A few weeks, ago my daughter came to me to show me a movie trailer she had started making about our family. I had seen trailers that people had made before, but they looked so good that I was certain it was beyond me. When I saw my 11 year old daughter’s, I decided that it must not be as complicated as I had thought and found some time to check it out.

As it turns out, it is REALLY EASY and QUITE FUN! iMovie does all of the hard work. All that you need to do is bring pictures and short video clips that you like. It walks you through the process step by step.

When you open iMovie, you select the plus sign to create a new project and these 2 options present themselves. You can use the movie option to put video clips together for movie projects, but I prefer the apps splice and clips for those types of projects. The option we want to focus on is trailer.

Once you select the trailer button, you will be shown all of the theme options for your trailer. You can watch a sample with each theme to decide which one works for you. The music will be exactly what you hear in the sample, but everything else can change.

Once you select the theme you like, you select the create button at the top right of the screen and then you will jump right into the process. There are two parts to the creation of the trailer. First, you create the outline. Here is where you name your movie, cast, name your studio (soooo fun!), and add all of your credits. You will notice that different themes allow you to name different numbers of characters. So, depending on what you are trying to accomplish and how you want to approach it, that may have a greater influence on which theme you choose. Also, I have used multiple students/characters as one character in the cast....that is one way to work around a limited number of cast member options.

The majority of the work comes in the second part of creation, on the storyboard. This is where you will select all of your photos and video clips. You will be prompted to choose action shots or closeups, medium distance or wide shots, group shots, etc. They will also ask for the text portions that will be smattered throughout the trailer. You can work from your camera roll. It will separate photos and videos. So, when looking for a video, you will have to switch to the movie icon at the bottom of the page to see your available movie clips and then, of course, will need to switch back again to see photos. You will see all of your albums. I found it easier to create an album with all of my photos for the project and that way have one central location to go back and forth between photos and videos. It made the process easier and quicker for me.

 You can check out your process at any point and play back whatever you have created to that point. Sometimes, you will need to go back and adjust the photos by zooming in or out or how the trailer pans over the photo. All of that is very easy to do. You just select the picture from the storyboard and you will be able to pinch to zoom in or do the opposite to zoom out and can slide the photo up/down or left/right to adjust where they start to pan across the photo. Once you have the trailer completed, you can save it to your camera roll or share it to social media or YouTube.

So, what will you use this neat little tool for? I made one as a psych-up for a movie making project for El Capibara Con Botas. I have also made one to represent myself and my teaching style. I imagine that I could make a trailer following a one word image and story, using student storyboards and illustrations. It is certainly something students could easily create and would be a fun project. I am including below the two that I have currently completed. As I finish them I share them on my YouTube channel on my teaching videos playlist.

I hope this is a fun addition to your bag of teaching tricks!

We have a routine in my class. It is a basic skeleton for class that we follow. Part of that routine is that on Fridays we talk about what we are going to do on the weekend and on Mondays we talk about what we did on the weekend. Here we are midway through another year and once again the song and dance is not as exciting for them as it once was. I vary it, sometimes we interview a student and class conversation builds from that; sometimes I put questions on socrative and we compare answers as if it were a survey; sometimes the questions are on a ppt. But I have come up with something new to spice up our weekend talk! I call it “Las Aventuras de Michimacho” (my students call me Michimacho) and it’s all about ME injecting my bitmoji into their weekend activities.
On Friday we discuss what adventures they think Mrs. Marshall is going to have. Where is she going to go? Who is she going to see? Talk to? Etc....In the midst of this discussion I also ask about what they are going to do. Over the weekend, I locate pictures of a couple students doing activities. Sometimes they send them to me, or I can ask a parent or I lurk around on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. Then comes the most fun part of all...SNAPCHAT STICKERS!

1.Once you have the photo(s) that you want. Open Snapchat.

2.If you have a bitmoji, you can link it to your Snapchat account if you haven’t already.

3.Now, select the camera roll button in Snapchat and select your picture.

4.Select the three buttons in the corner for editing options.

5.Select EDIT PHOTO.

6.Select the square sticker icon to see all of the available stickers.

7.Make sure to check out all of the icons at the bottom, because they are divided into categories.

8.Select the sticker you want to use and it will drop into your picture. You can move, turn and resize it. If you don't like it, you can drag it over the garbage can and it will disappear. You can also add writing or text with the pencil or T icons.

9.Select DONE and then choose the appropriate option for saving your image, either save and replace or save as copy. The image will be saved to your camera roll.

