Can we play a game? What are we doing today?

"Can we play a game?" "What are we doing today?" "Did we have homework last night?"
I hear these questions all of the time in my classroom and my responses are usually: "No, we don't have fun in Spanish." "Absolutely nothing." "Yes, a twelve page paper on why Mrs. Dunham is the best teacher you ever have or will have."
The game question is the most common because I like to have students participate in "education activities", or as some call them games, as much as possible. I have never used video games or computer games in my instruction and this week I looked at many options in the world of gamification.
The game that I chose to play was Third World Farmer. Now, I must tell you that I grew up on a farm that was established in 1854 and married another farmer whose farm was established around the same time. I know A LOT about farming and how mother nature works. I also know that many people in the United States have no idea what farming entails. Some people think that farmers where flannel shirts and cowboy boots and are just plain dirt poor. None of these are 100% true. My dad never wears flannel and he is a farmer, and doesn't own a pair of cowboy boots, and works extremely hard for every penny that he has in his pocket. Our two farm families own/rent over 6,000 acres in our surrounding areas. It's definitely something to be proud of, and really, we play the "game" of farming every day. Mother Nature is awfully unpredictable and mean sometimes. On the other hand, she might give you a close to 80 degree day in October to begin harvest.
As I played my game on the computer, I started to reflect on how lucky I am to live here, in the United States, on soil that my husband's family has worked for over 100 years. We are very different from the game, but I think both sides are important to understand. I only played the game twice, (I didn't last long the first time, but got the hang of it the second time) but I felt that I had a good understanding of where I could incorporate this in my own classroom.
At the beginning of this school year I started a level five Spanish class that doesn't focus on grammar, but culture. We talked about our own culture for the first five days of school. What is culture? What does our culture look like? How might we be similar or different to other cultures? What is the biggest part of our culture? What do others see when they look at our culture? Are you ever thankful for your own culture?
My students spent a lot of time reflecting on all of these ideas, and I think next year I would have them play this game at home. I would tell them that their goals/objectives would be to learn how another family in another culture functions. Compare and contrast the game that you play with the life that you lead. Does your family buy a chicken, or does your family eat the chicken stir fry that your dad made that evening?
For me, this could serve to purposes. First, I want to help everyone understand farming because people really don't appreciate the food that sits on our tables, or in our lunch rooms. Every thing comes from a farmer. Even Lay's potato ships come from potatoes that a farmer grew on his farm. Every single time you pour yourself a bowl of cereal, you should be thankful for a farmer that grew the wheat to make your cereal. It doesn't come out of thin air. Every time you complain about the prices at the grocery store, think about the farmers who had to pay for the $500,000 machine that had to harvest that corn. And every time you complain about your school lunch, think about the students that barely get one meal a day in a third world country. Think about their culture and their lives. What does their culture look like? What do they value? What do they worry about/
Before we understand other cultures, we need to understand our own. We need to appreciate our own, and I think this game would help get the point across in my classroom. I would have my students write and essay or create a powerpoint, or perhaps write a blog post in Spanish about our culture compared to the third world cultures to assess their knowledge on this topic. What are the similarities? What are the differences? I would grade these essays and discuss them as a group to check for understanding.
So, we could answer my first three questions again. "Can we play a game?" My response, "Yes, you can"! "What are we doing today?" My response, "Playing computer games and learning about other cultures".
"Did we have homework last night?" My response, "You had two things to do. First, write a 12 page paper on why Mrs. Dunham is the best teacher you have or ever will have, and second a small essay, powerpoint, or blog post on the cultures that we discussed."

This is a picture of the soybeans that we are harvesting right now and the beautiful sunset. Again, a photo from my very talented sister.
Hasta luego,
Alissa

Your homework is to go home and play video games, and don't make me say it twice!

That's right, I said go home and play video games...
Weird, right? This isn't something that students might expect their teachers to say. In fact, I myself was given an assignment to play a computer game, and thought, how will this work? 
In an article that I read called What is Gamification, it gives us a definition of gamification. "Gamification is the concept of applying game-design thinking to non-game applications to make them more fun and engaging." So, this could be used in the classroom or to practice a new language. Ogigames offers a wide variety of games for students to play, including educational games. 
I played Empire two times and noticed that it could definitely be used for students learning the command forms in Spanish. In the game, your "ruler" is commanding you to do things to help build the empire. In fact, all words are commands. How perfect for Spanish commands!? I think that I would have my students play the game, and write down ten command forms that they saw in the game. In class we could discuss all of the commands that they found and put them back in their original verb forms. I would grade their participation in class, or collect their ten commands as a homework grade and as I returned them I could give them to different students and they could put them in their original verb forms. If they could recognize the verb forms, and could report them the next day, all of them would be held accountable for their homework. They would all be actively involved in the game. 
I would not be using a walk-through (definition) for this type of activity, but I could see myself using one in future activities if the game was more difficult. In this game, they are commanded to do everything so it is easy to follow along with. 
After the students compared the commands that they were given, we could come up with our own images based on the game.  They could draw the images based on images that they saw in the game. The images could be put up around the room and we could refer to them when talking about "Open, Close, Construct, Use" etc. 
Instead of this being just a fifteen minute game that students play, we could turn this into a two-three day lesson.


