Dear novice-learner teacher - love, an AP teacher

foto Alex Fuentes

Twice for #langchat we've polled the following question:

What activities prepare students for AP from the very beginning?

I confess, I probably wrote this question, maybe with some help from something similar being suggested as a topic. Certainly I've voted for it twice. But for whatever reason--perhaps teachers of lower levels don't think much about AP or the question was polled with others deemed more relevant--this topic has lost both times. So as usual, I'll take my opinion to the blog. Because I can.

I'm currently in my fourth year teaching AP. I know I've learned a lot from it, and I've gotten better at it, but my students are also improving considerably, mostly, I think, from what they get before my class, not from what they get from it. AP is a fourth-year class at my school. My first year, I had just 2 students, scoring 1 and 2. Second year, 6 students scoring one 3 and five 1's (ouch). That year I was so mad at the College Board I won't tell you what I wanted to do with them. Last year I hit some things really hard and actually, I ended up with my eight students scoring one 4, three 3's, two 2's, and two 1's (yay!). This year, I have such a stellar group of kids that I wouldn't be surprised if all six of them pass.

Now, in all seriousness, I hate the AP. I hate the test, and I hate the College Board, and I hate the idea. I can't stand that one three-hour exam thinks it can predict how proficient my students are and will be in college in Spanish. That student my first year that scored a 2, he was conversationally fluent, at least an Advanced Low speaker, after 3 years (he'd skipped Spanish 3) and the most motivated learner I have ever met. Of the two students who scored 1's last year, one is majoring in Middle School Spanish Education and the other is minoring in Spanish.

Really, that's how I feel about all standardized exams (thank you, Alfie Kohn). But the fact is, most of my students care about it. It is our only fourth-year option, and last year they voted on whether to keep it AP (in which they are required to take the exam) or to call it Spanish 4 (in which they'd have the option to take the test). But all but one voted for AP. They want the weighted grade points, and the AP Advantage study hall, and yes, they want the extra focused preparation for the exam. They want the bragging rights, and they want the college credit. So, I'm about pleasing the students, and here we are again.

After four years of watching students struggle and succeed in their fourth-year AP class, here are my requests for you, the elementary teachers (which I also am) through middle school, Spanish 1, 2, and 3 teachers.

1. Please, please, PLEASE feed them ALL KINDS of authentic audio.
   This is my #1 because it's my #1 problem with my students. They get to me (in Spanish 3) and can't understand anything but learner language. The majority of audio on the AP is not learner language. It's stuff like BBC Mundo and Radio ONU (which I couldn't understand until, say, 10 years into my journey). More importantly, the majority of audio in life is not learner language.
   The common mistake is to think that novices cannot understand authentic media. The truth is that the difficulty is in the question and not in the source. If you're asking them to hear the word cinco that's a different question than if you're asking them to hear the word aprovechándonos.
   
   
2. Interact with vocabulary in real contexts.
   Asking students "what is the word for black? Good! Red? Great!" does almost *nothing* for their language acquisition. Trust me, from day one a novice learner can understand this question:
   ¿De qué colores es un oso panda? (2)
   Context is everything. My current AP students have not had a vocab quiz in four years and their vocabulary is incredible. Yesterday in our novel they were accurately identifying words like solía and lechuza. One of my Spanish 3 students actually asked for vocab quizzes the other day and we had to have a talk about how cramming does not create long-term memory. This is connected with the issue of authentic media - get students listening to and reading real materials and the vocabulary will just be there. I promise.
   
   
3. Ask questions that require critical thinking.
   Critical thinking is a life skill. Prepare your students for life by asking them real questions that make a difference. Stop asking 'what' and start asking 'why' and 'how.' To me, the true test of a critical thinking question is if there's no clear-cut answer. Instead of stopping with "what foods do you like?" ask "is a guinea pig food? why or why not? would you try it?" (In Ecuador, guinea pig - 'cuy' or as my dad likes to call it, 'barbecuy' - is a delicacy.)
   
