good for different reasons. The Play-Doh will allow me to get to know the kids a bit better as individuals, and while they're working I can chit chat with them (in ENGLISH or SPANISH??) to get to know them better. The Marshmallow Challenge will help them create their own community by allowing them to work together. 

An idea I have to get them speaking in Spanish, getting to know each other by finding things in common, AND allowing me to see what they are interested in is the People Search - or Human Bingo. I created a document (that I might shorten to be more like Tic-Tac-Toe for the sake of time) where they must fill in the blanks about themselves. There are words like "I have ___", "I wanted to ____ this summer", and "I am ____". They fill them out in Spanish, and then when everyone is done they will circulate around trying to find other kids who wrote the same things. This can be tricky because they will have to change the "I" form of the verbs to the "You" form in order to make the questions. If I do make it a Tic-Tac-Toe board, I could have two versions so that they don't always know what is going to be asked of them. I will participate, of course because I want to be immersed with my classroom!

The last idea I have, I would most likely coincide with the silent seating challenge. I know that students have a lot of anxiety when it comes to speaking Spanish, and I would like to prove to them that they can communicate without speaking at all. If they can go a whole block (or even half of one) communicating without words, it MUST be easier to do it with limited Spanish rather than no words at all. This was an idea I had for my level one class, but I think it would be a good point for my upper levels too. I would give them improv skits to act out where they would have to get their partner to understand them, or maybe give them something that they need to get someone to understand at some point during the block. For example, when José comes into class, he gets a piece of paper that says "I'm hungry" and Juan will get one that says "I'm thirsty" or "I don't feel well." Maybe I will give out other instructions like: when someone tells you that they're hungry, offer them some food, or if someone says they feel sick, let them know you feel badly about it. What are some other ideas with this that you have? 

So there you have it. My brainstorm for parts of the first three days of school. What are you going to do in your World Language classroom??