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Creating calligrams

After having successfully learnt Gloria Fuertes' poem Mi escuela, mi escuela, I asked my students to copy the poem as a calligram. I had already read a very good post from Claire Seccombe about calligrams and I wanted to try it out with my students.

You can use calligrams for lots of different activities such as "displaying key words, introducing new vocabulary or including a glossary on a worksheet". For example you write the word "grand" in big letters and the word "petit" in small letters. This way students "visually" remember what the words mean.

It could also involve sentences and even a poem, as I did with my Spanish students. I asked them to be creative and think of a shape which reminded them of the poem. Lots of them thought of the peace and love symbol to represent it and others had great ideas too!
I then took photos of their calligrams and posted them on the school blog so they could all see their imaginative work :)

What about you? Have used calligrams in lessons? 

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Collaborative work on a Spanish poem.

Click here to download:

GFuertes.escuela.ppt (583 KB)

Christian Jacomino created a wonderful method for French children to learn how to read, but not only how to read, how to enjoy reading French literature, something that schools omit to do nowadays because "it is too hard"!. His method focuses on the reconstruction of oral and written literary works such as poems, stories and songs and it revives the tradition of memory exercises.Through this method, Christian has created presentations of several literary works called Moulin à paroles (m@p) and he offers workshops (only in France at the moment) to help teachers and pupils use those presentations in a creative and suitable way. So far this method has been very successful with students who have been struggling for years with reading.

There is a poem called ¡Mi escuela, mi escuela! in the Spanish textbook Gente Joven I am following with my students. I thought it would be nice to create a Moulin à paroles with this poem and make my students follow this method although they are Spanish beginners. So I asked Christian if I could create a similar presentation to his and of course he said yes and helped me start on a shared Google document. So this presentation has been the result of a truly collaborative work. I have never met Christian physically, but we have been able to work together on this poem thanks to the magic of web 2.0!

Today, I have delivered the lesson to my students following the instructions on the presentation and I am proud to say it has been a true success. Students loved repeating each verse to each other and they were very proud to be able to remember a poem in Spanish although they only started to learn the language a few months ago. At the end of the lesson, I could hear a student who usually doesn't seem so keen on Spanish, reciting the poem to a friend who studies French. What a better example to show students how to enjoy literature!

I cannot thank Christian Jacomino enough to let me work with him and share his method with my students, and also write this moving newsletter on his website.

What about you? have you taught a poem in another language to your students?

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Colombia, Colombia!!

Let me be as clear as possible so to understand the ever-scaling political conflict between Colombia and Venezuela's governments:

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Custom AR domain for Posterous in Ñ

Hoy se me ocurrió intentar configurar el dominio para mi Posterous, no tarde más de 10 minutos pero eso se debe a que ya poseía el dominio registrado hace tiempo y solo falto hacer unos retoques al servicio de DNS, sin embargo no creo que les tome mucho tiempo a quienes tengan que registrar su dominio y demás (la activación puede tardar unos días).

Requisitos:
Blog en posterous.com (email a post@posterous.com)
Dominio registrado en nic.ar
Cuenta en everydns.net

Una vez registrado y configurado el dominio en nic.ar

Datos de DNS (delegación de un dominio)

Host: ns1.everydns.net - IP: 208.76.56.56
Host: ns2.everydns.net - IP: 204.152.184.150
Host: ns3.everydns.net - IP: 208.96.6.134
Host: ns4.everydns.net - IP: 64.158.219.3

vamos a nuestra cuenta en everydns.net

agregamos nuestra url y hacemos clic en "basic"

luego hacemos clic en nuestra dirección que aparecerá debajo de "primary domains" y veremos las opciones de edición para nuestro dominio donde vamos a agregar un registro del tipo A y su valor "67.207.139.81" (la IP de Posterous)

Por ultimo entramos a "Settings" en nuestro Posterous y agregamos un "Custom domain" donde escribiremos nuestra URL y listo

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Ben y Marina hablan de su intercambio.

¿Qué opinas de esta historia: romántica, divertida, aburrida...? Deja tus comentarios.

Vocabulario:

Un intercambio – a language exchange

Quedar – to meet (Quedábamos – we used to meet)

Daba clases de inglés – I used to teach English

Una cita a ciegas… con excusa… – A blind date… with an excuse

Hola, ¿qué me cuentas? – What’s up, how are you?