   
4. Do speaking assessments. GET THEM TALKING.
   My current Spanish 3 students tell me that last year they had exactly 1 speaking assessment. Now, kids like to complain about teachers, but if it's anywhere close to the truth, it's far too few. They're now facing two speaking assessments each in every unit for sixteen in all and they're dying. They hate it, except for my one who's aptitude leans toward speaking and away from writing.
   The AP has a wicked guided conversation activity in which someone says something, then there's a beep, and the student has 20 seconds to think up and say what the test says they need to do. That's repeated about five times and that's the interpersonal speaking section. It's stressful and intense and unrealistic but there you have it. My current AP students are so used to talking back and forth in class that this year they were able to do this for practice without much anxiety much sooner than the students I had last year. Keep students talking -for the AP and for life.
   
   
5. Teach and require idiomatic expressions.
   It's a sad fact about general proficiency guidelines and about the AP that the difference between one level and the next can come down to one single phrase - an idiomatic one. Three years ago the one student who passed said she went in determined to use the phrase "vale la pena." Honestly, she was the most proficient student in the class but I wouldn't be surprised if it made the difference between 2 and 3 for her. Keep an idiomatic expression on the wall, once a week or every two weeks. Reward students when they use them. Do an activity that requires a particular one. Point them out in authentic texts. Realize, and help students realize, that language is idiomatic.
   
   
6. Do assessments that require extrapolating and synthesizing main points from multiple sources.
   A couple of years ago I did a KWLA presentation called Prompts with Power. It was about finding authentic sources and asking students to answer a question, orally or written, based on the sources. Teach students to draw their own conclusions after comparing and contrasting two other opinions. Or three. Similar or different, it doesn't matter, but it's a life skill -and an important one on the AP- to be able to look critically at what other people think and use those opinions to develop an informed personal one.

Perhaps it's good I had to write this here and not on #langchat - this is certainly more than I could have explained in snippets of 140 characters. Thanks for putting up with it.

Not your average health unit

foto por USP Hospitales

A unit on health is common in Spanish class. We have a unit in Spanish 2 on describing ailments and visiting the doctor. Then in AP I have a unit called "Cuidándome a mí" (taking care of myself). It's useful -last year's AP essay was health-related- but for AP I wanted to go beyond the typical reflexive verb, sickness phrases, doctor questions vocabulary and activities. Besides, our principal asked us this year to focus on hands-on learning with our students. So how could I make the learning hands-on, relevant, and connected to communities and culture?

Every unit in AP contains four performance assessments: interpersonal speaking, presentational speaking, interpersonal writing, and presentational writing. I've had a focus in this unit for the past two or three years on healthcare and undocumented immigrants, but this year I wanted it to really matter. Here are the assignments we did for each:

1) Interpersonal speaking

One student played a doctor's receptionist, and the student being assessed was someone in the doctor's office. I was a mother whose child needed a chicken pox vaccine in order to go to school, but didn't have any health insurance or much money. So the receptionist won't let me make an appointment, and the student had to explain to me that I could get the vaccine at the health department. To complete this task my students had to a) get the address and phone number of the health department in our city, b) identify language options at the health department, c) find out what kind of care is offered at the health department, d) find out whether undocumented immigrants can get care at the health department, and e) understand how services are paid for at the health department. And these students had never even heard of the health department!

Here's April completing this task.

2) Presentational speaking

Scenario: The local Latino community is having a town hall meeting to talk about local health care options. Several local political leaders are attending (with translators). Based on an article about undocumented children in the health reform debate and a video about a baby's life being saved at Seattle Children's Hospital, present a 2-minute argument about why undocumented immigrant children should or should not receive healthcare services at health departments and hospitals.

3) Interpersonal writing

Students had to locate a doctor in the city who spoke Spanish. This involved actually calling the offices to verify that they had Spanish-speaking staff and to get their address. Then they wrote a letter to the doctor explaining what they had learned about the undocumented and/or uninsured Spanish-speaking community and encouraging the doctor to get involved in free or low-cost clinics in the area. We are mailing these letters.

4) Presentational writing

Students wrote a lengthy letter to our Congressman, John Yarmuth. Based on a Pew Hispanic Center study, comments by the Republican presidential candidates, and a radio program addressing changes in the California MediCal access laws, students addressed such questions as:

-what is the most reasonable response to the healthcare crisis?

-if we treat everyone indiscriminately, will healthcare costs rise to an unsustainable level?

-how can we control costs for those who can't pay without overburdening society?

-what kinds of healthcare are human rights and what aren't?

-what do we do with undocumented children who had no say in their legal status?

