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...

In addition to teaching Spanish this year, I have one section of 6th grade Latin. Learning about grammar can get a little dry, so we rewrote the lyrics to Drake's hit "Hotline Bling" and sung about the accusative case ending "m" in Latin.  

I used an old digital camera to film, but quickly realized I need to purchase an HD camera for better quality.  Maybe Santa will bring me a GoPro, but in the mean time, my Canon Powershot gets the job done.

I imported the clips into iMovie, along with a "color loop" downloaded off Youtube.  I also downloaded the instrumental track to Hotline Bling off Youtube, using Listentoyoutube.com.  I checked with a librarian friend, and we think this project avoids copyright issues due to the fact that it was created for educational use.

I used iMovie to edit, and had a student rap over the "Instrumental" track using the voiceover feature within iMovie; she used headphones with a built-in mic to improve sound quality.  Without the headphones and mic, the volume of the voiceover was almost inaudible.

The latest version of iMovie had a cool neon title feature which I used for the opening and ending credits.

The last time I taught Latin and made a video was when Gangam Style was a big hit...

The past two years, I have been focusing on moving away from paper tests and creating assessment scenarios that are task-based and hands-on.  I believe that real-life scenarios draw communication out of students in a way that paper tests can't.  On a paper test, if a student doesn't know an answer, she might leave a blank; in a real-world scenario, if a student doesn't know the answer, she won't be able to finish the task and won't be able to have the experience.  Students have greater incentive to learn the vocabulary and grammar structures.  In addition, I think task-based assessments help seal the learning in place.  A student is more likely to remember the word "manzana" if she is holding one and tasting one, rather than if she sees it on a vocabulary list. 

La prueba a ciegas, or “Spanish Blind Taste Project,” was the culmination of a unit on likes/dislikes and food in my Spanish 1 class.  Students each selected a food item and then had to bring in three variations of it, for example: red apples, green apples, and yellow apples.  They worked in teams.  On the first day of the test, one person worked the taste test booth while the other person rotated and tasted different items; the next day, they switched.  

​I was reluctant to join Twitter when my cousin first told me about it in 2007.  I didn't "get it" and didn't think the site would take off.  By the time terms like "tweet" and "hashtag" were common place, I figured I had just missed out on it.  

​A year ago, I had to join the Twittersphere as part of the NAIS Teachers of the Future program.  Technology in the classroom was the program's main focus, and we were supposed to have a Twitter handle.  I came up with @allynnshandle, which maybe wasn't the best choice, because people think it says "Allynn Shandle" instead of "Allynn's Handle."  But oh well.

I am still learning the ins and outs of Twitter, but one of the most amazing things I have discovered is the sheer amount of information that is out there.  I've been connected to some amazing Spanish teachers, like Laura Sexton (@SraSpanglish) and Amy Leonard (@aleonard) and I've discovered the concept of "slow chat."  Just type in the correct hashtag and you can be part of a day long conversation about a given topic.  

I was looking for a list of ed chats to share with my colleagues, and came across this great calendar:

Calendar of Education Chats on Twitter

Foreign language slow chats take place on Thursday nights @ 8pm EST with the hashtag #langchat.  A separate website archives and organizes all the langchats by topic and is a great resource.
  
If I had to post a topic for a #langchat slow chat, it would be:

Q.  How do you introduce and ultimately assess vocabulary in your classroom?

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!