Super Site Sábado # 11

It's been awhile, but I have a truly super app to share with you all today.

This week we have been working away at a review of verb conjugations in the present tense. Those pesky "yo" verbs keep giving my students a difficult time, so I decided to spend some additional time on them.

Enter Word Clouds by ABCya. This app gave us an engaging way to practice conjugating these verbs  and allowed for the students to be creative at the same time. Here is an example of how it works:

First, enter the desired words separating each with a comma. For our little project, I asked each of my students to enter, "yo", then their names, followed by at least 5 verbs conjugated in the present tense to describe them. You could truly use the Word Clouds app though for any subject area in which the students have developed vocabulary!

Once students have finished typing, their cloud will appear. This is where the creative aspect starts. Students can change the color, layout and font as they choose. There is also a randomize button which allows them to scroll through different setups the app designs for them.

Once my students had a little fun with it, I asked them to eventually end on a black and white color scheme for printing purposes (we are not lucky enough to print student work in color). I then asked them to utilize the "save to photos" feature in the app to save their work and send it to me to print their finished product.

Backed them on some patterned scrapbook paper and voila. Verb cloud magic.

The Word Clouds app seems to be free for a limited time, so grab it while it's hot. Most I searched for did cost money, and I think overall this one is the most elementary student friendly anyhow!

Have a great weekend!

YouTube and Spanish Texts

With many bilingual/immersion teachers such as myself having a limited number of Spanish texts to fill classroom libraries, I have come to find that YouTube is a wonderful backup option when there is something specific I am looking for!

There are a wide variety of Spanish texts read aloud and recorded that are available at your fingertips. 

For instance, at the beginning of the school year, I really wanted to use the book "Alexander y el día terrible, horrible, espantoso, horroso" for a character education lesson. But low and behold I could not get my hands on a copy. Enter YouTube to save the day.

On Book Character Day this fall I dressed up as the Paper Bag Princess and wanted to share the text with my students to start our day and do a character trait lesson. Unfortunately, I only had a copy of the text, myself, in English. YouTube to the rescue yet again.

And I just recently ran across this other fun little YouTube read aloud find.

Perfect for this weekend's occasion.

I must admit while I love holding a book in my hands and spending that quality time with my students huddled together enjoying a text together on our rug, I have come to enjoy and find that sharing the texts with them on YouTube is equally as engaging and taps into this technology age we live in.

Not only that, but you can share the link with students and families and they can listen again and again if they would like at home as well!

Do you use YouTube read alouds in your classroom? What are some of your favorites?

Super Site Sábado #10

In prepping for our iPad rollout next week, my students and I did a variety of mini-lessons this week about how we can use iPads in our classroom and what the expectations will be when we have them in our hands!

In doing this, it was my goal to not only convey the information to them that they needed to know, but also try and show them a few features and apps that they would be using this year to get them more excited about our 1-to-1 environment.

Enter Popplet.

Popplet is an app that gives you the ability to create flow maps, charts and bubble organizers. I use the lite version in my classroom, which is what I will be sharing today. It's free and provides me with just the tools I need, but there is a paid version of the app for any who are interested in upgrading.

On Thursday, my students and I had a discussion surrounding what they thought our rules for iPad use should be in order to ensure we were using and handling them safely. I used the Airplay feature on my iPad to project an ongoing Popplet on our Smartboard so that the students could see how the app worked at the same time as I was adding all of their newly developed rules to the screen.

Here is what we came up with.

This map started as one bubble and we added on as we went along. 

Here's how:

You can also customize your Popplet by changing the background color of the whole thing.

Or just an individual bubble - which would be great for placing ideas into categories.

In addition to changing the color of each bubble, you also have the ability to add a drawing by clicking on the pencil icon or a photo by clicking on the photo icon.

Finally when you are all finished you can even save and/or send the finished Popplet. If you plan on having students use it as a tool to communicate their learning, this can definitely be a helpful feature!

And there ya have it, folks. How do you think you could use or how have you used Popplet in your classroom? I'd love to hear and share some of your suggestions!

Super Site Sábado #9

I am beyond thrilled to share this week's super site with you all today!

Not only is it a creative, innovative and rockin' place for Spanish learners, but I actually had the opportunity to interview the site's creator, and feel honored to share what I learned from him with you all today.

Rockalingua.com is a site chalked full of songs, animated videos, games and more to get kids excited and motivated to learn basic concepts in Spanish. As those of us who are teachers of second language learners know, teaching through song is one of the best ways to reinforce concepts and vocabulary for our students. 

Cesar Chinchilla, this super site's founder has even more to share with you about how the site came to be and what it has to offer in the interview I conducted with him shared below!

So without further ado...

Cesar, please tell Tell us a little bit about yourself.

I am originally from Madrid were I used to teach English to Spanish speakers. 7 years ago I moved to San Francisco, and now I teach Spanish to English speakers.  Music is my main teaching tool.

How was the idea for Rockalingua born?

When I moved to San Francisco and I started teaching Spanish I could not find quality materials to teach Spanish so I started to write songs to teach vocabulary and basic grammar structures to my students. They loved the songs so I kept writing more. After 5 years of writing songs and seeing that they worked great with my students I decided that I wanted to do something with them to help other teachers and Spanish students. I contacted Daniel Fernandez, an old friend of mine and a professional cartoon animator to turn all my songs into animated music videos and that’s how Rockalingua was born.

We know the site offers some incredibly videos for teaching students basic concepts in Spanish, what else does it have to offer and how does it all connect?

