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Wednesday, February 3, 2010

Something cool in the Spanish Classroom! ¡Una Cosa Chevere!

Spanish 1-3 students are completing a collaboration project that I began a week ago requiring students to do research on different topics paired with partners from two other school districts in the state of Iowa.  How do the students communicate?  Through a NING.  What is a NING you say?  A NING is a social networking site that is very similar to Facebook.  It allows students an area where they can manage their own wall and communicate with other people who have been given permission to join the specific NING.  It has Forums, Groups, Blogs, Chats, Walls etc.  It is perfect for a classroom because the teacher can monitor everything that happens on the NING due to emails that are sent to the administrator (teacher) with every post. Students are familiar with this type of communication and enjoy posting to each others’ walls and commenting in the Forum section.  They call it the school “facebook”.

In November two other teachers and I myself communicated and connected these students as a daily conversation piece in Spanish on the Forum to communicate a review concept. The hardest encounter we ran into was our curriculums did not line up, and one of us was teaching something the other had not learned etc.  We definitely want to collaborate this summer to create a curriculum that will work!  Communication between teachers was essential, however we managed…and what the neatest thing about the introduction to the Ning was the fact that the students had the opportunity to communicate in Spanish to someone they did not know and find out they were learning similar things at the same level.  They were no further behind than anyone else.  

Last week we decided to pilot a project for Spanish levels 1-3.  This pilot project required students to join a group with no one from their own school and research the topic listed.  Spanish 1 was researching about sports in Spanish speaking countries, Spanish 2 researched about animals in specific Spanish speaking countries and Spanish 3 researched about Spanish speaking countries and all they have to offer.  This project required students to become LEADERS by taking on these roles they would read the requirements and delegate what needed to be completed and who would do which jobs.  It required students to share the information they found and communicate what else needed to be done to be complete.  Students used Voice thread and Show beyond, their choice as a method of presenting.  This allowed both students to edit the same slide, create a podcast type presentation on a web2.0 application!   Hopefully an example to follow, but until then---what a cool project!  Getting students to THINK, LEAD and SERVE---by representing Van Meter Iowa and be able to collaborate and communicate with students across the state!  ¡Todo es possible! Gracias Newell Fonda and South Hamilton schools!

Student work examples Spanish 2:
Example #1
Example #2
Example #3

Spanish 3 work samples:
Example #1
Example #2
Example #3

Spanish 1 Work samples:
Examples #1
Example #2

3 comments:

  1. I can say that the NEWELL-FONDA students are working hard on the project... some are learning the hard way how to work in a group and some had no problems getting it done... I am looking forward to seeing the results... Thank you...

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  2. I would agree Juliana, I think our positive results are out weighing any set backs..and all have learned lessons beyond the spanish classroom. Great opportunity for us to collaborate too! We must do it again!

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  3. Here are some daily Spanish class warm ups with music! Great cultural activity to start class and get students on task and in Spanish right away!

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