Think about it...
Hasta luego, 
Alissa 

"Tweeting All Teachers"

The Teacher's Guide to Twitter states that "the best way to get the most out of twitter is to use it." Most of my students are most definitely getting their use out of twitter. The article also states that "you see hashtags everywhere." I hear them ALL of the time. I even taught my students the word for hashtag in Spanish so that have to refer to it in Spanish in my classroom now. "Twitter is too big to ignore." Twitter really is everywhere. I had been against "tweeting" because I didn't think it was useful up until this week when I had to create an account. I did find that some of the people that I started to follow really do share useful lesson plans, ideas etc. I found myself clicking on them and looking at what they had suggested.
The Teacher's Guide to Twitter also suggested that you "become friends with your enemies." So often in school districts teachers hoard their lesson plans and refuse to share ideas with their colleagues. In fact, I have worked with teachers in my past that do this but I have also worked with teachers who believe in sharing everything. "Why reinvent the wheel?" they say. I believe that without collaborating and sharing our ideas, we really are reinventing the wheel. Why not share your ideas?
The second article I read this week was called A Must Have Guide on Using Twitter in Your Classroom . Using Twitter as a Bulletin Board was their first suggestion. They said to use it to communicate about homework, useful information, class cancellations etc. I liked this idea, I just need all of my students to have access to the internet outside of school, and I know that they don't.
The last suggestion that they shared was creating pop quizzes on twitter as bonus points. I liked this idea also and could see myself doing something like that in the future.
My favorite suggestion was to use twitter to silence a "blurter" or someone who shouts the answers out in the middle of class. I can think of students very quickly that this would work well for. Maybe I will try it sometime while I am still participating in this class and I will let you know how it goes.
Twitter is too big to ignore, I just wish I had more time to spend tweeting, reading other tweets, and creating lesson plans using twitter. Now that I know all of this information i hope to use it to better my practices in the classroom and use it as a collaboration tool.
Hasta luego,
Alissa

#Ohmygosh, Mrs. Dunham, can I totally follow you on twitter!?

This week I have spent some time joining the 21st century and creating a twitter account. I created the account with the expectation that all I would see if a bunch of hashtag crazy tweenagers complaining about their classes or homework. Little did I know that professional teachers use this site to communicate about their experiences, share their best ideas, and ask questions about language classes, lesson plans, and expectations.
I experienced two twitter chats this week, as I didn't have a full hour to spend on both. This first chat that I attended was on Wednesday (10/2) #ELT English Language Teachers. As I sat in on the chat I was very confused as to what I was supposed to be doing/ what I was looking for. As a Spanish teacher, I found that some of the practices that they were discussing really didn't pertain to me. I could understand their questions/comments but found it to be a little boring to sit in on.
On Thursday I attended the Foreign Language Chats #langchat which I found to be a little more entertaining. Here the teachers were lead by a facilitator and simply shared questions and comments about lesson plans and specific sites that they use. I found myself clicking on these sites and saving them for future reference. I am teaching a level five class this year so I have found that I am able to branch into many different things that I haven't used before.
I think that following these chats/people on twitter could be beneficial for me. As I said before I had to attend two of them because I couldn't attend a full one this week. I think that this would be far more beneficial if I had the time to spend on twitter. I barely have time to check my email. I spend two hours on the road every day so I find that when I get home I only have time to make dinner, grade some papers, and relax for five minutes. I did find that many of the bloggers that I followed were writing about and discussing things that are relevant to my teaching practices so I hope that I can find time to really read what they have to say in their posts.
I also asked one of my students to help me out with this this week because I knew they would think it was funny that I didn't know how to tweet. They said they would help me and said "oh my gosh, we can totally follow you on twitter!". I have yet to see any of them follow me, probably because I am following "boring teacher stuff." Let's keep it that way!
:) Hasta luego!
Alissa