  

On the website there are 5 different sections: videos, songs, games, worksheets and picture dictionaries. Each video and song introduces a topic and each topic has a related worksheet, picture dictionary and interactive set of games to review and broaden everything learned on the video and song. All is really well connected. If you are, for example, using the video on numbers at the right of the website you will see the related content so you can easily access the worksheet about numbers, or the games about numbers.

How do you go about selecting content for a video/song?

 I write songs about topics that are relevant to Spanish class. My songs cover concepts that all Spanish students need to learn. Some are very basic such as colors parts of the body or daily routines but I have lately been working on new songs that I will upload soon to the site that covers, verb conjugation, prepositions and irregular verbs that will make the learning of this tricky concepts fun and easy.

What do you currently have in the works? 

 We are constantly creating new content, writing new songs, creating new videos, and worksheets that we upload regularly to the site.  We are  also designing a memory game that we will  add to our game selection

Anything else you'd like to share with readers? 

Thank you so much Krista for this interview (but seriously, THANK YOU, Cesar!) 

I want to invite everyone to explore Rockalingua, there are a lot of free resources and everyone can do a limited free trial that will give them access to all videos and songs for a week.

Thank you so much and enjoy the music!

Not only was Cesar generous enough to take part in the interview, but he also was more than willing to co-host a giveaway with me for all of you!

That being said, one lucky winner will have the opportunity to receive a free 1 year subscription to Rockalingua to utilize with your class, your kids, yourself (whoever you'd like!) 

Did I mention this is a $149 value! Wowzas!

But wait...there's more...Another lucky winner will receive a copy of a DVD containing the Rockalingua videos Cesar and his team have worked so hard to create! 

That's two winners in all folks! The giveaway will run from now until midnight next Saturday. 

Check out the Rafflecopter below to see how to enter.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Super Site Sábado #8

This week I am bringing you another app that one of my colleagues discovered and shared with me last school year. 

"DeCuentos" is a FREE Spanish story app where students can listen to and watch popular children's stories read aloud via video. 

Here is a brief description given within the app itself.

As you can see with each story, students have the option to download the video, share it with others, or add it to their favorites list to listen to over and over again. 

These features may also be useful for teachers if there are particular stories you desire for your students to take a look at.

Here is an example of how the story list screen appears. You can see the three options I described above highlighted next to each story description as well as a still image of the video with the option to press play and begin watching. It is quite user friendly and easy to navigate for all.

Once a story is selected, students may either hear and see the actual book being read aloud.

Or, the storyteller may be utilizing props to set the story in motion for them.

As you may have noted in the list above, there are a few titles in English, however, the vast majority are in Spanish and what is even cooler is that almost all are read by native speakers.

Is this an app you could see yourself using in the classroom or with your own children at home? 

How would you use it?

I encourage you to give it a whirl as it is definitely a treasure for the price (which may I remind you is absolutely nothing!).

Super Site Sábado #7

This week I am highlighting an app that one of my delightful former colleagues brought to my attention this past school year. 

Rosetta Stone Kids is a free application that offers the opportunity for students to build their letter/sound recognition, vocabulary and speaking/comprehension skills in both English and Spanish.

It is a great one for preschool and primary grades or for those who are working to first learn a new language.

The app utilizes these adorable and ridiculously fun little creatures called GoGoLingos to present the skills for practice. 

There are 3 activity options within the app. 

My favorite is the "Spanish Speak & Learn".

In this activity, kids are introduced to a new word by sharing for example "The word for dance in Spanish is...", it then pronounces it, and finally asks them to repeat by using the microphone feature on the phone/iPad. 

Once the child pronounces the word effectively, the GoGoLingo will "perform" the word definition. (Seriously, these little guys crack me up.)

It continues by adding on to the word and utilizing it in different contexts (i.e. dance fast, to the left, to the right, dance together, etc.)

Check out more about the other activities this app offers by watching this YouTube video all about it below :).

Super Site Sábado #6

Hello-World is a site I came across this year that is not only particularly great for kids, but for people of all ages to learn about different languages in a fun, light-hearted way. I must say even I got hooked for awhile trying to pick up languages I had never even thought of trying out before.

The site is free to use and and offers options to learn vocabulary and more from 21 different languages around the world.

Here is a snapshot of what they are all about:

And here is a glimpse at some of the languages they offer:

Once you select a language, you will be brought to a screen with tons of options as to what you'd like to learn about.

Here is an example of a bingo game based on household vocabulary that I chose to play.

You will see and hear a vocabulary word and then must select the correct picture. If you get it right, it will be highlighted with the blue circle (looks a bit like a bingo chip!), and if you select wrong, you will get that sad looking red x. Obviously, the object is to get 5 in a row. You can see my win straight down the center. This game is offered with different vocabulary ranging over a variety of basic concepts.

Here is another activity example for practicing numbers. Kids love a good connect-the-dots picture and this one enables them to hear and practice numbers in the language of their choice at the same time. 

There is also an interactive dictionary under each language which you can use to locate words...

as well as hear them and see a picture reference. 

Another activity that I found to be pretty useful can be found under the "Main Concepts" heading for each language. Here, you can click on any of the key concepts that you are interested in learning more about and practice the vocabulary/listen to it on an interactive screen. For instance, on this calendar screen below, I can click on the days of the week, months, year, season etc. and they will all be read to me according. The season even changes with the month chosen!

Another neat aspect of the site is that if you and/or your students, etc. are not native speakers of English, the site can be translated into a different language for navigation purposes as well simply by selecting from the menu on the left-hand side bar. Pretty nifty, right?

There is seriously so much more to explore on this site. Thus, I think instead of hearing me gab about it more, you should really go check it out yourself! Hope you have a much fun as I did exploring Hello-World and learning new languages, even if it is only a word or two!

Have a great weekend!