Day 9

June 15, 2017
Today we continued to learn about creating lessons that engage students and promote learning. After a review of Backward design, we started collaborating on a mini-lesson plan. Ruth and I spent a great deal of time finding a common topic for both of us. She teaches an intro course to 8th graders. Her course lasts 1 nine weeks. I wanted to find a unit I could teach in Spanish and French. Hopefully, I can use this unit to review with Spanish II since these students are new to me. We are planning a unit including family vocabulary, the verb 'to be', possessives, simple questions and descriptive adjectives. I would like to plan the lesson as an IPA. This means we must find authentic reading and listening for the students. It shouldn't be difficult to create an authentic performance assessment (letter, poster, presentation).

In art - we glued our shapes to matte board. Tomorrow we can begin cutting. Sadly, there is only 1 hour of art tomorrow because we have a guest speaker during our usual art time.

We discussed some technology tools and 'played' with them in the lab. One was a concept mapping site:  Bubbl.   It seems easy to use. I think I may create my lesson plan outline with that.  It should work well for me because I think in all directions at once!

We looked at a word cloud site that doesn't need Java:  worditout.  I quickly created the following from the first verse of 'Eres tú.' I tried to use Wordle with students after the last GAETI but it requires Java, which we didn't have on Mac.
This word cloud shows the most frequent words. This is a great tool to preview unknown vocabulary before reading a poem or listening to a song.

We also looked at a timeline tool:  timetoast.com
 I looked up the age of Exploration.  My idea would be to recreate these timelines in the classroom and let the class compare these events with major events in the early history of our country. I think students need a clear understanding of how long ago the explorers traveled. The major events of US History come 200 years later. By finding out the countries of origin of the 'explorers' students should comprehend why the US speaks English, why Canada speaks English and French, and why most of the countries south of us speak Spanish.
I am excited about using this tool!

Hasta mañana.