French the Natural Way

My dad has decided to teach Louis, my eldest son Mathematics. To that end and because he lives in Spain and we live in Germany, he has chosen to use Khan Academy and to show Louis one video once a week and then check with him his understanding by using Skype. Therefore this afternoon, my dad showed Louis this video about rays:

Identifying Rays: Identifying Rays

My dad used Chrome Remote desktop to set up the video for Louis to see it. He could then pause it and talk with Louis through Skype anytime. I was amazed! First, even if Louis is seven years old and doesn’t understand it all, he could still grasp the overall concept. Secondly, it made me wonder if brick schools were still useful nowadays. The Internet provides us with tons of lectures and videos made by great teachers and big universities for free. We have access to knowledge for free and yet our children still go to schools when they could learn at their own pace from the comfort of their own home. I do know that homeschooling in the United States is quite common. However in Europe it is not, to the point that it is forbidden by law in Germany!

Anyway, this is food for thought for today…

Last night I read the post Why you should write daily by Leo Babauta. My maternity leave is soon coming to an end and when I look back at what I wanted to achieve when I started it last December and where I am now, I feel like I didn’t do much (apart from giving birth to a lovely little boy of course! ). I had so many goals that I wanted to attain and I secretly wanted to start my own online language business to become freelance and independent. Although I do love teaching in a “real” classroom and I did miss the school buzz, I wanted to start something on my own. I under – estimated what “looking after three boys ” really meant and to be honest a part of me also wanted to rest and enjoy the time with my family. I definitely think woman nowadays have a hard dilemma trying to find a balance between work and family. The point is that I didn’t do what I had plan to do and I now feel frustrated and a bit depressed.

Going back to Leo Babauta‘s post, his point is that writing everyday “helps you reflect on your life and changes you’re making and it also clarifies your thinking.” That is why I decided to have a go today to help me “de-stress” and feel less frustrated about my current situation. As a matter of fact, I did achieve some little things related to work. I had plan to finish writing the whole Spanish curriculum at my school but of course I didn’t and I am nowhere near it. But … I did add some bits and bobs, especially to grade 8. So that is at least something.

I will try to to commit to daily writing even if I only end up writing two sentences because I do feel better now and I do feel that I have at least done something productive on my blog! When I first started writing a blog a few years ago, I wanted it to be focused on teaching and languages but I then added some recipes and then other things that had nothing to do with teaching. I now want my blog to be a mix of everything, a blend of reflections, feelings and most importantly ideas, new ideas…

I am at the planning stage for when I go back to school in August. This time I have decided to plan for more creative projects as they allow for a lot of comprehensible output and they get students engaged and enthused. The immigration project I did with grade 7 last year turned out to be a positive experience so I have decided to follow the same pattern. I am now planning the curriculum for grade 8 students (13-14 years old) and one of the topics in their textbook (Gente Joven 2) is about famous Hispanic people. This allows to use the simple past as well as discovering the Spanish speaking culture.

The goal of the project is to write a biography on a famous Hispanic and to also present it orally. I got mostly inspired by the Common Core Classroom‘s post on biography writing which got grade 5 students to write a biography in a fun way creating a “Hanger Person” to go along with it. I thought it would be fun to do the same but in Spanish! My students are still developing writers in Spanish so I scaffold the writing process using Stephanie’s templates to help students to organize their thoughts and write the introduction.

The great Mexican artist Frida Kahlo is in Berlin! I mean she has passed away but over 120 paintings and drawings are on display in the Martin-Gropius-Bau and it is one of the most extensive exhibition of Frida Kahlo’s oeuvre to date. I could not miss such an opportunity to share Hispanic culture with my students. So the Art teacher and me decided to take the 9th graders (14-15 years old) on a field trip to Berlin.

