I have been meaning to blog about this all month and finally getting to this! 
My coworker , Irene, and I had the pleasure of presenting at the Region 13 LOTE Institute on March 3rd. There was such a wonderful group of LOTE teachers from all over the region and it was so great to attend a few sessions and present!

In the morning, we attended Tina Dong's session on Interactive Notebooks. I loved how she broke down the right and left side of the notebook and gave many examples for activities specifically for second language class.

Next, we attended Brooke Maudlin's session on Circling It Up! I loved how she modeled putting students in a circle to open up communication and the ideas to get the kids communicating and transitions to keep them focused. Many teachers from our district have had the opportunity to go to a Organic World Language Workshop and it has inspired Brooke to incorporate these strategies. 

In the afternoon, Irene and I presented two sessions back to back on Balancing the Modes. This year Irene and I have started our journey of creating lessons focusing on balancing the 3 modes of communication while using the ACTFL Can Do Statements as objectives. We shared our experiences, activities, authentic resources and technology tools as well as shared in detail two lessons we planned and implemented this year.

If you missed our presentation, check it out here.

Click here for handouts for entire Region 13 LOTE Institute.

Several of my coworkers and I have been assigning Duolingo as homework for the students to help improve their basic vocabulary and reinforce putting it all together.
We use Edmodo to collect the homework so it ends up being purely electronic. Great for any of you looking for paperless homework.
Students can download the Duolingo and Edmodo app to their Smartphone and complete the Duolingo homework , take a screenshot of progress and upload image to Edmodo all from their phone. This also can all be done on a computer by going to the websites duolingo.com and edmodo.com.
The students enjoy doing the homework on their phone or computer and like the ease of Duolingo itself and many ask "Can I go farther than what is assigned?" When is the last time you have had students ASK to do more homework than assigned!?!

Student Set Up PowerPoint for Edmodo & Duolingo

A Bit on the Process:
1) On the teacher side of Edmodo, after you have created an account, set up your periods, you will get a group code for each period that you want each student use to join your group. You should create a seperate group for each period because then when it grades the homework, it will keep each period seperately. You are now ready to assign homework.
Click "Assignment" at top and give title, details and due date and type in all periods you want to see this. This will ensure that each period sees this on their student side of Edmodo.

This is an example of what I assigned last week:
Duolingo: Present Tense &  Colors (146 words)
Complete rest of Present Tense verbs and Colors for total of 146. Take a screenshot and upload here to Edmodo.

POWERPOINT WITH SCREENSHOT INSTRUCTIONS FOR STUDENTS

Once you have created the assignment, when students log in or click on app (or some will have notifications set up on phone to notify them when you assign something) they will see the assignment with a "Turn In"button.

2) After students have done their Duolingo homework and have taken a screenshot by holding down the home button and top right at same time on iPhone, using Snipping Tool in Accessories folder in All Programs on PC computers, or whatever other method to capture image on other Smart Phones or Mac they are ready to turn it in. They go into the Edmodo app and click on the "Turn In" button and there is a choice to upload an image/access album. They upload the image and the "Turn In" will turn to "Waiting for a Grade".

3) On the teacher side, you can click on the period and then the "Turned In" button and on left click "Ungraded" and go through each and quickly see the images and assign a grade. At top there is a Progress icon to right of Home icon. Once you have graded the work, click this Progress button and Export the Excel sheet and you will see all the grades in a column and alphabetized. Super easy to put in the gradebook!

If you want more details or information, comment below or click on the home page and fill out the contact form!

UPDATE 5/17/14: With Duolingo's most recent update, there are MORE steps to getting the screenshot needed to turn in homework. Here is a PowerPoint with instructions on how to upload a screenshot that includes the students' username, profile picture and word count all in one image. This is important as students will just take a screenshot and text to all friends if you don't make it an image with their username and word count in the same image.   

I was both inspired and introduced to Kevin Karla y la Banda by EstudiaFeliz blog which always has great ideas. I did Sarah's worksheet for the Spanish version of "Wide Awake" focusing on the preterite in my level 2 class. I wanted to use one of Kevin Karla y la Banda's songs with my level 3 students too. As part of reviewing preterite conjugations, I used their song "Siempre Supe", the Spanish version of "I Knew You Were Trouble". I like that this song uses both the yo and tú form. The music videos for their songs are great because they show the lyrics while it is being sung.

I really enjoy Zachary Jone's worksheets and his style inspired me to include some details about Kevin and Karla as well as some discussion questions that I had student discuss in Spanish first. After listening to the song, filling in blanks and watching the video, we discussed what this song said and we compared it to the original Taylor Swift song and discussed why they thought it wasn't a direct translation. 

The students enjoyed this song and throughout the year I played Kevin y Karla's other songs while the students were working on something and they enjoyed guessing which English song it was a cover of.