-should undocumented immigrants receive healthcare anywhere, or only in certain places?

-how can we inform undocumented immigrants on their healthcare rights and options?

I am going to write an English-language note to accompany these letters, explaining what we did to Mr. Yarmuth and telling him that my students care enough about the Latino community that they have taken the time to learn their language, and if he will take the time to find someone to translate their letters, he will get some interesting opinions, as well as getting a taste of what language negotiation immigrants have to go through to become informed. Then I'll mail them.

I actually posted about this unit two years ago, but I think now it's become a lot more relevant and service-oriented.

It's time for them to use their time

There are a lot of problems with current world language teaching in the U.S. I think the biggest problem is that we're trying to teach it the way we teach everything else, when language used for communication is not learned or stored the way other subjects are, and the answer is to look back at the way this happened the first time. Don't agree? That's okay. But I'm looking back at 100 years of failed language teaching in the U.S. and at a profession full of teachers who don't believe in what they do - because if you ask a language teacher where to learn to speak a language, they won't tell you to take a class. They'll tell you to put yourself in an immersion situation. We know that immersion is the only thing that works, but we won't do it in class. Why? Lots of reasons. We're not trained. Students are conditioned to think school should happen a certain way and when it doesn't, they revolt. Our expectations are too high. Our assessments are completely invalid.

And the biggest complaint I hear is this: we don't have the time. Young children are flooded with massive amounts of input from the moment they're born, and we have them for mere minutes a day. What about that?

One answer is that the minutes we have them add up over years to a whole lot of time, so one solution is to figure out how to motivate students to continue into advanced levels of language learning. Another solution is to impress upon students that if they're really going to succeed, they can't rely on language class to keep this up. At some point, they have to take ownership of this language journey in their own lives and not let it be just something a teacher is making them do, because if that's all it is, they won't keep learning after they leave us, and it will be a waste of time. One way I've tried to do this is to assign my students to do a "fluency activity." Once a week, my fourth-year students have to do something outside of class to show me that they can find ways to interact in the language. They have to tell me on a card 1) what they did 2) one thing they learned and 3) what they need to improve on. @SraSpanglish asked me to publish the options I give them, so here they are. Keep in mind that I teach in a private faith-based school, so several of these options are faith-related. One premise there is that the vocabulary used will be very familiar to my students, which primes their brains for higher comprehension. You might have other ideas for how to do that also - please share them in comments!

1. Listen to Spanish-language radio for one hour (music) or 30 minutes (talk).
2. Watch television in Spanish for 30 minutes.
3. Change your facebook language to Spanish and play on Facebook for an hour.
4. Read a Spanish-language newspaper for 30 minutes (may be online).
5. Play on one or more corporate Spanish-language websites for 45 minutes.
6. Read a book in Spanish for 30 minutes (may get one from Sra. Cottrell, may not be Ciudad de las bestias)
7. Read 3 familiar chapters of the Bible in Spanish.
8. Change your cell phone or mp3 player’s language to Spanish for an entire week.
9. Read the directions in Spanish of four items in your house (e.g. detergent).
10. Read the last 50 tweets using a Twitter hashtag for a Latin-American country or city.
11. Read the last 30 Spanish-language tweets by one or more Spanish-speaking artists or politicians on Twitter
12. Read an article about a famous Latino musician or politician in Spanish on Wikipedia.
13. Watch 3 videoclips on sports and 3 videoclips on current news on Univision.com.
14. Compile a list of 30 words involving the profession you hope to have, on 3x5 cards for your review.
15. Explore the Spanish-language section of a bookstore (music, kids’ books, and/or adult books) for 30 minutes and find two things you would like to own.
16. Listen to a sermon (at least 20 minutes) in Spanish (see oneplace.com).
17. Conversar (o ‘chatear’) en español con alguien por 30 minutos
18. Asistir a un Spanish Group
19. Asistir el servicio de una iglesia
    

Added recently:

1. Find a recipe on a site like Mi Cocina Latina or Qué Rica Vida and prepare it.
2. Listen to at least 5 clips at least B1 or higher on Audio Lingua.
3. Watch at least 5 clips Intermediate B or higher from UT proficiency site.
4. Play around on the iTunes Latino store and find 2 albums or 5 songs you would like to own.

