While searching the internet for some #authres, I came across the Youtube channel for "LosPolinesios," a trio of Mexican siblings that film themselves doing hilarious retos, or challenges.  Mostly, they dare each other to eat outrageous food items, but they also play practical jokes on each other and make silly videos.  They have a series of videos called Reto: Éstos no son mis brazos (Not My Arms Challenge), where one person talks and the other provides accompanying arm movements.  Lesslie did a video, with Karen as her arms, in which she discussed her rutina diaria, which just so happens to be a unit in our 8th grade Spanish curriculum.  Lesslie covered a lot of our reflexive verb vocabulary in her video:  despertarse, cepillarse los dientes, maquillarse, peinarse, desayunarse.  Perfect #authres!  I showed the video to my students and asked if anyone was brave enough to try to make a similar video.  I wasn't sure how they would respond, but before I could even get the idea out of my mouth, several of them were clamoring with excitement.  Speaking in Spanish...on camera...while having someone throw a bunch of beauty products in your face takes a certain personality type.  I wanted everyone to feel involved and comfortable, so I said students could pick from three main roles:  the speaker, the brazos, and the helper.  The helper would be entirely behind-the-scenes and would help edit the video.

​Day 1:  Students were introduced to the project, formed teams, and began brainstorming.
Day 2:  Teams put their ideas / script into a Google Doc, shared with me, then were approved for practice.
Day 3: Students practiced in class.
Day 4: Filming (4 groups in 40 minutes)
Day 5: ​Filming

Supplies that came in handing on filming day:

• giant plastic tarp - Protected the floor from water, shaving cream, cheerios, etc.
• plastic table cloth - Protected the desk from mess.
• laptop  - We used Mac's Photobooth app.
• Apple headphones - We plugged them into the laptop's headphone jack and taped down the attached microphone to a nearby desk for better audio.
• trash bags - Served as ponchos for teams that went all out and weren't afraid of getting messy or wet.
• make up wipes - Maquillarse was the most popular verb used in the skits.
• scrap paper - I had students give feedback to each group.  They had to write a few positivos, a crítica, and had to rate the group's español and overall comedia on a check plus, check, or check minus scale.

This was the first video that came into me.  The student editor for this video added in sound effects and played with the video speed.  The only requirement I gave was providing subtitles, but she had fun playing around with iMovie.  She has a few typos in the subtitles, but I love the spirit of this video!

The videos are beginning to come into me as students finish editing.  Each class will vote for the best video from their section.  They will choose the videos based on the quality of the Spanish and overall humor.  I spoke with my principal in advance, and we decided to show the top video from each class at our morning assembly.  The student body will vote on the best video and that class will win a reward.  I'll post the results in my next post.  To be continued...

In my Spanish 8 class, we have been working with the topic of health and sickness for some time.  This topic provides endless possibilities for activities, conversations, and projects. Heading into the Winter Recess, I was looking to wrap up the unit.  Students created silly first aid videos based off of a booklet on primeros auxilios.

When we came back from vacation in January, I didn't feel we were ready to move on from the health topic.  I wanted students to spend more time ​speaking about health and wellness in Spanish.  I decided to try a doctor-patient scenario that would give students the perfect opportunity to practice tried and true vocabulary (¿Cómo te llamas?  ¿Cuántos años tienes?), while at the same time allowing them to tie together the ideas we had been working with (describing symptoms, asking how someone is feeling, etc.).

1.  Students took a look at a real patient intake form in English.  They worked in groups to figure out what questions needed to be asked to fill out the form, and how those questions would be worded in Spanish.

2.  We worked on compiling an accurate master list of Spanish questions and answers.

3.  We began practicing the questions and answers through a variety of classroom activities.

4.  We practiced a doctor-patient scenario in class for two days.

5.  Students spent a class period taking on the roles of doctors and patients while I observed them and evaluated them according to a rubric.

6.  Students completed a self-evaluation and then prepared for a minor written quiz covering the same material, but focusing on accent marks and spelling.

