Minute by Minute Spanish – Page 2

Spanish Rejoinders Réplicas Musical Video with Compelling Comprehensible Input (CI) and Posters

June 25, 2018 By Personal thoughts and beliefs of E.B.Shrager - do not represent those of any past or current employer.

Add this Rejoinder Video to your lessons that teach them in context and you will be impressed with your students’ usage.

Spanish Rejoinders are taught in context with different stories, readings, videos, and routines.

Spanish Rejoinder Posters around the room are helpful, but listening to rejoinders in a catchy and compelling video seems to accelerate output. It’s not that students will watch the video once and learn 70 of them. Rather, as they are used in context, with the added layer of this video, students tend to have musical lyrics flow out of their mouths with spot-on pronunciation mimicking the native singer.

It also provides a visual for those who need images to retain, and words, for those who need to see the spelling.

I am teaching a new prep this year – Honors part two and look forward to using this as a review. This video frequently sparks interest in students as they gravitate to those that have yet to be taught explicitly. It rouses curiosity and frequently students become enamored with a few phrases even before they are official taught/targeted. Teach your rejoinders in context and add this to the posters around your room.

Here is a two minute video of my experience and the resultant rejoinder video we created to help raise money for three Venezuelan families.

Spanish Rejoinders Replicas Musical Video from ellen shrager on Vimeo.;

Purchase Here

Thanks for Visiting For the Minute by Minute Spanish!

The Best Way to Group Students to Ensure a Wonderful Community – Use CI and TCI for this weekly task in many languages.

March 31, 2018 By Personal thoughts and beliefs of E.B.Shrager - do not represent those of any past or current employer.

I am passionate about students not being allowed to choose their partners! They have seat partners for quick activities and weekly partners for longer activities.

I believe you are abdicating your responsibility as a caring adult in charge when you let them choose their own partners.

I directly explain to them the first week using a child’s book how important it is to learn to work with everyone: we need everyone and his or her unique strengths. I tell a story from my first year teaching about a boy who stopped coming to school because he was so lonely and how when he returned he actually saved a girl’s life. I also use the book “Taky the Penguin.” All of this is outlined in my book, Teacher Dialogues. The relevant excerpt from my book is included with the musical video, Partner of the Week.

Every Monday we do random partners using cards for groups of 2, 3, and 4. Before we take the cards, we sing the ¿Quién Será? and the students watch the video and imitate it. They line up and keep the cards close to their chest until we count down and they look for their partner. It is also available in French, Italian, English, German and Mandarin. They stay on task and in the target language and hand me the cards and start the activity as the instructions are on the board for it. I make a slide show for each class with a slide for each activity and a transition slide in between activities. I use a remote presentation device or mouse so I can stand anywhere in the room while I teach.

_13 Quién Será Pls no posting (1) – trimmed from ellen shrager on Vimeo.

MBMF_13 Camarade Pls no posting – trimmed from ellen shrager on Vimeo.

MBMSpanish_13. Random from ellen shrager on Vimeo.

MBMI_13 Random from ellen shrager on Vimeo.

MBMM_13 Random Pls no posting – trimmed from ellen shrager on Vimeo.

Since I started doing this twenty years ago, I consistently am told by substitutes and administrators observing me that I have the nicest classes and everyone gets along. I hear about the drama of who can’t work with whom in other classes but it doesn’t apply to our class, unless there is a court order or something of that magnitude. I have people tell me how lucky I am, but the reality is that I create an all-accepting environment. I was just out for a few weeks because of tonsil surgery, and the sub keeps telling me how every year that she has been in the building my classes present the least problems.

Start your year with this high expectation that everyone graciously works with everyone and one day in the spring you will look around your class and realize they have learned a valuable life skill of getting along.

Add this video to the mix and students will almost love Mondays. The video had the layout for labels to print the grouping cards, the video, and the book excerpt.

All net proceeds from the sales of these videos go to support three Venezuelan Families who make these videos for us.

You can help some starving Venezuelans — All net proceeds go to help three Venezuelan Families to survive their economic crises.

More info here for Spanish.

More info here for French.

More info here for German.

More info here for Italian.

More info here for English.

More info here for Mandarin.

#1 Reason Why Smart Parents Do Not Text Their Children at School

March 29, 2018 By Personal thoughts and beliefs of E.B.Shrager - do not represent those of any past or current employer.

Smart parents show restraint. — Misguided parents will be unhappy with the unintended consequences of their fears dictating constant communication with their children.

At a recent national conference, teachers shared their stories with me about a shift in the past two years: parents feel entitled to exchanging texts with their children all day while they are in school.

Previously parents would text info for after-school logistics that would be read at the end of the school day.

Now they micro-manage their children’s experiences – preventing their children from connecting with other adults in the school community. The African proverb about needing a village to raise a well-adjusted child has been replaced with isolation and the sole lifeline to mom and dad. This creates anxiety for the students and satisfies some need of the parents.