Ciudad de las bestias: Guides public & streamlined

I wrote here about what I've done with the book Ciudad de las bestias by Isabel Allende in my AP class. I recently put all of the chapter guides with their "palabras claves" in one streamlined Google doc, public on the web. It should be easier to use and as always happens with time, more accurate as my students find mistakes (like incorrect page numbers) and I fix them. If you have any suggestions or comments, as always those are welcome.

A few notes about the guides/words:
- The guides get longer because 1) the students become more capable and less in shock and 2) the chapters get more complicated in regards to the plot
- I use a "did you read" question at the end of every guide, worth at least 10 points, more according to the length of the chapter
- sometimes there's a ¿? instead of a definition of a "palabra nueva" because while the phrase itself is new, it's related to words the students know, and so I think they should be able to figure it out (e.g. desangrar).
- at this level my students read mostly on their own but we try to make time for it in class, and the day it's due they come in with questions and we read through tough sections together - this lessens their frustration

Have you thought about writing guides to literature for your own class-- and sharing them for other teachers? Collaboration is the 21st-century skill. :)

Since I stopped teaching to the [AP] test

Last year my AP class was a bit happy-go-lucky. They had a sort of attitude that went like this:

"Well, I understood that pretty well, that was awesome!"
"I didn't get that at all. Oh well! What's next?"

This year, not so much. This year's class is more like:

"I understood that, cool!"
"I didn't understand that at all. I'm dropping this class at Christmas. My life is over."
"We don't do anything fun anymore."

So I feel like I couldn't possibly say "back to the drawing board" one more time, but here I went anyway. I took a good hard look and determined that what we were lacking was focus. One of my students said something to the tune of "We should do a unit on dating." I pointed up at the title of Unit 2: "La red interpersonal." We did an entire unit on interpersonal relationships and they didn't even get the focus. So I thought, where do the students think this is going wrong? Where do I think this is going wrong? What can we do that might improve it while still preparing them for the exam (and more importantly, to communicate better with the Spanish-speaking world)?

1- They hated Triángulo. They groaned every time we pulled it off the shelf. I mean despised. So I decided to move to (almost) entirely web-based sources for assignments and my own topics and questions. I still can't find anything else that has as much and as good of a replication of the AP's interpersonal speaking (simulated conversation) as Triángulo, and that whole 20-second- talk til the beep thing just freaks them out.

2- They didn't understand the sources on their own in enough time to put together a good oral or written synthesis or argument. We were doing too many oral presentations and essays within a unit. So it started to feel like "here's a source, here's a source, here's a source, bam, good luck, say something, go." Their heads were spinning and often a few of them were still confused on what exactly the question was after 2 or 3 had already given their presentation, or well into writing their essay.

So, we focused. And I mean really focused. I took the same unit themes I have in my AP syllabus, and the same general idea, but we focused it completely so that all the assessments use the same idea, and the oral presentation and essay use the same sources, and we all discuss and walk through the sources together, and then they do their presentations and essays.

Take the unit on ecoturismo. The focus was that they were trying to convince either their classmates or the school administration to take them on an ecotourism trip to Costa Rica instead of their regular trip to Disney World, or write a letter to the director of an ecotourism-focused resort, etc., depending on the assessment, but all about the senior trip, ecotourism, Costa Rica, and issues involving indigenous peoples in Latin America. And you can bet at the end of the unit, no one even thought about wondering if we'd done a unit on the environment.

So, some of them are still frustrated, because they wish it were easy, and they wish they didn't have to do anything, and well, they all have senioritis. But the class has focus, and it's not about the AP test anymore--I hope I've finally convinced them of that--and things are looking up. And in the spirit of doing something fun, they've written so many essays that in this current unit I'm suspending the essays in favor of a video using our Flip camera.

I've never been a fan of teaching to the test. I should have lectured myself about this a long time ago.

Faith and Culture: help me decide our AP topic

(Keep in mind I teach at a private faith-based school and this isn't an invitation for a debate.) I'm in a dilemma between two potential topics for our next AP focus. Will you help me decide and/or make suggestions?

Our current unit in AP Spanish is called "La verdad es que..." and it's about how faith relates to culture in Spanish-speaking countries. In the first part of the unit, the assignments are related to informing students on the Spanish conquest of Latin America and getting them to weigh in on the controversy surrounding the "genocide" of the indigenous peoples and whether or not, or how, the Spanish conquistadores imposed their faith on the indígenas and how this affected today's faith/culture mix in the region and whether or not, or how, it had a negative effect on their culture.