Once you play with this a few times it is really very easy to do. I even do it on the fly in class with success. It is fun and it is funny. Humor is supposed to be the best medicine and it can surely cure some middle of the year "I don't feel like it" blues! Monday morning brings a bit of excitement and anticipation, because the kids want to know where in the world that crazy Spanish teacher went this weekend and which students will be the victims of her emoji photobombs.

This weekend was a busy one...

If you want to start a hot topic conversation these days among CI teachers, you could start off talking about your opinions of free voluntary reading (FVR) or class novels. EEEK!!!! Everyone has an opinion and usually it is pretty strong for one or the other. I’m a fence rider and Happy to say I do both in my class. Sometimes one works better than the other, but more often than not, both work great and I take time for both depending on the day, month, time of year and general mood of my students.

If you ask ask what I prefer, I love sitting quietly with a good book and getting lost in an adventure....IT IS THE BEST!!!! BUT.... I LOVE READING TO MY STUDENTS! I am a clown and love to act out the stories with different props and voices. I love reader’s theater. Come on! It’s play time with learning....what more could I want or my students want, for that matter?!

El Capibara Con Botas by Mira Canion is my book of choice and it is perfect for my version of reader’s theater. I regularly now do TEATRO DE PELUCHE instead of straight up reader’s theater. It is me or my students acting with a cast of stuffed animals and all of my or my students’ silly voices. I read the chapter, plus I personally add some conversation in with the characters to expand upon what is happening in the chapter. I talk to the characters as if I were interviewing them. If the character says something, I may question them or tease them. I also talk to my students who are the spectators. I add in some silly humor joking with them about what is going on and WE HAVE FUN! Students will return after missing a day saying, “You didn’t read that book while I was out yesterday, did you?” I’ve had students say, “ In what other class does a teacher get down on the floor and play with stuffed animals (and a fart app ) to teach you??!!” They ask for it, they enjoy it and they are excited when it is on the day’s agenda. Sometimes in reader’s theater, it is hard to get kids to ham it up when they act and to feel comfortable enough to really put themselves out there in a part, but when you are making a stuffed animal or a puppet act, it is different and almost gives a universal permission slip to be silly and dopey and allow the stuffed animal/puppet to do what the student would never just do on their own.

Here is a clip of me reading chapter four of El Capibara con Botas to my seventh graders:
https://youtu.be/ZO-vHYKARKQ

Here is a clip of us reading a chapter of El Capibara con Botas and my students are acting with the stuffed animals:
​https://youtu.be/i1qFyLSajws

Is it for everyone? Probably not. I am silly and a ham. I always say,”take what works and leave the rest,” but for me, it is truly enjoyable. I really look forward to the days that I know I come in and read to my students, because we all get lost in the adventure together. We all experience the magic of the book together. I’m a mom of five....I appreciate disappearing into an adventure in a book all on my own, for sure, but sometimes, it’s fun to read a book and have other people there to share the excitement, humor, sorrow and fear with....other people who get what’s going on and are in the same club as you. It’s fun to hear students walking out of class and telling the next class, “We’re Reading today. It is sooooo funny!”

Here is my Capibara YouTube video playlist of videos:
​https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLB-R-b5R5jFnMTY65xHhm3tEJsAZT_kcL


I would love to hear ideas and feedback!

​

This year has been hectic for many reasons. This time, I am going to talk about variations on a theme. I find that when my students come back for year two with me as a CI teacher, they remember how much fun they had and how exciting, but as we begin to move, it is all old hat. I pulled all of my tricks out for them last year and now it isn’t as exciting as they remembered. Sometimes, I feel like I am killing myself to get buy-in from them and nothing has changed since last year....same kids, different combination. I suppose it could be different personalities blending in different ways and creating a different energy. It certainly could be that, but it could also be that NOTHING HAS CHANGED SINCE LAST YEAR. Maybe that is the problem. A little innovation goes a long way. I do not consider myself to be an overly creative person, but I am good at tweaking things to work to my benefit. Innovation doesn’t have to be starting from ground zero and creating a completely different product. Innovation can be changing something just enough so that it is a little bit different. I have done this with several things this year with some really positive results.