Beforehand, I wanted to prepare the students for the exhibition, so I made them watch the movie Frida with Salma Hayek. The movie depicts the professional and private life of the Mexican painter. We watched the movie in English as my students are only Spanish beginners but it was an excellent insight into the Mexican culture and into Frida Kahlo’s life.

Before watching the movie, I displayed different items related to Frida Kahlo’s life: a bus (a toy!), a monkey (a cuddly toy!), Diego Rivera portrait, a Communist flag, a picture of New York, a picture of la casa azul, a quotation “I never painted dreams. I painted my own reality.” – “Creían que yo era surrealista, pero no lo era. Nunca pinté mis sueños. Pinté mi propia realidad”. (You can download the picture here: items.frida). In pairs, students were asked to look at each item and to ask a meaningful question about each. I then told the students to answer their questions whilst watching the film. I also gave them a questionnaire about two scenes happening in the film and which relate to two different paintings:

After watching the movie, we continued to discuss it with a list of questions (you can download it here: Frida_movie). This time, I asked the students to write their answers on slips of paper. Each student had to read aloud a slip of paper from another student.

We then talked about self-portraits, which Frida painted a lot. I wrote some questions on poster paper:

• What is a self-portrait?
  
• What are its common characteristics ?
  
• Can you identify other self-portraits done by famous artists?
• What is the expressive value of this form?
  
• Through her self-portraits, what did Frida wanted to share? (the bus accident, the loss of her baby…)

Students worked in groups of 3 to write their answers on the poster papers. They had five minutes to answer and then they had to pass their questions to another group. The other group was allowed to cross out some answers if they thought they were incorrect. However they had to justify their decisions. These activities worked out very well and led to some very interesting discussions. The class thoroughly enjoyed the movie.

All of the above happened in English. I then had an activity where students had to speak in Spanish.
I posted different paintings outside the door to the classroom. There were all self-portraits. Students were in groups of 3.
Student A from each group went in the hall to look at the painting. After looking at the painting, Student A met Student B at the door to the classroom. Student A described the painting in Spanish to student B. No English was allowed, however, students could use gestures and body language to aid them in communication.
Student B received the description of the painting from Student A, but was not allowed to look at the painting itself. Student B was allowed to ask questions in Spanish for clarification. After receiving the information, Student B reported back to Student C, who was seated in the classroom.
Student C remained seated in the classroom the entire time. Student C drew the scene that was described by Student B. The goal of the activity was to have as many details as possible in the student drawing. Student B ran back and forth between the two students multiple times to gather and report additional information.
This activity went on for 10-15 minutes. At the end, students could see the real painting and check to see how many details they were able to correctly place in their own drawing.

Finally, on Friday we took the train to Berlin! We were very excited to see Frida Kahlo’s real paintings! The Art teacher had booked a guide,, which was a wise decision as there was a very long waiting queue at the entrance of the museum. Because we had booked a guide, we didn’t have to queue! The guided tour went on for an hour and was very interesting. We then let the students wander for another hour with a questionnaire to fill in (you can download it here: Frida_Kahlo_Retrospektive). We will discuss the answers next week in class.
All in all, it was a wonderful experience for my students. They got to understand the Mexican culture and art better, and I hope they will have remembered at least one painting from Frida Kahlo.

As Kevin Mclaughlin mentionned in his great post Set learning free in 100 words, we as teachers should “try not to overplan, forget the detail and be confident in changing direction as and where learning takes you.” This is exactly what I attempted to do with this project I set up last year with grade 7. It all started when we were listening to a Spanish song at the start of each lesson. At that time, we were listening to Manu Chao’s song Clandestino. The students were really enjoying the song and I started to think about what could be done more in depth with the lyrics, rather than just translating them. I decided to leave out the curriculum for a bit and to initiate a creative project.

