Over the past few weeks, I have been thinking hard about how I can use blogs in my classroom to help enhance student learning and increase student motivation. I teach high school Spanish, levels I/II and III/IV. One idea I have come up with is to use a blog to help showcase their work and to help me as a teacher see at what level students are with their writing and grammar skills. I will use a blog for students to reflect on questions I give them in Spanish, and each question will deal with new grammar concepts previously learned in the classroom. It will give students time to reflect on how they will write their answers correctly and to express themselves in Spanish. One idea I've thought about is to have students practice the past tense in Spanish with my blog. I could ask them questions using the preterite tense (a past tense in Spanish) and students would have to identify that the question I was asking was in the preterite tense and they would respond in the same tense to the question(s). I could have a new question every week, or do one blog assignment per unit. Students could also incorporate their new vocabulary into the response as well. For example, students will be learning food vocabulary shortly in second year Spanish and they will also learn the preterite tense. I could ask a variety of questions which would be in Spanish such as:
I:
1. What did you eat for breakfast, lunch and dinner yesterday?
2. Was the food good or bad?
3. Who prepared your meals?
II:
1. What is a restaurant you ate at recently?
2. What did you order?
3. Did you like it?
4. How much did it cost?
5. Who were you with?
This is just a very quick example of some questions I could ask with the current unit being studied. Its sole purpose would be for students to express themselves in a different way using the target language, and to practice being accurate with new grammar and vocabulary. It would be useful for me as a teacher to see how well students write and understand the simple past tense and how their writing is improving with each blog post. It would also give students practice with using accents and symbols with a computer, since the Spanish language has many symbols that need to be added when typing. I could check for how accurate they are with this as well.
As I am writing this blog, I am coming up with other ideas as I go. I would also perhaps assign each student to comment on at least one student's response with another question. The question would have to include the past tense as well, and be used as accurately as possible. This would make for some good interaction outside of the classroom in the Spanish language!!
Blogging seems like a great tool for the classroom, especially when I think of using it with Spanish. Students would be practicing the language and be interested at the same time. It seems like it would not be too troublesome to grade either. Does anyone have any thoughts or comments on my ideas? Or how about the grading that goes along with blogging? Do you find it easy to grade students' participation?
My last question is should I be grading more on participation rather than grammar/accuracy? I'm not too sure what the grading part would look like yet. Any ideas there?
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I am also new to blogging, so I do not have much experience on grading the interactions. The way it sounds the students would be interacting with you most of the time. That should not be to hard to keep up with. Will they be required to respond on their on time, like at home, or will you provide time and a computer for them to use? One thought I have is if you could connect up with either another classroom teaching Spanish and have the students converse with each other or have a Spanish class from another country and your class correspond. The other country may be learning English as a second language and yours are learning Spanish as a second language. Not sure how to do all that but it might be something to really get the students motivated and involved.
ReplyDeleteThat is a really good idea, Linda. Thank you for that. I have been thinking about how I could get my students using penpals, and the thought of incorporating that idea with a blog sounds really neat. I am not sure how to set it all up either, but I will look into it and see what I could do.
ReplyDeleteAs for your question about my students and when they will respond, I would have them respond sort of like how we do our discussion for the Master's program. They would have the assignment on Monday and have until Wednesday to respond to questions. And perhaps by the next Sunday they would have to read and post to two other comments, or something like that. Depending on what the assignment was in the first place. I wouldn't provide a computer for them, but we would all set up our blogs together in a computer lab before all of this took place. Thanks again!
Marie-
ReplyDeleteGreat ideas! I really think that this would be beneficial and give students practice with their spanish skills. The only problem I could see happening is students copying each other's work, do you have any ideas on how to manage that? Blogs can be so useful, and sometimes students feed off of each others ideas in a positive light. I would really recommend using weebly.com to create a classroom website, and add a blog section under there, I have found it very easy to manage and use. In fact, after I started my website, about 5-6 other staff members in my district have started one as well. Its a great tool.
Fantastic Ideas. I too teach Spanish and find all of these valuable. I have been wanting to incorporate blogging in my Spanish I classes for a long time and you have given me hope. I also questioned how I would grade thaem and participation seems to be the best I can think of. As far as getting started, I would love for my students to interact with kids from all over latin america but the reality is that I'll probably start with our own ESOL students in our building. That way I can get their teacher involved and we can be accountable to each other face to face. I have heard horror stories of kids from different countries not answering the blogs. If this could be remedied, I would absolutely try with kids from many diffferent countries.
ReplyDeleteIt certainly would make their grammar assignments more relevant if they knew that their blog entries were open to public viewing. I liked Rodrigo's idea about hooking them up with ELL students in the building. It would be good feedback and would incorporate an important cultural diversity piece. I can't think of any challenges you might face regarding this idea, it seems pretty easy and straightforward. Maybe the kids might get bored with it because it's just a substitute for paper and pencil? I am certainly not in a position to critique your ideas, as I have never experienced a blog in the classroom, so please take that with a grain of salt...
ReplyDeleteRodrigo,
ReplyDeleteI like your idea of having the ELL students writing to my Spanish class students. That is one idea I will try to incorporate this year. It sounds really neat. I am glad that we both teach Spanish and that we have some other world language teachers in this course to bounce ideas around. I am looking forward to getting more ideas from all of you!
Hi Shaina,
ReplyDeleteThanks for the post!! As for students copying each other's work, i don't have ideas to remedy the situation, but if I see two very very similar posts or identical ones, I will know there was cheating going on and they won't get their points. That is all I've thought of so far. Just like if it was a paper and pencil activity and someone copied word for word someone else's paper, they both would still get a zero.
I will try the website you suggested for starting classroom blogs. Thank you for your suggestion!!