Rock, paper, scissors: La Maestra Loca already has an amazing blog on this. https://lamaestralocablog.wordpress.com/2016/08/16/brain-breaks-part-2-rock-paper-scissors/
and
https://lamaestralocablog.wordpress.com/2017/09/03/brain-breaks-part-9-extreme-rock-paper-scissors-part-2/

Sometimes the changes just happen in the flow of class without pre-planning. My students have enjoyed 3 variations on rock, paper, scissors. We play ELIMINACIÓN where students sit when they get out and players that are still in continue to play until one student remains as the winner. We also play CONTRA LA PROFE. In this version students all play against me. Students stay in if they “tie” me (put out the same thing as I do.) or if they beat me. If they lose to what I put out then they sit down. We play until it is me against one student and if they win they get a candy. We also have fun playing BEAR, NINJA, COWBOY
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These are fun additional brain breaks, but I find that I also need innovation in some of the meat of my class...the stories and the interactions. I teach 6 classes a day for forty minutes (3 eighth grade, 2 seventh grade and 1 sixth grade). Sometimes I just do not have the gas in the tank to work through the creation of 6 different or even 3 different stories. We have on a few occasions now done PROGRESSIVE STORIES. This has been fun! I have 3 classes in 2nd year and 3 in first year. I have each of the three classes for a level create a different part of the story. The first class, sets the scene and the character and his/her problem, the second class gets bare minimum information and builds the second part with the character working to solve the problem without success and the third class writes the final part with the resolution to the problem, again, being given only minimal detail. I then put the story together that night with a little dialogue and we do a full story re-tell in all three classes the next day with activities to support. It is a fun, slightly different variation on the Storyasking theme.

Students always enjoy running dictation in classes. It gets them up and moving and still has a purpose. I have twisted it this year and regularly do RUNNING RE-TELL. I hang screenshots of a story up outside of my classroom, in the hallway (this can be from a movietalk or from a story) Students pair up and take turns with one student running out to find the first picture for the story and then they run back and describe it to the other person who writes what their partner tells them. They then switch places and the other person runs out to find the next picture in the sequence and then runs back to describe it to their partner. They continue until the story has been retold and I collect and peruse what they have written. They seem to really enjoy this; and I do as well.

The other re-tell that is working very well in my class also uses drawings or screenshots. I call it SECUENCIA. Each student gets a screenshot or picture from a story or movietalk. They do not show this picture to anyone. Students must re-tell the story or movietalk figuring out who’s picture is first , second and so on. As they describe and retell their portion of the story they lay their picture face down on the floor. This continues until each student has shared their portion and laid their picture down in the correct sequence with the other pictures. At the end, they flip over all of the pictures to see if they got them correct.
https://youtu.be/QrRoO1levzg

​None of these ideas are anything really new, they are just slightly different than something I already do in class. A slight variation on a theme by me is something completely new for my students and is enough to boost the interest and energy in class.

Well, I think we all probably have those kids that chatter. I am blessed to teach the very top students in the school and because of that (and no magical don of classroom management) I almost never have behavior problems. As a rule of thumb, I keep things moving in my class and try to have minimal down time that would allow for the chatter to start, but still occasionally it happens. Maybe I dropped my guard, maybe my transition wasn’t great, maybe I was too laid back, maybe they just sat super quietly in another class for a long chunk of time and needed to talk. Any of those is a reasonable possibility, the question is what do you do to deal with it?

I, for one , think that some output activities are not a bad thing. I play them usually in a short game format with structures that have been highly used in class and are pretty solidly known. Most of these games are in the document I created that are in my very first blog post. These short little output moments are just one of the tricks that I use, to give them those moments to move in class and to flap their gums for a few minutes so that when I need them to focus on me and the input that I am trying to deliver, it will be a fair request.

Now, I have been playing with another approach recently to deal with the chatterboxes that pop up in class. There was a trainer that recently came to work with my horse, who is a rescue and has never been ridden. The horse is a love and enjoys people, but has a stubborn streak and a mind of her own. She has been through several owners and keeps ending up back at auction, because she is huge, very strong and determined to test her person. I was mesmerized as I watched the trainer work with her, because he won her over by convincing her that she didn’t want to do what she wanted to do, she wanted to do what he did. How did he do that, you ask? It was really very simple, make what they think they want to do a lot of work! For example, if the horse refused to move forward and started walking backwards, he would embrace that and walk backwards...FOR A LONG TIME. The horse would come to this “wait a minute” moment where she realized that she didn’t really want to walk backwards, because that took a lot of effort. It would be much easier to just do what he asked her to do in the first place. His technique worked every time. There was no bullying or heavy-handed behavior by the trainer, it was very matter-of-fact that if she wanted to walk backward, ok, he would do what she wanted and walk backward...A LOT!

