Reflection #8: Bromley

I was a bit nervous when I started reading this article, because many of the techniques and things that the author mentioned in the first column are things that I do with my class, such as writing definitions, using words in sentences, memorization, and vocabulary quizzes. The reality is that there is a lot of vocabulary that one must learn to be able to speak a language. Needless to say, I was eager to hear what the author had to say!

I thought it was interesting that the author addressed the dynamic and shifting nature of our language. It was neat to think of asking students to brainstorm words that may be added to the dictionary (tweet? google as a verb?). Number two in the list really stood out to me, because in my content area, teaching the essentials of English grammar and using it as a comparison to teach Spanish is a must, and helps strengthen students' skills in knowing English grammar as well as Spanish. I really liked the points that discussed oral proficiency and the importance of sometimes "speaking above" your students to a certain extent. I think this is really helpful and in a modern spoken language, it's something that I am trying to grow in in order to promote oral proficiency and help my students have to struggle a bit to understand. 

Text Set Numero Uno - Un viaje

Text Set Uno:

The topic for this first text set is travel. I chose this because it's a theme that I enjoy teaching, it appears often in multiple chapters of the textbook that we use, and I know that it provides a link to some very authentic types of texts that I hope my students will eventually use more and more. Perhaps, many of them will eventually travel to a Hispanic country someday!

Books:


Spanish Phrasebook for Dummies
Susana Wald (Author)
Ages: 12 and up


This book contains thousands of helpful phrases in Spanish, beginning with the most simple and essential phrases that native Spanish-speakers use every day. This is written as a guide for English-speakers traveling to Spanish-speaking destinations, and thus would be an excellent resource for a travel unit in Spanish.



Pobre Ana bailó tango - a TPRS novel in Spanish
Patricia Verano, Verónica Moscoso, and Blaine Ray (Authors)
Ages: 12 and up (Spanish II level class)

This short novel is written completely in Spanish, and in the preterite tense (past). It is a simple story about a girl named Ana who travels to Argentina. I have enjoyed using these books as a text in the target language because it provides an interesting and authentic story as rich context for teaching grammar concepts that appear throughout the chapter.


Other Materials:

Menu (Nena's Restaurante Mexicano)
Nena's Mexican Restaurant, San Bernadino, California
Ages: 11 and up (Spanish I or II)

This menu is written completely in the target language, whereas some other Mexican restaurants list the food items in both Spanish and English. This is a wonderful piece of realia that provides an interesting and mouth-watering context for students to discuss traditional food and dishes from Mexico. Because it comes from a real restaurant in California, students can see ways that these texts are all around us, and that we don't necessarily need to leave the US to encounter them.

Map of Puebla, México
Brought back from Puebla
Ages: 11 and up

This map shows major tourist destinations in the city of Puebla, in Mexico. It also marks any historical sites. The great thing about this map is that it is taken from Puebla, bringing an authentic piece of the city to students in the US. This is something they would use when traveling, and they can use it in activities to practice reading and giving directions.

La misma luna  (movie case)
Patricia Riggen (Director)
Ages: 15 and up (Spanish III or IV students)

This is a more unique text that a teacher might use in a unit on travel to talk about immigration and some of the hardships that immigrants face in coming to this country. Not all travel is for vacation! The film is a wonderful and emotionally gripping tale of Mexican immigrants crossing the border to the U.S. I like to have students read a bit about the story before or after, and reading the sleeve of the DVD case is an excellent way for them to summarize, translate, read aloud and comprehend the story a bit more.






La fiesta brava (worksheet and reading on the topic of bullfighting in Spain)
Ages: 11 and up (Spanish I or II)

This handout that I have inherited from my Mentor Teacher (who inherited it so long ago she can't remember where it originally came from) is the first text featured in this text set that is actually in English. This would be great to use as a cultural highlight in a travel unit on Spanish festivals and traditions. The great thing about this, is that it relays valuable information, while not intimidating students by too much
Spanish text. It also has a helpful word bank on the back to introduce thematic vocabulary relevant to the unit.









Chico Chile - ¡Vamos a celebrar! 
Teacher's Discovery (Publisher)
Ages: 11 and up

This booklet is really interesting because it presents traditional stories and recipes from various Hispanic countries that pertain to different holidays, which would be valuable information to know if a student were to travel to another country. I like that this booklet features so many different countries in one little book. I also love that some of the stories have graphics included throughout the text, which would be a great visual aid and provide cues for struggling readers.