First, the students completed all the activities related to the song which I found on the amazing website Formespa.
Then as we discussed the life of illegal immigrants trying to move to Europe and how they might feel being clandestine, I thought about making the students pretend they were one of them and make them write a diary about their journey to Spain. Of course, because it was a grade 7 class (which meant that this only was their second year learning Spanish), we had to go through several steps and I had to give them samples of work to help them start writing. I had to do some research myself to find out how the journey of an illegal immigrant trying to go to Spain was. I read a moving article from El Pais where two journalists travelled with a group of immigrants from Casablanca in Morocco to the Canary Islands; and I started from there.

Creative writing – Diary
(You can see and download all the resources used in my curriculum wiki.)
Each lesson or sometimes each week (depending on how much and what they had to write) was about a new page in their immigrant’s diary:

1. Describing the immigrant. Students had to decide on a name, family background, where he/she came from, physical description and reasons why he/she wanted to move to Europe. This page was a great way of revising how to describe someone and his/her family. Students not only reinforced their Spanish knowledge, they also tapped into geography as they had to look for a country in Africa to explain where their immigrant came from and also at reasons why immigrants would want to leave their own country to start a new life.
2. Getting ready for the trip and saying goodbye to family and friends. Again it was a great way of learning and revising vocabulary related to clothes, food, equipment you would take on a trip to a new life. At this stage, students also had to learn how to form the present perfect in Spanish. We spent a couple of lessons learning how and when to use this tense in Spanish. Grammar was learned for a useful purpose and therefore students assimilated it better.
3. The start of the journey. The immigrant was meeting his “dealer” and other immigrants taking part. He/she was scared and had to pay the “dealer” to make him cross the Mediterranean sea. This led to a discussion about who dealers were and what their jobs consisted of. As for Spanish, students had to convey feelings and emotions.
4. Reaching the Mediterranean sea.Students had to describe the journey by car crossing the desert to get to the Mediterranean sea. They had to use lots of different verbs in the present perfect and to describe the feelings of the immigrant.
5. Crossing the sea. Students had to describe the trip on the sea and if the boat was caught or not by the Spanish “guardia civil”. Here, some students got very creative and imagined that their immigrant would drown. They even wet their diary so one could see the drama!
6. Future life. Students brainstorm on the future of these immigrants. They made two columns, one for an happy ending (they are not caught by the police, they find a job, they can get official papers/documents and stay in Europe…), one for a sad ending (they have to return to their country, they can’t find a job and live in the streets, they die…).

Oral presentation
As we were going along with this writing project, I found out that grade 3 students in lower school were also working on immigration as part of their PYP unit of enquiry. So I asked their teachers if my students could present their diary to their students. Of course, they had to translate in English but I also wanted grade 3 to learn something in Spanish. My students had to do an engaging presentation which main goals were to explain the journey of an illegal immigrant to Spain and to teach some key Spanish words about immigration. Last year, I asked students to do an overall presentation to grade 3 but I thought it was not engaging enough so this year I decided to change the format. Each student would present his/her diary to a small group of 3 to 4 grade 3 students. When planning their presentation, they had to think about the format (PowerPoint, with pictures, with music, map…), how they were going to teach some Spanish words (cards game, repeating the words…), how they were going to know grade 3 had learned something about their presentation (quiz, game, competition…). We also talked about the way to present a diary in an exciting way. Just reading it was going to bore grade 3 students to death! My students had to think of ways to make their presentation interesting to listen to. Not only did they work on their Spanish speaking skills, they also worked on how to give out a speech and how to teach others. They worked hard to deliver inspiring presentations and I was very much impressed by the maturity they showed when talking to the younger ones. Each one of them had prepared a game, a quiz or an activity for their group. They had brought pictures, maps, cards. At the end of the session, they were all eager to tell me how it had gone and how grade 3 students were engaged! Grade 3 teachers also told me how happy their students were to have learned from the grown-ups! It was a success!

I guess Kevin Mclaughlin is entirely right: “Let the learners control the learning, give them opportunities to decide what they want to learn. Take back learning in your classroom.”

What about you? Have you changed direction in your planning?