SO INSPIRED (so I'm writing an EXTRA blog post)


This weekend I met with my possible placement teacher for the fall, and she is exactly the teacher I want to be.  She loves using music and art and TECHNOLOGY in a classroom! I just wanted to share with the blogsphere some of the really cool things I took from our meeting and what I'm finding on my own!


First she is doing this really great thing in her class called The Flipped Classroom.  This is technique in which the teacher gives the student work to do at home, online... THEN! The students will come to class the next day, and there will be an activity based on what they should have done, at home.  SO!  The students will do the leraning on their own and it requires the teacher to trust the students, because if they haven't done the lesson, then they won't be able to complete the work in class (there's also away to monitor them actually doing the learning at home, kind of like a screen shot).  My mentor was very excited about this, and she said that her students came to class, and were helping one another, and they successfully completed the assignment, and she in awe at how the students were engaged in the lesson - because they had done their work, and they were using technology.  


Another thing that she does is use this http://www.senorwooly.com/.  This guy, uses his students and posts music videos that other Spanish teachers can use in their classes.  His songs will use the target vocabulary and the target verb tense for each lessons!  My mentor has her students make their own videos too - either songs or skits.  It's such a fun way learn the language!


She also uses a Google phone number for students to practice speaking.  Por ejemplo, the students might be learning how to invite someone to the movies, and they can call and get oral (and authentic) practice with the language.  And she also uses something called Camtasia - but I haven't had the time to research this in more depth, but it seems like a screen recording software, and I'm guessing this is what the students use to verify that they're doing their online portion of the work at home.  


Things that I've been doing online lately:
I made a Pinboard on my Pinterest (if you're not on there and would like an invite, let me know!) where I can find adorable teaching ideas that other teachers have found useful (or adorable).  


And for my research paper about music in second language acquisition, I found this: http://www.songsforteaching.com/index.html.  And look!  There are songs that you can use music in classes OTHER than just languages!
Anyway - I have just been so crazy inspired, and I thought I would share it with y'all :)

Living is like tearing through a museum. Not until later do you really start absorbing what you saw, thinking about it, looking it up in a book, and remembering - because you can't take it in all at once - Audrey Hepburn