Websites: 

Cruises to the Galapagos Islands
http://www.galapagoscruceros.ec/galapagos-cruceros-especiales.html
Cruises
Ages: 12 and up (Spanish I or II)

This website features various cruises leaving from South and Central America to take tourists to the Galapagos Islands. This would be an interesting text to use on a cultural and travel unit featuring these islands. It might even be a type of text that students have never encountered before. I like that I could show this to students and have them "book a cruise" as they plan a trip. The website is entirely in the target language, but students would be able to pick up on some details.

Travel to Chile
http://chile.travel/whynot/ 
A tourism website
Ages: 13 and up (Spanish I or II)

This website is one of my favorites! I love that the text throughout the website, which focuses solely on the country of Chile and is geared towards young people seeking adventure, is displayed side by side with such vivid and thrilling graphics. It makes this site exciting for students to peruse. There is a wealth of information regarding Chilean culture, geography, people, places, and activities categorized under easy-to-access tabs that students can easily navigate for a research project. This makes this text very "cool" and appealing to teenagers. (C'mon... don't tell me the photo isn't a draw!!)

Lonely Planet
www.lonelyplanet.com
A travel resource
Ages: 13 and up (any Spanish class)

This site is an amazing resource for teachers OR students. It features travel information for planning a trip to any part of the world. This is a quick resource that I have used before in assigning a general "plan a trip" research project for students. The graphics are great, and this site is so authentic because it's something they would use if they were planning a real trip. I like the fact that I could have them explore the site in Spanish or English. The text is simple and presented in an organized way.

Conocer Barcelona
http://www.conocerbarcelona.com/mapa
Interactive map of Barcelona
Ages: 11 and up (Spanish I or II)

This interactive online map of Barcelona not only is presented completely in the target language and geared for tourists and visitors to the city, but it also features lots of helpful symbols and keys that show where different neighborhoods, museums, parks, featured historical sites, restaurants, etc. are located around the city. This would be a wonderful interactive tool to use to send students on a webquest in order to learn their way around a city using directions or commands. They could also use this to plan a trip itinerary to Barcelona, because when you click on one of the symbols, it reveals to you all the details of that place!

Travelocity
www.travelocity.com
Book a flight
Ages: 11 and up (any Spanish class)

This is my go-to website to teach students more about the process involved in traveling by air and booking a flight. Many of them have never even been in an airport or on an airplane, let alone booked a flight online. I love the simplicity and layout of this site, and the fact that they can see the various airline options and prices and routes that appear. The text is basic and it is an interactive research process. Students feel like they are really planning a trip as they plug in their destination and pick a flight option.

Zambombazo
http://zachary-jones.com/zambombazo/panorama-tematico/#viaje
A great resource for Spanish teachers

Zachary Jones is an incredible Spanish teacher who has compiled lots of authentic resources on his website for teachers to purchase and access. He is famous for using current themes, articles in newspapers, and songs to teach Spanish grammar and themes. Teachers can search through all the resources on the site by theme, and travel is one of those themes! The links that pop up include cloze song lyric sheets, music videos, tweets, comics, and magazine articles, all having to do with travel! What a great variety of authentic texts!

Visit Chile Tweets
https://twitter.com/visitchilecom
Tweets: The text of this age!
Ages: 12 and up (any Spanish class)

I am a big proponent of finding relevant and authentic pieces of texts to use in my classroom in order to teach the language of Spanish to high schoolers today. One of the most common forms of text that these teenagers will read daily are tweets, as nearly all of them have a twitter account. I really enjoy finding tweets like these ones about traveling to Chile, and having them translate the text into English. Funnily enough, a tweet is the perfect length of text to read, even for struggling readers. And really, who can resist a cool spanish #hashtag?

Tripadvisor Hotels and Hostels
http://www.tripadvisor.com/Hotels-g294305-c3-zff26-Santiago_Santiago_Metropolitan_Region-Hotels.html
Booking a hotel in Santiago, Chile
Ages: 12 and up (any Spanish class)

I have enjoyed using this website in a research project on Chile in which students had to plan an imaginary trip to Chile. Part of the process was that they had to "make a reservation" at a hostel or hotel in Santiago. The text presented on this site is shown in small chunks, and with pictures, helping students to rifle through them quickly and with ease. They also learn to read reviews that people write on different hotels.

Clarin
http://www.clarin.com/
Buenos Aires Newspaper
Ages: For Teachers and upper level Spanish students

This website of a large Buenos Aires, Argentina newspaper is a bit hard to read for students who don't know the target language as well. However, it's a great resource for teachers to tell students about current events in other countries during a travel unit. It also can feature cool texts that are easier to read, such as recipes, sports statistics, or brief tabloid messages about celebrities.

New York Times Travel
http://www.nytimes.com/pages/travel/index.html
A general travel resource in English
Ages: for Teachers and students 12 and up

This resource is extensive, and features some recent and exciting travel destinations all over the world. I have often found museums in Hispanic countries recommended on this site, as well as particular foods or celebrations highlighted. This is a great resource for a teacher to keep up to date on current world and travel news to share with the class, as well as a resource for students to explore. It is in English.



el fin.

