Sunday, May 27, 2012

Memorial Day Sale! 20% OFF ALL of Liz's Lessons TpT Products!



Happy Memorial Day! ALL of my Teachers Pay Teachers products are now 20% OFF until midnight on Monday! Stock up on French and Spanish Final Exam Review Packets, Summer Vocabulary and Activities, and Back-to-School items for next year!


Thursday, May 24, 2012

French and Spanish Summer Vocabulary and Activities!


Need some fun activities to do in your French or Spanish classes before summer vacation? "Les Grandes Vacances: Activites et Vocabulaire" and "Vacaciones de Verano: Vocabulario y Actividades" each include 47 summer themed vocabulary words, a word search, double puzzle, bingo board template, summer acrostic poem template, a summer word cloud activity, a near future writing prompt, a past tense writing prompt, and answer keys.

These products are also good to use to supplement a vacation themed unit in your textbook during the school year. You can use the extra vocabulary to differentiate for your more advanced students!

Tuesday, May 22, 2012

10 Tips for the Speaking Section of a World Language Exam

 
  1. Determine the order in which students will speak with you in advance, and make a list. Ask for volunteers that would like to go first. Then draw students names at random. Give students their number, and let them know what day they will speak with you.
  2. Give students time to practice the questions with a partner in class.
  3. Practice the questions as a whole class as well so that you can make corrections and help them with their pronunciation. I ask all students to stand up, and then throw a ball around the room to one student at a time. I throw the ball to a student, and ask them one question. They answer the question and throw the ball back to me.
  4. Do the speaking portion of the exam before the day of the final exam. This way you can be in the room, and have all of your attention on students during the exam to monitor them, and answer questions.
  5. Give students a review activity to complete while you speak with their classmates. Check off this assignment for a completion grade to ensure that students will stay on task. You may choose to collect it by the end of the class period. 
  6. Speak with students out of earshot of their classmates. While speaking with students, I leave my door open and put two chairs out in the hall. I call for volunteers first, and then call students based on my list. They normally feel more comfortable speaking with me in the hall.
  7. Grade students on the spot. This will save you time of having to go back and re-listen if you record, or look over your notes later. You do not want to forget what students said. You can give students their speaking score right away if you choose to.
  8. Grade students with a speaking rubric. This will make your grading quick and easy. Show your students the rubric in advance and give them a copy so that they know what they will be graded on.   
  9. You have the option of recording students answers on your computer, on a tablet, or with a smart phone with a voice App. That way if a student or parent disputes their score you can go back and replay the recording for them in order to clear things up. 
  10. Weight the speaking portion of the exam as highly as other portions of the exam. Speaking is one of the most important aspects of learning a foreign language!   

Spanish I Final Exam Review and Rubrics! Includes Speaking Questions!


Need to prepare your students for their Spanish I final exam? This packet will save you a lot of time! This review was designed to go with the textbook "En Espanol", but it is general enough that it would be a good review of basic vocabulary and grammar for any Spanish I class. Includes 24 speaking questions that students can use to prep for their exam, a speaking rubric that you can use to grade them, a list of common Spanish I infinitives, a review of verb tenses, a conjugation practice sheet with a variety of verb tenses, answer keys, a writing rubric, a writing template, and answer keys.

If you would like to preview part of this packet, download  


Three Games for Practicing Infinitive Meaning:
1. Charades: Have students get in groups and act out the verbs. The student in the group that guesses the most correctly is the winner!
2. Pictionary: Have students get in groups. Give each group a small white dry erase board, a maker, and an eraser. Students draw a verb and their group guesses the verb in Spanish.
3. The Flyswatter Game/The Plunger Game: Write as many infinitives on the board in Spanish as you can. Scatter them across the board at random, and at different angles. Divide the class into two teams. Have a student from each team come up to the board. Call out an infinitive in English. The first student to "swat" or "plunge" the correct infinitive gets a point for their team.