So, I reflected on this and thought, I wonder...couldn’t hurt to try. Again, chattiness isn’t an epidemic in my class, just something that sometimes happens and can be annoying and disruptive. I have been experimenting with it and I have to say it is kind of fun and it is working. If a student wants to talk....I make them talk....A LOT and WITH ME. They become my impromptu special person for a few minutes. I make it a big deal, but in a positive way. I usually lead in with “Oh, wow! So-and-so wants to talk! I love to talk!” And I proceed to do a rapid fire burst of questioning. I don’t talk about the talking they were doing that got them into this fine mess they are in 😂 I just talk them into a frenzy and make them realize that maybe they didn’t really want to talk after all and it would definitely be easier to sit up, square my shoulders and give the teacher my eyes.

I have to say that this also plays right into Justin Slocum Bailey’s “just make lemonade” idea where you embrace the interruptions that happen in your class and make them work for your purposes. That is all I am doing with this, turning lemons into lemonade and it turns what can be an annoyance into a little chuckle for me and some good material for class!

We made our first stories of the year this week in my 8th grade (second year) classes. Created the main character on day one, created the story on day two and then did the re-tell/act out today. We will follow-up with a variation on the story tomorrow that they will work with in Textivate as a group challenge, which is something they love and something everyone gets involved in and excited about.

I created a shell of a PowerPoint presentation to use this year for story details: https://docs.google.com/file/d/0BzNpz6m0Aob4WEEtWW5TQ1hYcTA/edit?usp=docslist_api&filetype=mspresentation

I used this presentation to put in the details for the character and then had a slide for each location and a slide for each dialogue. For the next story, it will be a student job to fill in the details in the presentation for me and I will clean it up for the re-tell on the following day. Having the outline in front of us on the screen as we moved through the story was great for keeping us on track so that the story stayed simple and didn't get too convoluted. 😂

​The actual re-tell was a lot of fun. The students were all plugged in and enjoying the already known story being acted out in front of them. I chose NOT to have an artist on this first story, but will employ one for the next story. I have felt like I haven't quite hit my groove with the 8th graders yet (I'm on fire with the 6th and 7th graders, but the 8th graders need a slightly different pattern and that takes a little while to sort out) and I am trying to patiently feel my way without throwing everything in all at once. No need to do it all at once. There is a whole year to ease my way in and build this year's better mousetrap and anticipation is building about the jobs. Kids are asking when there will be more jobs....that's great!

So, all in all, these were not perfect and that's ok, but there was great comprehensible input and the kids and I had a great time doing it!
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Here are links to videos of 2 eighth grade class re-tells:

https://youtu.be/lsfdGLDF_Fg

​https://youtu.be/exoF4_P3JOk

Well, there now. In the spirit of full disclosure I am openly admitting that I royally STINK at PQA (personalized question and answer). Oh my, how I have tried. I have read blogs and blogs and books and practiced and I continue to put it into my lesson plans and spend time thinking about possible directions I could go with discussions, but when we get right down to it and I am in the moment with my classes, it fails....epic fails. 😂😂 Every year I work on it and swear that I will get better at it, but it just doesn't happen.

Well, doing a little self-reflecting here, I know why it doesn't work. I HATE small talk. I hate small talk in any language. I enjoy companionable silence. I love to talk and talk and talk and have never ending deep conversation, but the small talk is like nails on a chalkboard for me. PQA feels like small talk to me. Every once in a while, I will strike a vein of gold with my attempt, but that is an occurrence that is not common. I often feel like the crickets will take over my class. Bueller. Bueller. (Ferries Bueller's day off movie reference)

So, what does this mean for me? Do I stink at CI. Nope. I'm doing ok and my kids are enjoying and learning and there are a lot of CI techniques that I do really well with. I focus on what I am good at and work on strengthening those skills. We don't have to do every technique that exists. I embrace what I am good at and what works for me and let the rest go. PQA gives great opportunity for practice and repetition of vocab and for building community and talking about what interests the kids, but I find other naturally occurring ways to make that happen in class.

I no longer plan to spend a chunk of time doing isolated PQA. I might as well have no lesson plan if I do, because when it doesn't work, I will definitely need a back-up plan. I will do my stories, my picture talks, my movie talks, my class novels, etc and when the conversation within those activities lends itself to ask some personalized questions of students, then I will do it, but I won't belabor it.

​What is my point? Well, there are so many different techniques that fall under the CI umbrella. We hear all the time about one colleague or another's amazing success with one technique or another and think we have to do it. I should be doing that! I need to do that! Everyone is doing that! If I don't do that, I am missing the boat! We don't have to do everything. I know my personality style. Not everything will work for me, but what does work for me REALLY WORKS and I have success! Be true to yourself and it will all work out.