Reflection #7: Tierney and Readance Ch. 8

I like the fact that this chapter opened by immediately listing some strategies for vocabulary development. I was pleased to see that many of these are natural to implement in a world language classroom. The strategies "Possible Sentences" as well as "Contextual Redefinition" were two that stood out to me in particular as being definitely applicable every day in any reading in my Spanish class. What I liked about this chapter, as I have liked about most of the readings for this class, was that it made me think more carefully about how I can implement this strategy more explicitly and actually TEACH my students how to read using these strategies! In "Possible Sentences" I like how reading aloud and pronunciation of the words is emphasized to an extent. In a world language, this is obviously very important, as the end goal is communicative proficiency in the target language, and one cannot communicate effectively if one cannot be understood due to incorrect pronunciation. I also like that this strategy uses student-generated examples as the driving examples behind the lesson, and allows for students to make mistakes and all learn from those mistakes together. This encourages the natural process of learning through commiting mistakes and then checking them against the text. The "Word Map" was another strategy that I'd like to try to implement more. I like the idea of having a mixture of concrete and abstract vocabulary terms and letting students organize the words (after defining them correctly) in a hierarchy that they determine individually depending on what it most memorable and significant to them. 

BBR Ch. 8

This chapter consisted only of strategies to promote critical reading in the classroom. I had not heard of any of these strategies before, so this was all new to me. To be totally honest, I find the formatting in the BBR text to be a bit confusing to follow. It is really difficult for me to really envision what the activity or strategy is truly supposed to look like, even though it's presented visually with lots of check marks and bullet points and things. I also feel like the titles of these strategies get me confused. For example, in reading the Phony Document Strategy, I could not for the life of me figure out what about it was "phony" exactly. Nonetheless, I will comment on each of the four that were presented. I like the Polar Opposites strategy as a writing prompt or as a prompt for a small group discussion. It seems like a great way to let students express their opinions while also having them back up their ideas. I think some sort of assessment connected to this would be imperative in order to keep students accountable for how they rationalize their answers. At least that would be the case for my class. I struggled to grasp the concept of Opinion-Proof, but I also like how it emphasizes that students can have opinions but need to be able to rationalize and justify them from a text. (How delightfully "Core" of us!). To me, REAP seemed more like basic inductive study of a text, but simply put to a catchy acronym. This is the first strategy that I felt like I have and can really use in my class. When my Spanish II class was reading a simple novel, I often had them translate aloud and "encode" the passage by putting it into their own words, rephrasing it either in English or Spanish. This shows that whether or not students have a true grasp on the reading, if they can explain it again in their own words. I often have students write this down in some way before asking them the question aloud. Again, I honestly don't really get the Phony Document Strategy, and I don't particularly like it. I don't know that I would choose to use this in my classroom. It might work better in an English or a History class.

Tovani Ch. 5 and 6

One thing about this chapter (Ch. 5) that really stuck with me is the concept of becoming an expert in something and then struggling to teach it, as was conveyed with the illustration of the girl, Mary. As Tovani reminds us, students are going to be learning things for the first time, things that have become oh so familiar to us, their teachers. It can be frustrating and difficult to learn something for the first time, and we are quick to forget how valuable that struggle of learning truly is. There is no moving forward in learning without some struggle, and oftentimes, the greater the struggle the greater the revelation, discovery, and "enlightenment", if I may.

I wrestled with this when I first considered becoming a Spanish teacher. I felt uneasy teaching a language that was so much a part of a culture that was not my own, even though I had spoken Spanish from a young age in a school setting. I have come to understand that to some extent, I will never have the benefit of teaching Spanish in the context of my "own" culture, and that means I must draw and rely heavily on true native speakers to be ambassadors for their culture in my classroom. I want to model having humble relationships with native speakers in which I am eager to learn from them. However, as I have started teaching, these initially uneasy thoughts have been put to rest as I see the ways that I as a non-native speaker of Spanish can relate to the struggle that kids experience as they learn it for the first time. Granted, I have to stretch myself to learn to explain why we say certain things the way we do because I have grown so accustomed to just saying it without really knowing why, but I have a different perspective on the process than a native speaker. Not only have I walked through the learning process, but I very much still am, and not being a native speaker gives me freedom to readily admit to my students that I don't know everything and that there is much I have yet to learn. Like them, I too forget the meaning of a word, and have struggled to grasp certain grammatical tenses. I get to model this (hopefully with humility) to them, and my hope is that it causes them to be more eager and more humble learners.