For the second half of the unit, I'm having trouble deciding between two topics.
The one is more closely related to our first topic and so I'm leaning towards it, but the other is more current and relevant to Latinos in the U.S.

1) What ethics are involved in current Christian mission work in Latin America? Can this work continue and the indigenous cultures still be preserved? Should organizations be allowed to operate freely, or be tightly controlled, or be excluded from indigenous tribes entirely?

Sources:
El impacto fundamental de las nuevas tribus ha sido el etnocidio (Print)

El domingo vence plazo para salida de misiones Nuevas Tribus de Venezuela (Print)

Foro: Nuevas Tribus, ¿misión de Dios? (very nice audio source)

2) Evaluate the motives people have for loyalty for a particular denomination over another. What cultural shifts are enough to push a change in philosophy? How does a culture decide what philosophies or principles are "hills to die on" and what can be given up? What does a group do when a respected spiritual leader leaves their denomination, but remains in the spotlight?

Sources:

Fuertes críticas de padre Alberto a la Iglesia, en libro. (Print)

El padre Alberto lloró por su bebita (Print)

Padre Alberto Cutié via La W Radio (audio)

In the spirit of open source: Ciudad de las bestias

Want to guide your advanced students through a culturally-relevant novel by a Hispanic author, written specifically to adolescents? Good! Intensive reading for pleasure is the best way to acquire vocabulary in any language.

I've put an incredible amount of work into writing reading guides and vocabulary lists for all 20 chapters of Ciudad de las bestias by Isabel Allende.

In the story, Alex, a 15-year-old Californian, must spend some time with his eccentric grandmother while his mother receives cancer treatment in Texas. His grandmother is a nonfiction adventure writer, about to leave with a team from "International Geographic" for the Amazon, in search of the (mythical?) Bestia--the 'abominable jungleman.' Alex's presence can't throw a wrench in her plans so he must tag along. Suddenly the California boy finds himself in the middle of the Amazon, picking off leeches, swimming with dolphins, befriending a young Brasilian-Canadian girl with whom he gets kidnapped and must embark on a journey to answer tough questions about who gets to use what in the jungle and what the future holds for the indigenous peoples of the Amazon, as well as where his true riches are and where he can find purpose.

Sound like culture? communication? motivating subject matter for teenagers?

My reading guides aren't perfect--just the other day one of my students pointed out I hadn't put page numbers on a few questions-- but here they are, and I encourage you to see the power of reading come alive for your advanced students.

**UPDATE 3 FEB 2011** For new info on these guides, see this post.

I'll try to post some tips on class novel reading soon, but my first one would be to start reading together before assigning it outside of class, so students can get used to the big keys which are:

1-read the question first so you know the big idea you're looking for

2-read so you understand the gist, but not so you understand every word.

Prompts with Power: writing/speaking prompts

These are the sample prompts we are doing in my presentation, Prompts with Power, with sources.

Unit theme: Interpersonal relationships
Prompt theme: Adamari Lopez and Luis Fonsi divorce

LEVEL 1
Target "should"
She is sick.
He "should..."
Extend: why?

LEVEL 2
Target: talking about the past
Compare their relationship to a time when an illness affected your relationships.

LEVEL 3
Target: Perfects, subjunctive
What has happened to their relationship?
Extended: How do you feel about Luis Fonsi now?

LEVEL 4
Target: None specific.
Write an essay for your Marriage and Family class on the following topic: How does stress affect relationships? Give a personal example. How do you think famous couples could deal with the stress of fame and separation to make their relationships last? What about when an illness adds to the challenges?

Potential audio sources:
Adamari Lopez no se dio por vencida
Confirman Luis Fonsi y Adamari Lopez su separacion

Print sources:
Luis Fonsi: "Miento si digo que estoy bien"
Siguen cuidando uno del otro

Prompts with Power: Prezi

Here's the Prezi for Prompts with Power.

Prompts with Power: Dating in high school

This is a writing or speaking prompt I'm making available as a follow-up to my upcoming presentation called "Prompts with Power." Prezi coming soon.