Thursday, May 10, 2012

French I Final Exam Review and Rubrics


Need to prepare your students for their French I final exam? This packet will save you a lot of time! This review was designed to go with the textbook "Discovering French, Nouveau! (Bleu 1), but it is general enough that it would be good as part of your review for any French I class. Includes 20 speaking questions that students can use to prep for their exam, a speaking rubric, a list of common French I infinitives, a review of French I verb conjugations and tenses, a conjugation practice sheet, answer keys, a writing rubric, a writing template, and an exam outline of vocabulary and grammar by unit if you use Discovering French, Nouveau!

If you would like to preview part of the packet, you can download  

May Instructional Resource Update

Teachers,
You are almost there! Only about a month left of school! I have listed below the top instructional resources that I have come across in the last month. More new website links are also bookmarked on http://www.diigo.com/user/Ebucrek.  I hope you will scroll through the resources and to pick out one or two new things that interest you to try during the last month of school, or the beginning of the year next year. Happy Teacher Appreciation Week!
Liz






Google Drive
Google Drive is a file storage and sync service. It gives the user a free-of-charge cloud-storage of 5 gigabytes to start with! It is similar to Dropbox, but is linked to Google. My Dropbox is almost full so I have both!



Great Review Activity: Graffiti Wall (via Luv2Teach on Pinterest)

From "Adventures of Room 129" Blog
Useful to have students 'graffiti' on the board what they know before a test on a certain topic. I know this comes from an elementary blog post, but I think that it would be a good activity for the secondary level as well. It looks fun, student centered, and engaging! I think it would work really well as a French or Spanish review activity.

Crocodoc
"A collaborative reading tool where you can upload any PDF file, mark it up collaboratively and have an online discussion.  This is a great student reading and peer editing tool.  This can be used for text rendering where students draw their symbols for “I like this” (smiley face) or “I have questions about this” (?) using the drawing tool and highlighter.  Comments can also be added using the comment tool; users have a choice of point, area or text comment.  For editing, there are a highlighter, strikeout tool and textbox for additions.  The final product with markups can be downloaded and printed for review by the teacher and peers and be useful in assessing the areas of individual and collective needs."

This site looks like a great tool for teaching with the new common core standards. It would help students to understand more complex and informational texts. Many students also struggle with reading in the target language. It would be great for scaffolding for lower level language learners.

77 Web Resources for Teachers to Explore This Summer By Free Technology For Teachers
Great list of web resources with descriptions and organized by subject area. You can scroll through to find "Resources for Across the Curriculum", "Science", "Math", "English Language Arts", "Social Studies", "Art and Music", "Heath and Physical Education", and "Teaching Online Safety".

Quick Formative Assessment Poster: Assess yourself! (via StephR on Pinterest)
From eberopolis Blog
I love this quick and easy self-assessment for students! Scroll down the blog post to see the poster, and read the post for ideas on how to use it. You could make your own poster like this for your classroom.

I am currently enrolled in an online orientation class to become certified to teach for North Carolina Virtual Public Schools (NCVPS). As one of our assignments a couple weeks ago, we were asked to watch the videos below on digital learners and 21st Century Teachers.



Top 12 Effective End of the Year Activities from TeachHub

EOC review links on Diigo
For those of you giving state End-of-Course tests, or final exams in the subjects below, I have included some resources below that I put together for the teachers at my school for EOCs last year. There are practice tests, games, flashcards, and more!

Algebra I EOC links

Algebra II EOC links

English I EOC links

Biology EOC links

Saturday, May 5, 2012

Teacher Appreciation Week Three Day SALE!


No one can appreciate how much teachers do more than other teachers! For Teacher Appreciation Week I'm offering 20% off ALL of my TpT products from Sunday, May 6th-Tuesday, May 8th.  Enter the PROMO CODE TAD12 for an extra 10% off for a total of 28% off!  Stop by my store and stock up!  
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