8 Tips to Maximize your Interactive Notebooks!

Interactive notebooks are a BIG part of my middle school Spanish classroom. When I taught in elementary school our notebooks served more as a porfolio of the student's learning but in middle school my students' notebooks have become their main resource and de facto textbook for the two years they are in my class. 

Keeping up with notebooks is not easy though! If you don't have the right systems in place you might question (like I did) if they are worth the trouble. Believe me, they are! One of my favorite things to hear is a student asking to grab their notebook to use during an activity or assignment or even to take it home to practice their Spanish outside of class. When done right, interactive notebooks help build lifelong learners.

8 Tips to Maximize your Interactive Notebooks!

1. Use Canva to create templates for your covers, syllabus, unit section dividers, unit overviews and reflections. Once you have them set up then you can just update with specifics for the grade level and unit of study. It also gives the notebooks a more organized and uniform look. Click HERE for a FREE template.

2. Have students number their pages and keep a table of contents at the front. This helps keep things organized and uniform so when you go to do a notebook check, the majority of students should have what they need where they need it.

3. If you are using composition notebooks, print things at 80-90% so that they will fit on the page. Students then cut off the excess before gluing it in.

Finding Authentic Resources for Novice Learners

Thanks to everyone who attended my workshop this weekend at KWLA conference!

I presented on finding authentic resources for novice learners and how to scaffold and use those resources. Click below to see my slides!

Classroom Jobs in the Middle School Classroom

Classroom jobs can feel like it belongs in the elementary school but really any level classroom can benefit from having class jobs. I tried them for the first time last year, made some tweaks this year, and now I'm totally sold. Read on to see why I love classroom jobs and which jobs I give my students!

Advantages to classroom jobs:

• They give students agency and ownership in the classroom, which leads to better behavior. In my experience, kids who can be more difficult actually LOVE a job.

• They save your energy. Teaching is exhausting. Classic veteran teacher advice is never do something the students can do. 

• They save time. It takes a lot less time to have 4 people passing out notebooks, 1 kid handing out pencils, and 2 more passing out papers than if I did it all myself. 

Me & My Community - Student Maps

 In my last post I talked about how I revamped my city unit and the results were fantastic. Not that my students haven't created awesome maps in the past but this time they did it with sustainability in mind AND they were able to write thoughtful and detailed descriptions of the neighborhoods they had designed. Here are some of my favorites...

This one not only is very nicely drawn, it has amazing and clever details. My favorite is of course the temple to Juan our class mascot. 

Me & My Community - Teaching Places in the City

The city unit has always been one of my favorite units to teach. See my posts here about using beebots and coding as a way to teach third graders how to give directions. However, in middle school I have had adapt how and what I teach for this unit. 

Some considerations:

This unit falls in 8th grade and programming beebots is a little babyish for them. They would still probably like it and I think I will add it back if I can, BUT the emphasis cannot be on giving directions. I will save that for the travel unit where it makes more sense AND we can spiral back to places in the city vocabulary.

I teach in an IB school which means I need incorporate certain things. For this unit we focus on sustainability and connections. They did background reading in English about the UN's Sustainability Goal 11 and then learned key terms in Spanish such as espacios verdes, uso mixto, transporte público, el reciclaje, paneles solares, sostenible, etc. 

There are multiple parts to their summative assessment - first they listen to a conversation about where someone lives and answer questions - interpretive listening. Then they write a description of their own neighborhood - presentational writing, and finally they work with a partner to plan a sustainable community  - interpersonal speaking - also with a written description - more presentational writing (although next year I think I will make this a recorded speaking assessment because they struggled with this kind of task on the STAMP test.) 

Unit focus:

sustainability

places in the city

the verb to go

frequency words

Review of Tiene, Hay, and Es

description words     

What we did in class:

We started out with this Basho and Friends video and students filled in a picture dictionary. They also took notes on the verb IR and we used this song from Real Language Right Away to reinforce the structure "Voy a..."

We played ¿A dónde va Juan? This game is one of my favorite ways to practice vocabulary. I picked a place in the city where Juan (our class mascot) was going and students had to guess using a complete sentence. This was also a way to practice the sentence frame "va a..." Later they played with a partner. You can also mix it up and guess where I'm going, where we're going, etc. to get in different verb forms. We also played scattergories where we spun a wheel and students had to list places in town that started with that letter. 

Students completed two different class surveys. One was a find someone who page where they asked if classmates went to different places. In the next one they picked one place and asked classmates if they went there and how often.    

 

La Casa Craftivity - Practicing Rooms & Furniture

 It's nearing the end of the year when kids are in out due to field trips, field day, and make-up testing and I need something that is fun and crafty and doesn't require a Chromebook (because they're sick of being on them and also because they'll be collected soon.) My 7th graders are making alebrijes that go nicely as an end to our pet unit (click here for that post) and 8th graders are making these cool house foldables. 

Students color, cut, and then glue their furtniture into their rooms. Then they label the items. Finally, they will write a description of the room on the floor

. I anticipate that some students will only have time and/or interest to make one room which is totally fine with me. Not everyone loves crafty things. These students will pivot to a reading assignment from Español con Randy. 

Here is the video I used to learn how to make the foldable itself.

And here are links to the furniture. 

Furniture Set 1

Furniture Set 2 - Scroll down to the individual furnture -  I also recommend printing at 80% rather than 100 so that the furniture fits in the house foldable.

What kinds of activities do you do to finish the school year? Share in the comments below! And check back later for pics of student work!

Click here to follow me on Instagram!

Spanish Class Mascot - Engaging Students & Creating Classroom Community

I attended a session on Creating Class Lore at the beginning of the year and it was just what I needed for my too cool for school 8th graders. 

Getting started - First up, we co-created a character in class. I gave them the choice of a capybara or a llama because those were two animals from the target culture that I had stuffies for. Then we named it, decided how old it was, and what it liked to eat and what sports it played. Somehow both classes picked a capybara and named it Juan so Juan became the 8th grade mascot. 

The second day I pulled out my stuffed capybara and held it during class. The kids got excited and several asked if they could pet Juan. I told students that Juan was sad because he was lonely. He didn't have any friends or family. Then I handed out cardstock with black and white capybaras and told them to decorate them however they wanted and then name and describe their capybara. This took two class periods.