10 FREE Downloads; Keeping your advanced kids engaged‏

Have you seen this week's 10 FREE downloads yet?  You will find some great differentiation tips from TPT teachers, as well as some excellent FREEBIES! This week there were six downloads for the secondary level. They were all really good, but  my favorite was the Thanksgiving Activity by Tracee Orman. I liked that it could be used in both Social Studies and Language Art classes, and that it is linked to Common Core Writing Standards. It can also be used as a formative assessment. I believe that the writing prompt will peak students' interest. I will be passing along the link to this activity and some of the other great freebies to the teachers at my school this week!

Thanksgiving Creative Writing Activity by Tracee Orman Grades 4 - 12

French and Spanish Thanksgiving Themed Vocabulary & Activities!

Looking for something fun to do in your French, or Spanish class the week of Thanksgiving? Try teaching your students some Thanksgiving themed vocabulary! These products includes 47 Thanksgiving themed vocabulary words, a word search, a double puzzle, a Thanksgiving writing activity in the target language, a blank Thanksgiving Bingo card, and directions for making virtual Thanksgiving greeting cards in the target language. 

NEW LiveBinders Instruction Sheet and Rubric!

I was doing an online search recently for some teachers at my school for a student instruction sheet for Livebinders and a Rubric, and I was not able to find one. So I made one myself :) LiveBinders is a 3-ring Binder for the web.

 Ideas for using Livebinders:
1.    Have students create an ePorfolio of their work from the year in your class.
2.    Have students use a Livebinder to present a research project.
3.    Create a Livebinder as a resource for your students, and post it on your web page.
4.    Use Livebinders to organize your electronic resources for the units and courses you teach.
5.    Have students create a Livebinder on a country, or make a Travelogue in a World Language classroom.
6.    Put a set of digital student projects in a Livebinder and share so that students can see their classmates’ projects.
7.    Students can create a binder on a book, or author in a Language Arts class.
8.    Create a binder of parent resources, and post it on your website.

Advantages of Livebinders:
•    They are free!
•    They are a great tool for teachers AND students.
•    You can add many types of multimedia into them-documents, PDFs, videos, photos, images, links, websites, etc.
•    They incorporate technology into your lessons.
•    They can easily be updated, or changed since they are digital.
•    Great for organization!
•    They are easy to share.

Why use web-based activities?
•    More engaging/interactive
•    Increased interest/motivation
•    Technology can facilitate the transfer from teacher-centered to learner-centered environments
•    Enhance the authenticity of the learning process
•    Help develop 21st Century Learning Skills
•    Inspire creativity

  

I also updated my Technology Template Bundle (Wordle, Glogster, Stripgenerator Xtranormal, Voki, Blabberize, Bombay TV, Wordle, Wallwisher, Livebinders, ) and added the LiveBinders template to it so it now contains student instruction sheets with screen shots and rubrics for 10 different popular websites in education!

10 FREE Downloads; Thanksgiving items; Teaching beyond the test‏

 

Have you checked out this week's 10 FREE DOWNLOADS on TPT yet? You will find some great tips from teachers on test prep and high stakes tests, as well as some fun Thanksgiving activities! I was also excited to see that seven out of the ten downloads this week can be used at the middle school, or high school level. There will be a lot of great FREEBIES for me to share with the teachers at my school this week. I really liked all of the secondary education downloads this week, but I will have to say that my favorite was "Phases of the Moon Rap Video". So cute and catchy! I still have it stuck in my head   

Phases of The Moon Rap Video by Songs of Higher Learning Grades 4 - 9

Bombay TV "Subtitle Your Movies" Activities and Student Examples

 

Looking for a really fun writing activity that incorporates technology?  This online assignment allows students to create a film from old foreign video clips, and type in their own subtitles to go along with it! The activity contains directions with screenshots, a checklist, and a rubric to make it super easy to use. There are a few different Grapheine websites to choose from: Bombay TV,  Bombay TV2, and Futebol TV. Your students that are into sports will love the soccer clip option. This assignment was one of my students' all-time favorites!

Bombay TV2 French I Student Movie "America's Next Top Model"

Classik TV French I Student Movie "Santo"'

Student Work Examples from Stripgenerator Assignment

I wrote a blog back in September about my Stripgenerator activities in English, French, and Spanish. I mentioned it to a French teacher on Twitter the other day, and the teacher asked if I had any student examples. I realized that I did and that I should have posted them in my previous blog. So here they are now!

French I Assignment: Normally with lower levels I give students a lot of flexibility in what they write. Sometimes I let them make a comic about whatever they want as long as they are practicing writing in French. One assignment I have done before in French I with stripgenerator is to have them practice greetings and introductions.

French II and French III student examples: In these two assignments students had to practice using object pronouns and also commands with object pronouns. In French II, I have also had students make comics where they practiced the past tense.

French and Spanish Music

If you ask your students what they are interested in, I would bet that many of them would mention the type of music that they like to listen to, or their favorite artist. Why not incorporate music into your World Language classroom? There are a couple of great sites out there that will help you to easily implement this.

Zachary Jones has an amazing website for Spanish teachers, and one of the categories is the "Clozeline 2011: Spanish Music Cloze Activities". On the site you have access to the music as well as free activities that go along with each song. The songs are already labeled by grammar topic or vocabulary theme so you can easily match them up with the units that you teach! Then if you want to show your students the music video, you can go do that on www.youtube.com. Each activity is also linked to National Standards.

If you teach French then you should check out AATFrench's youtube channel for a collection of French music videos. Maybe you can look at Zachary Jones worksheets in order to get some ideas for creating your own French Cloze activities.

In addition, you can have your students create their own music videos in the target language! When I taught French Conversation and Composition, I had my students do a project where they had to research a French artist or group. One component of the project was to create their own version of the music video. I was about to post an example video from one of the student groups, but it looks like their youtube account is no longer open. I'll try to find another one to post soon, along with the project!