But the good feeling that parents experience by satisfying that need is fleeting because their child doesn’t learn to self-soothe, doesn’t learn to trust and work with other caring adults, and doesn’t learn to independently negotiate sticky situations. Some parents are smug that their children can live in their house for as long as they want. They are the lucky ones, because what these misguided parents don’t see coming on their horizon is that when their child becomes sexual, their sexual partner will replace the parents. Their child’s sexual partner will be the one who is called for every decision and the partner is not going to share with the parents. Their child is used to one lifeline, and it can’t continue to be the parents because of sexuality. These parents will be appalled at how their child is attracted to someone who isolates him or her from others. They will struggle to see that it is a natural consequence for their actions. These parents can’t believe that they were so close to this child and now they only see the child on certain holidays on certain years. One such pair of parents were horrified when the new spouse explained the Christmas visitation schedule: one year with her parents, one year with his parents and the third year just the couple and no parents.

The rise in parents unable to leave their children alone for seven and a half hours a day while they are in school coincides with another shift that recent research attributes to social media and cell phone usage: a rise in student anxiety. Many schools now have ‘quiet rooms’ for anxious students. While in the past teachers sought out anxious parents to help soothe the transition for them and their students and eliminate the anxiety, not all parents think the anxiety they have and the consequences it has on their children is a bad thing. Some parents judge the quality of their parenting by their level of anxiety. When one parent was asked if she felt better about her child going to a new school after a tour of the new building, the mother replied, “Oh, no, you have to understand, I have been the most anxious parent since kindergarten and nothing will change that!” She was proud of her anxiety as if that would win her “The Best Parent Ever “award.

Good parenting is more of a marathon than a sprint. If your goal is to raise wonderful, independent adults, help yourself and your children by not texting them all day while they are in school. Let them develop other adult resources to help them navigate through their day. Start in middle school/junior high and show restraint. Help them to negotiate social situations in advance with “what if” scenarios. Strategize with them how to approach teachers about makeups and missing grades. Equip them and then let them try it and wait until the school day is over to get your report. If they are upset and have to get through a couple of hours of being upset, it doesn’t make you a bad parent – it makes you a good parent who is developing some age-appropriate inner strength.

It just might help you to stay in better contact with them when they are adults by choosing partners who share and not isolate.

If your child takes Spanish, consider donating these videos to their Spanish teacher to play at the beginning and end of class. All net proceeds go to three desperate Venezuelan families who create them.

Stay on task and in the target language by having students put away their phones.

Purchase here to help support some desperate Venezuelans.

Unintentional Consequences of Social Media Clash with Appropriate Classroom Behavior

March 21, 2018 By Personal thoughts and beliefs of E.B.Shrager - do not represent those of any past or current employer.

Don’t blame the parents or the students! Blame social media surrounding our middle school students with the belief that every opinion is important and demanding of immediate attention. The village needs to directly teach children and their parents to stop this or else the students will not deserve an excellent Teacher Evaluation when applying to colleges.

In case the parents don’t know, over 700 universities accept the Common Application. Its Teacher Evaluation will be important and students really don’t know who in their senior year they will be asking to complete it. Acting like jerks in ninth grade study hall may prevent students from getting the kind of recommendation they need. I described this in detail in books for parents and a book for teachers. If you want the whole explanation and create a paradigm shift with your community, consider using these books: Seventh Grade Guide Sixth Grade Guide Teacher Dialogues

But if you just want the 10 minute explanation it goes like this. Pick a time to have a heart-to-heart talk with your class. Explain that their speaking out, whining, and interrupting, is becoming a habit that must now be broken in middle school because their high school teachers will be judging them and evaluating them. Even if they think they will grow up when they are juniors – their senior teachers may have had them in a study hall or lunch room duty when they were freshmen. Even if they are marked as being good – they are in column 5 of 7 – and not the best candidates. The margin is very slender. Show them the four areas indicated with the arrows that concern you. Tell them that they have a great future, but not if they don’t have the social skills desired by adults writing and reading the college applications.

This usually stops students and parents. I tell them that I will do my job by reminding them with the words, “social skills alert” meaning their lack of appropriate social skills is a problem. I call their parents and tell them that I am doing this to help them and ask for their help. I assure the students and their parents that this is so important that I am willing to assign detentions and work with their parents to get them back on track.

As for Spanish class, I have created three musical videos to demonstrate these skills. The first is how to treat a new student in class. The second is how to write an email to a teacher, and the third is the most important, asking if now is a good time before just talking at the teacher with different requests.

As I write these words in March, I see many teachers writing about classroom management beginning to unravel. Point systems are all about external validation that quickly loses its attraction and the external rewards need to be upped as time goes on. There is no magic bullet that will last the year. External rewards only last so long.

But internal validation is something else. It’s about catching their vision of who they want to be and showing how developing self-discipline will get them there. Connect with your students by sharing this information with them and their parents and relating their behavior choices to their future ability to have the things they want and the lifestyle they deserve.