Tomorrow, I will be back in this room to teach 6 forty minute Spanish classes every day. There will be some returning faces and some new faces...So many different backgrounds and scenarios. So many that sit in my class and I have no idea what their daily battles and struggles are. Honestly, sometimes I think that Spanish could easily be just one more thing piled on their already overburdened plate, but then I have another thought. Spanish is my vehicle to reach them, to connect with them. Spanish allows me to create our own all-inclusive community within what is not always the kindest world. Spanish allows us to suspend the reality of the outside world and create a magical place where everyone belongs and everyone matters, where imagination rules and our willingness to play with and to acquire a language unites us.

May I be up to the challenge. May my classroom be their soft place to land. May I be the teacher they know they can trust. May I be the teacher that inspires them to want more and to be more.

Well, I just spent an amazing four days in Brattleboro, VT at the Express Fluency conference. What a GREAT week! I got to watch and learn from Justin Slocum Bailey, Grant Boulanger, Annabelle Allen and Dustin Williamson. My five children tagged along and got to spend the week learning Spanish from these great teachers. There is so much that I need to digest, but more than anything I am energized and excited for this new school year! BRING IT ON! LET'S DO THIS!

As I watched these four amazing teachers it struck me that they are so vastly different in how they teach, in their personalities and styles and delivery, but they are all doing the same thing.
1. They are delivering comprehensible input to their students.
2. They are delivering the language and the students are delivering the subject matter.
3. They are creating small safe ways to become a part of the community.
4. They are attentive to their students and in the moment with them.
5. They are making connections
and most importantly...
6. They are making success unavoidable. WOW! They are making success unavoidable (Thanks for that thought Grant, because it is sooooo powerful!)

​(Those come from Grant's presentations)

What better goals could I have for the year? If I can do those six things, there is no way that I can avoid a successful year! Each one of my children had what I would consider to be one of THE BEST teachers possible this last week. Each one of them would tell you that they had the best teacher. Each one of them DID have the best teacher, because they all delivered those six things, albeit in a totally different package.

My final thought, each of these teachers were great and awesome and none of them had an approach that was better than the other. There is more than one way to skin a cat and as long as the kids are acquiring the language and enjoying the ride, that is the only thing that matters. I am not targeted nor am I untargeted in my teaching, I fall somewhere in the middle and I do story asking and I do some storytelling (among a wealth of other things😂). I am super organized with very detailed lesson plans, but I am willing to throw them out the window at a moment's notice (and more often than not, I do) to follow my students wherever they may lead with their thoughts, ideas and interests. As teachers, we need to support each other in our similarities and most especially in our differences and challenge each other to be better at what we do as teachers, for the people that matter most....our students!!!!

Well, I have been teaching using Tprs/CI for almost three years now. I started out experimenting here and there and could not deny the results that I saw when I used it in class and the kids liked it and were engaged and excited. I am constantly reading blogs and posts, books, going to trainings and trying to get better at it. I'm always trying to build a better mousetrap. I have decided that by the time I am ready to retire, I may be good at this! 😂

i started doing videos a little bit at the end of the year and shared some of the games and activities we did in my class. Some people were interested in getting the instructions to those games and I have now put together a document that has about 30 of those games in it. Here is a link to that document: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0BzNpz6m0Aob4YUt4dmt0YlRUY2c

Some of these games are short brain breaks, some are story games for a change of pace, some are longer games, but all can be completed within a 40 minute class period. Also keep in mind that many of the story games require output. So, some of them might be better for later in the year or even for students to buddy up and work together on.

​I have included links to videos on my YouTube channel (Dmsspanish) of the games that I have videos of. I intend to do more videos in the next school year and will add links as I have them.
I'll make no bones about it, I'm a ham and I sell hard to my kids. When they start walking through my door I am on stage and it is all about them. Many of these games are often delivered as ice-breakers, but I never use them for that. I spend a huge amount of time developing trust with my kids, making them feel safe and valued and make myself vulnerable to them so that they at some point are willing to do the same with me. I gradually introduce these games with them as I see the trust level build, because some of the games require more buy-in than others.
I hope you have as much fun with them as I do! I would love to hear how they go in your classes!

Finally, Chris Stolz has suggested I make a spreadsheet of the games that anyone can share additional games to. I LOVE this idea and will be putting together a spreadsheet that I will share soon.

My next big project is a document with the favorite songs that I have created for class. I still need to do some videos of those. Stay tuned, I will share it as soon as it is finished!

Happy summer!
Amy