After the discussion at the beginning of the worksheet, this is the sequence I did: 
1.  Showed the music video first without students filling anything in – this allowed them to experience the song and watch the words and make connections. 
2.  Minimized the video window so that the words weren’t visible and played the song again. Students listened to and filled in the verbs.  Afterward, they compared their blanks and helped each other with missing blank words. 
3.  For participation stamps, they said the answers for the blanks and translated the phrases in the song. 
4. Discussed why the words weren't exactly the same as Taylor Swift's version.
5.  Played music video again so students could sing along.  
 
 Could do following for a warmup the following day if didn't do #4: 
 Have students translate the some of the lyrics from Spanish to English. Then show them what Taylor Swift's version says and they compare what they translated from Spanish to English with what Taylor says in her song. Are they the same? Why do you think they are different?

Side note: "Mi Princesa" by Victor Muñoz is an amazing song to use with the subjunctive. Zachary Jones has an excellent worksheet (you can see his style which I love how he includes extra activities) for this song and the music video is so good. My students liked this song and video so much that for the rest of the year they kept asking to hear it and MANY students downloaded the song and several memorized all the lyrics all on their own. I love seeing them being excited and motivated to take Spanish beyond the classroom.

This is my very first blog post! I wanted to share with you about my adventures in implementing one of my first iPad lessons based on the app PuppetPals HD.
In the past, in my level 2 classes, when students learned the preterite and imperfect tenses, I did a fairytale unit. Students wrote in groups and made a written fairytale book complete with colored pictures. This year, I wanted to do a fairytale but incorporate technology.
I found this great iPad app called PuppetPals HD which has a Fairytale theme that is free.
I structured the unit as follows:
Day 1: (20 minutes) Instructions to students. Students choose a partner and brainstorm with partner using the brainstorm sheet.
Day 2: (20-25 minutes) Students individually complete the freewrite on their own. Students use their brainstorm sheet to help them know where their story needs to go based on discussion with partner day before. Students get 20-25 minutes to silently write using the freewrite sheet. (I wanted students to not spend so much time just talking in English about what to write but actually starting to write in Spanish, also to help prevent the urge to write a story in English first and then try to translate (using translator) that super advanced story!).
Day 3: Last 25 minutes of class students get with partner and read each others' stories. They discuss what they liked of each others' story and combine elements. They write a roughdraft based on what they already wrote on a clean piece of paper over the weekend.
Day 4: (10 min) Handout rubric, discuss and be sure these elements are in story (40 min) Peer edit roughdraft. If pair does not have roughdraft today, the final project grade drops a letter grade. Homework: Make final copy in two days
Day 5: (20 min) Work on final copy, rehearse with partner so you know who says what. Homework: Make final copy by tomorrow
Day 6: (50 min) iPad Day: Students get the entire period to record stories. First, I quickly showed students the app under the document camera showing how you can:
1) move characters from the "backstage" in and out of the scenes when needed, change backgrounds
2) zoom view in out to show or not show stage
3) shrink or expand characters, double tap character to turn around
4) cannot re record a section but can pause - students may need to re record the entire show several times but video is just 3 minutes and they have the entire period to record a story they should already have written so it is reasonable and most of my kids got it done.
5) How to upload videos to YouTube. I got parents' permission first and assigned all groups a group # to be used when titling YouTube video. This helped it be more "real" to students - the world can see their fairytale!
While students are recording walk around and assign each pair a group number that they write on their rubric.
Day 9: Show published YouTube videos. At beginning of class, students staple the rubric with name/group number to front of final copy of fairytale and turn in. (I purposely skipped a few days from recording day to make project due as I gave a buffer to get the project turned in if someone was absent, or they didn't have time to finalize the movie in class. So day 7 and 8 we worked on other stuff in curriculum). I first showed under the document camera the vocab list the students had created, then showed the corresponding video.

A few things I would improve next year:

• Not show all the videos in one day...maybe show a few videos each day for a few days. It was hard attention span wise for them to watch 50 minutes worth of fairytale videos but they wanted everyone to see their video. 

• Do more prior practice working with fairytale vocabulary and grammar - several students still showed weakness in grammar. When I did this activity as a book, I worked at a different school so the curriculum was different and allowed me to build up the vocabulary more. I would like to try to incorporate these activities I did. See some worksheets I have used in past.
  

1. Cuento Vocabulary
2. Cuento Flashcards
3. Cuento Translations
4. Fairytale Vocab Quiz
5. Fairytale Pret-Imp Quiz
6. Faiytale Pret-Imp Test
7. Online Reading Fairytale Activity

• Have students read some authentic fairytales prior and analyze preterite or imperfect. Also, give students a series of pictures and have them put in order and write one or two Spanish sentences per picture on a whiteboard. 
• Online Fairytale: La Bella Durmiente
  

Instructions I wrote on board for students the day of iPad recording:
When you save your video, save as:
Period ________  Group _________
             #                        #
Export the video to the camera roll (within the app)
Go to the camera roll and click the arrow inside the box at top right
Upload to YouTube with title: Period _______ Group __________
You must include a description (don't use your name!), category: Education,  tag: Spanish - click Publish

If a child did not get parent permission to upload video to YouTube, you have the student still export it to the camera roll. Then you can plug the iPad into your computer using the cord and access the video that way and save to your computer.