The prompt is:
¿Deben los jóvenes salir con novios en el colegio?

My favorite audio source for this (you have to watch both to get the full drama):



And the print source is an article from EPA.

Another possible audio source (but I didn't want them both to be about pregnancy, etc. and the Patito Feo is a good glimpse of the manipulation that can come from immature relationships):

Print & audio sources for AP synthesis essay re: efficient energy

In the world language classroom, we are not just teaching language. Language as a means of communication by its very nature enables us to touch our world in different ways. That's why I say all the time that a major part of our responsibility is to help our students become world citizens by keeping them informed on what's going on in the Latin world. Another aspect of this is to encourage "green" thinking in light of the Latin world. That's not hard to do, given that the world's largest rainforest and concentration of species is found on the South American continent.

The people who write the AP exam are aware of this as well. They want our students to be green citizens like we do, and chances are there's going to be something on the environment on the AP. This whole emphasis is clear if you open any advanced or AP Spanish textbook--there's usually an entire unit devoted to the topic. I know in the AP curriculum I've created for my classroom, my fourth unit is on the environment.

Because of this focus, in this unit my students wrote an essay about the importance of developing efficient sources of energy and hypothesizing on where energy technology will take us in the future (good use of future tense & subjunctive). My two print sources were a Wall Street Journal article entitled "Cinco tecnologías que podrían cambiarlo todo" and an article from Yahoo Autos about the features on the upcoming Chevrolet Volt.
The audio for the essay comes from a video taken at the recent Solar Decathlon in Washington. It's featured on the YouTube channel and website of Solar Decathlon Europe, who are looking forward to holding the competition in Spain next year--a golden opportunity for you to highlight this important event in the Spanish classroom.

Two songs + resources for Ojalá + subjunctive

The word Ojalá is, in my estimation, the only 'verb' in Spanish that isn't conjugated. It finds its roots in Arabic, meaning "May allah grant that." In any case, in Spanish it's always followed by subjunctive, and here are two songs to help work with that.

The first is with present, Ojalá que llueva café, by Juan Luis Guerra. It's one of those songs that can lead you in a hundred different directions. It's a bit controversial from what I understand, and is a perspective on the life of the poor in the Dominican Republic.

I found some interesting blogging on the song. For example, read what José has to say about the song and its meaning. Then, use this cool site by Ms. Nelson to work with the song, complete with lyrics linked to pictures to aid in comprehension.
I just found out that the song was re-recorded by Café Tacvba, with some killer fiddling:


The other song unfortunately does not have much in the way of resources but is the best I've heard to work with Ojalá + past subjunctive or just past subjunctive by itself (Si volvieras a mí by Josh Groban is beautiful to me but not so appealing to most of my high-schoolers). It's Ojalá pudiera borrarte by Maná. The video used to be on YouTube but was removed, and now is only available in cheesy photo collages, especially since I can't get imeem to search anything at the moment.

Ojalá que you enjoy them.

AP sythesis essay sources: Los indocumentados y el sistema de salud

When you're testing someone to place them in a certain level at a language school, you're supposed to push them until their language breaks down, and the best way to do that is to stop asking "is your mom tall" and start asking "what do you think about interracial marriage?" The assumption is that when people express their opinions, they get emotionally involved and think less about their language, and they get into vocabulary they're not used to using. So why don't we do that with our students?

After a relatively calm first couple of units, my third unit in AP Spanish is a short one on health. I decided to move away from the "use reflexive verbs to describe how you take care of yourself" and make my students think about the issues related to undocumented workers and the U.S. healthcare system and healthcare reform.

First hurdle: my students did not know what the health department was. They thought I was talking about the health inspector.

After we got that cleared up, our "story" was about a lawyer in Lexington (KY) who last year sued the health department for treating illegal immigrants, saying that their services should be reserved for taxpayers. A judge threw the case out for the garbage it was, but it's a good point to get my students thinking--what's the difference between an illegal immigrant and a citizen? Paying taxes? Do most of the people who use the health department make enough money to pay federal income tax? Do illegal immigrants pay sales tax when they go to the store? Do they pay property tax, whether themselves or through their landlords? What type of healthcare does the health department provide? How much money does this preventative and contraceptive care save our healthcare system every year? Is there ever a reason to deny a child a vaccine that's available, ever?

