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Pecha Kucha: Speaking Spanish Without Fear

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“I’m a Spanish teacher,” I say. “Cool! I took 4 years of Spanish in high school and I can’t remember anything.” Cringe. How can this be? I wondered. After hearing this time and time again, from person after person, I began to question my practice, wondering, do my students leave my class feeling the same way? Do they feel like they can communicate in Spanish? Is real learning happening in my classroom or am I helping to create good test-takers? It is important to me that students can produce language after leaving my classroom because otherwise, what is the point? I noticed students had no problem memorizing verb charts and vocabulary, but in turn, they were disengaged and bored. Traditional grammar and vocabulary learning was working to keep their grades up, yet it had very little connection to the real world. The students barely relied on one another for information, hardly collaborated, and almost never were asked to perform a real-world task using Spanish.  ...

Turkle & Wesch

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Question: What is the relationship between Turkle and Wesch? Do you see them as allies, or opponents in this discussion of new media and technology? Sherry Turkle's “ The Flight from Conversation ;” and Wesch’s “ Crisis of Significance ” really both resonated with me in their own ways. I would consider Turkle and Wesh allies with a mindset that human collaboration and engagement is key to learning. While I read Turkle, I found myself highlighting and pulling so many quotes that I wholeheartedly agree with. I find that in this day and age, most people (who aren’t teachers) that I talk to about technology don’t even notice the negative effects technology and social media has on us all. Her point about us being together but separate in our own little bubbles is what I witness each and every day as a high school teacher where smart phones and earbuds are part of the standard uniform for teenagers. She writes, “Always-on/always-on-you devices provide three powerful fantasies: that ...

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Beauty Supplies

Popular culture sells so many beauty supplies and advertises the importance of external beauty to all genders, especially women. They say women need skin serums to keep looking young, makeup to look beautiful, plastic surgery to remain gorgeous. For men, they say men need not lose their hair and use products like Rogaine, etc. They say men need to be strong and sexy, women need to be thin and have large breasts and bums! But, what really makes someone beautiful is not all of these things. In our product that resists popular culture messages about gender, we created a collage that exemplifies inner beauty. See below: In this video, we put together the letters Beauty Supplies on top in all different cut out shapes and fonts to show that we are all different and offer a different kind of beauty, in all genders. We also pasted and made representations of things that make you beautiful inside such as kindness, gratitude, collaboration, friendships, being yourself, paying it forward, lo...

Immigration: The REAL Story

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The Hamilton Mixtape: "Immigrants (We Get The Job Done)" For tonight's blog I chose to read "Who Can Stay Here? Documentation and citizenship in children's literature" by Grace Cornell Gonzales. Gonzales was a bilingual elementary teacher in East Oakland, California where, one day, she and her students experienced real fears of an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raid. Because many students and families were undocumented, the students were panicked that they would or that their family members would be taken away. She writes, "Half of my class came running back inside, panicked, hysterical, in tears, saying that la migra was coming in helicopters to get them." (p. 74) After this day, although never raided, she as a teacher felt the need to compile a library of books dealing with the very real topic of immigration for her students. In her search, she found several books that "...dealt with many themes: intergenerational ties and g...

Kahoot upgraded... Welcome to Gimkit!

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Gimkit - “How to” & Review What is Gimkit? Gimkit is a game show for the classroom that requires knowledge, collaboration, and strategy to win. Gimkit was made by a high school student in Seattle for students. Students answer questions at their own pace on their own device. Throughout a Kit, students get exposure to the questions multiple times to ensure mastery. What else does it offer? Data: After every game, Gimkit generates a report detailing what your class needs help on. Individual reports allow you to help specific students. Homework: Gimkit isn't only used in a live class setting. You can use Gimkit for homework assignments which are graded automatically. KitCollab: KitCollab allows students to take charge of their own learning! Your class builds the Kit by each student contributing a question. Quizlet Import: Import any of the existing 200 million Quizlet sets with only a few clicks. Or search and reuse Kits made by other Gimkit users. Getting Starte...

The Magic of Disney

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I was born in 1985 and a bulk of my childhood entertainment was watching VHS Disney movies at home. When thinking about my relationship with Disney, I immediately called up my Mom to ask what she thought. Mom claims I was obsessed with watching The Little Mermaid, Aladdin, Beauty and the Beast, and Cinderella movies. In addition, I also loved Disney movies where animals were the characters. I grew up on movies such as The Lion King and The Fox and the Hound. She claims I was so obsessed that I had every VHS and watched them over and over. I never dressed as a Disney princess for Halloween (see this news story on parents weighing in on their little girls dressing up as Moana) nor did I have all the Disney themed toys and games, but I was always entertained by watching the movies. I do specifically remember making my mom fast forward through the parts in certain movies where the villain was present and threatening the princess. At one point, I felt I connected most with Belle from Bea...