Cuidado, porque ¡mira hasta donde puedes llegar! – Watch out, because look how far you can end up going!

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Sebastian, Nando, Fiete y Alex hablan de sus familias.

Click here to download:

sebastian.nando.familia.mp3 (711 KB)

Click here to download:

fiete.alex.familia.mp3 (755 KB)

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El día de los muertos en Mexico.

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Using Student Cell Phones and ipadio to Record Conversations in A World Language Classroom

This past week one of the teachers in our World Language Department used student cell phones and ipadio to record pairs of students having a conversation about a famous Mexican painting. Prior to the activity the teacher paired the students off and had them write a dialog in Spanish talking about the Mexican painting. On the day of the activity the students paired off around the room and using one cell phone dialed into ipadio, entered the 4-digit access code, and began talking. When they were finished they just hung up the phone. Each of the recordings were saved in the teachers private ipadio account. Later that day the teacher listened to the conversations and assessed each student's performance.

After the class when I spoke with the teacher she told me that she had the students do the recording in groups at a time so that she did not have 20+ students talking at once. She said that doing the phone calls took less time than she planned. She had about 20 recordings and all but two worked as planned. One recording was nothing but static and the other one was just not that clear. The next day she had those students redo the activity.

The lesson required the students to study the culture of Mexico (painting), use correct grammar in writing the script, and use proper pronunciation in speaking the target language. Additionally, the activity afforded the students the opportunity to perform an oral activity with just one of their peers while talking on a cell phone (something they are quite comfortable with) as opposed to doing it in front of the whole class. The take away for the teacher was that she could listen to the recordings at her leisure and replay the conversations as much as needed to properly assess the student's performance. This scenario is much better than when the teacher has to assess the students live when they perform in front of the class. In the live scenario the teacher has to asses both students at the same time and does not have the option to replay the conversation.The end result is a much better assessment of the students speaking ability. The teacher can provide much richer feedback and even replay the recording for the student. The students enjoyed the activity and were eager to listen to themselves speaking.

I believe this activity demonstrates an innovative way to use student cell phones within the confines of the classroom and is an example of technology being used to accomplish something that would not be possible without the technology. Did I mention that the activity used none of the schools technology resources?

A big thank you to Liz Kolb for sharing about ipadio on her podcast and to James O'Malley from ipadio for setting up the "open channel" to make the multiple phone calls possible. Thank you also to the brave teacher in our world language department who was willing to use student cell phones in the classroom.

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Get active learning directions.

Continuing with my series "Get active in the classroom!", here is another activity by Marc Helgesen which worked very well to reinforce directions in another language. I did this with my grade 12 group (17 years old). Although they are grown up students, they do need a bit of action from time to time as they tend to be a bit lethargic! We learnt how to give and understand directions in town. Then, as a follow up activity, we did the Tour guide in Madrid. I created cards to put on the walls and tables in the classroom. They were showing La Plaza Mayor, El Parque del Retiro, El museo del Prado, Atocha on them and some shops in Spanish we had learnt previously. It was a double lesson and students had a 5 minutes break so I had time to fix the cards in the classroom without them watching. When students returned from their break, I asked them to stay in the corridor and I explained the following:

1.  Students worked in pairs. One was a tour guide. The other was a tourist. The tourist is blindfolded.

2.  The tour guide directed the tourist around the classroom, giving directions and pointing out things that are interesting. (The tour guide may not touch the tourist). Only spoken instructions are allowed. The tour guide encourages the tourist to touch and pick-up objects. Naturally, the tour guides need to be careful so the tourists don’t hurt themselves, bump into things or other people, etc.

3. When each pair of students had finished their tour, we had a discussion of what makes for good directions, things that were easy or difficult to explain. We also talked about the main sights in Madrid.

Students really enjoyed doing this, they thought it was a fun way of practicing the directions.

What about you? Which engaging activity do you do to practice directions?

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Luz Casal, Spanish voice.

To me, Luz Casal represents Spain. She sings el amor, la pasión, la fatalidad, la muerte... she covers all the Spanish themes with her beautiful voice. I first met her when she sang her famous Piensa en mi by Agustín Lara', which was chosen by Pedro Almodóvar for his film Tacones Lejanos.

She has now released a new album called La Pasión which is a wonderful collection of South American songs. This is the first time that Luz Casal devotes an entire album to already known songs. I love her voice and when I listen to her, it just reminds me of Spain...

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