Then our oral presentation and synthesis essay were drawn from these two print and audio sources I found on the internet. You can't buy this stuff in a textbook. Your textbook was out of date when it went to press.

Here are the print sources:
'Dolor de cabeza' la reforma de salud

¿Dónde quedan los inmigrantes en la discusion de la reforma de salud?

And this is a very good downloadable audio source, quite clear and muy parecido al audio in the AP exam.
Denuncias contra indocumentados
The audio is part of a longer radio program, but the relevant parts for this essay are from 11:16-12:56 and 20:02-23:22.

Remember, we're preparing them for more than the AP.

An AP oral presentation, with past tense: "Consecuencias"

Today my AP students will do what they do every Wednesday--give a 2-minute oral presentation based on a print source and an audio source, involving some type of synthesis and persuasion.

Our current unit (in my own curriculum) is called "Un Pasado que Me Construyó" and is intended to practice and develop command of the past tenses and discuss how our pasts affect who we are today. Today's topic is "Consecuencias," in other words, how our actions can have consequences.

Our print source is from theonlinemom.com and is about texting while driving. Our audio (video) source is a YouTube clip about alcoholism in Mexico, particularly in D.F.

It took me maybe 15 minutes to find these, and they're a lot more interesting than what's in Triángulo (which we are using as a supplement), IMO.

I love crossover songs

I love crossover songs. That's what I call those songs that have so much good material in them that they're great from Spanish 1 to AP. Fanny Lu's new hit Tú No Eres Para Mí is one of those. It's especially good for uses and conjugations of ser. There's the title, which is of course a Spanish 1 level comment, all the way to fuera in unreal if clauses. As usual her video is too skanky for my class, but enjoy the songs. A girl making fun of a guy's cheesy pick-up lines? Super fun and lots of good grammar points. Enjoy.

Developing world citizens

With all the amazing things popping up on the internet, there's no excuse not to help our students become educated world citizens by keeping them pondering important events in the Spanish-speaking world. E.g. last year's rescue of Betancourt and the other hostages was a monumental shift in the situation between FARC and Uribe and dominated an entire project in my Spanish 3 class.

So, today of course we have emerging details on the first coup in Latin America in 16 years. Such a difficult event to evaluate. Which is more important, Zelaya's democratically-elected standing, or his dismal track record/popularity with the people?

Here's a fabulous tool to keep up with what's happening, including real-time info from people on the streets of Tegucigalpa. Tweet the twub #honduras, and if you don't know what that means, just follow this link and welcome to the madness of twubs. Happy exploring!

Honduras twub: http://twubs.com/honduras

Two months later, back to the blogosphere (with a companion)

Wow, what a hiatus! I definitely didn't intend to be absent that long. But I have a good reason. Two weeks before the end of school--what timing, Zoe!

The last month of my pregnancy it was crazy hard just to get up and go to school in the morning--and I was in assignment overdrive, trying to get all my students' necessary work assigned and done early, just in case. And the just in case came in handy. The day after I gave most of my final exams, Friday May 9, I had a migraine so bad my midwife told me to come in for evaluation re: preecclampsia. Behold, 5 cm dilated and didn't even know I was in labor. They didn't let me leave. Slept there that night and had Zoe at 12:35 the next day. She's muy preciosa! But that left me with a newborn to care for, all those assignments to grade, and a substitute to supply with ideas & plans. Ugh. I don't remember working so hard since the week my master's thesis was due

But, now it's officially summer and la pequeñita and I are hanging out at home trying to snatch sleep whenever we can. The one parent/one language thing we're doing is both easier and harder than I thought it would be (how on earth do you say burp cloth? and what about when daddy doesn't understand anything?)--maybe I'll blog more about that later.

In any case, I'm back.

I intend to use the blog this summer kind of selfishly, to help myself keep track of what I'm working on for next year. Since it is summer I don't anticipate a lot of need for the blog or much traffic but hey, it'll be there for the next go round.

First tasks on the list:
1 begin reading & charting vocabulary & writing quizzes for Ciudad de las bestias por Isabel Allende for AP next year, and
2 investigate how the AP test has changed and how my 2-year-old syllabus needs to change, since I can't leave the baby to go to an AP workshop this summer. Any ideas/tips on how the AP is different or what the best new tools are--please offer them!