During the spoken assessment, students had access to the document below, which I based off of the English-language, patient intake form.  The "doctors" filled out this document and could show it to the "patients" during the interviews.

Here is a clip of two students in the middle of a doctor-patient scenario on the day of their assessment.  All my students were having conversations at the same time, so there is a lot of background noise, but here is the transcript of the clip:

Doctor: ¿Dónde te duele?
Paciente:  Está aquí (points to head).
Doctor: Describe tu dolor...0 a 10.
Paciente: 6.
Doctor:  Describe tu dolor.  ¿Es agudo, ardiente, doloroso, punzante?
Paciente: Doloroso.

The next unit will be deal with daily routines and reflexive verbs...

This assignment was borrowed from the great Señor Wooly.  I used his market place idea in my 7th grade Spanish 1 class for a unit involving classroom objects (la mochila, la calculadora, etc.) and numbers (0-100).  

To start, I gave my students a basic script for how to behave in a market place. They then went through various simulations in which they had to buy and sell different objects.  I put strict rules in place -- absolutely no English --- during the practice rounds, and they quickly discovered what ideas they needed to know in order to communicate effectively.  

Interestingly, I didn't formally "teach" the numbers to them when I introduced this unit, even though I knew that I wanted them to learn the numbers 30 - 100 by the time "test" day rolled around; the competition of the market place caused students to learn the numbers on their own.  They were incentivized to learn the numbers so they could compete against each other and "survive" the game.  Here's how everything worked:

I divided my students into even groups of buyers and sellers and gave them a stack of fake money, which I had made on the photocopiers ahead of time.  For each simulation, there were two winners: (1) the seller who made the most money, and (2) the buyer who had the most cash left over.  I awarded 2 points of extra credit to the winners, but the real goal was to stay in Spanish the whole time.  Students worked off of a rubric I had created, which featured categories like:

• Did you stay in Spanish the whole time?
• Did you understand what was being asked?
• Did you use a wide variety of vocabulary?
• And so forth...

I did not follow up with a written component to this spoken assessment, but plan to create one when I teach the unit again.
​
The video is of my students practicing their buying and selling skills in class.  They are still using scripts at this point, and you can hear some English sneak out.  On test day, however, they were off script and were careful to stay in Spanish, since staying in the target language was part of their grade.

Last year, instead of giving a typical final exam -- 10 photocopied pages, mostly multiple choice --  I decided to offer my Spanish 1 class an "alternative assessment."  I figured a paper exam would only show me a portion of what they could do with the language.  I wanted to create a more dynamic opportunity to test their skills.  What would they really need to do with the language in the real world?  What could they realistically achieve, given that they were at the novice level?  What 21st century skills could I incorporate into this assginment?  I collaborated with Michigan Teacher of the Year Matinga Ragatz, as well as my own colleagues in Boston, to create a final exam that centered around the creation of a celebrity fan page.

The basic project was for students to work in pairs to create a website about their favorite celebrity.  The content of the site was based off of 32 questions, which I gave the students ahead of time, and which covered the content of the beginning Spanish course:

• What is his name?
• Where does he live?
• How old is he?
• What does he look like?
• What is he like?
• What does he like to do?
• And so on...

Students used these questions to build their site.  They knew the end-goal was to talk about their celebrity and website for 3 minutes at a time.  Their classmates drew index cards with the questions printed on them, and they had to respond in Spanish using the website as a visual aide.

The exam itself was divided into two parts: an oral component and a written component.  The oral component took place over several days because each student had to have a turn.  The written component took place during one 1.5 hour period a few days after.  For the written exam, students read through a "print out" of a celebrity website.  I had created a mock website on Word about a Spanish soccer player, and they had to read through the packet and answer many of the same 32 questions in written format.

The video up top is of a student pair answering questions about their favorite celebrity, Will Ferrell.  They make some grammar mistakes, but they understood the questions and spoke with fluidity, which were two categories I strongly emphasized on their rubric for this project.  The screen shot below is a picture of the top half of the home screen for a celebrity project on Taylor Swift.  I even changed the formatting of my own blog to have this look because I liked the way the students designed their site so much!