Enjoying the Little Things: New White Board Erasers

School starts on Wednesday, and we have teacher days Monday and Tuesday.  Just a quick post today with a little thing that makes me smile - new erasers for my white boards!

I was inspired to make these out of leftover flannel fabric after I finished making some flannel baby burp cloths for friends who just had a baby.  They're super simple - just two rectangles of flannel sewn together.  Hopefully they'll hold up well and I can start throwing out the old eraser socks I've had since I inherited them from a former colleague four years ago!

Teacher Life in Detail

Welcome to a (fairly typical) Day in my Teaching Life!

My teacher blogger friend, Sarah of Math = Love and NPR fame, blogged this week about a day in her life.  I love reading Day in the Life posts, so I thought I'd give it a try.  There's a lot of detail here, so I don't blame you if you quit before the end!

5:00 Wake up, shower, get dressed.  It's Friday, so I wear my Bloomington North sweatshirt. Yay for comfy teaching clothes!  (Side note: My 12 year old son, Andrew, wanted to be in the picture.  We live in Bloomington South district, so I told him after I took the picture that I could blackmail him with that picture when he is in high school at South.  Second side note: picture taken at 6:29.  Andrew is neither awake nor smiling at 5:00.)

5:20 Empty dishwasher, make breakfast

5:40 Eat breakfast (cherry almond steel cut oatmeal - so yummy! and tea) while checking school email

5:50 Complete Spanish lesson on Duolingo, keeping my 14 day streak going

5:54 Work on enrichment activity for German 3/4 while finishing my tea

6:30 Kids leave for the bus stop, and I drive to school while listening to Planet Money podcast about the lottery - it has me laughing all the way!

6:45 Arrive at school, check mailbox (empty, which is always good), and head to my room

6:50 Unlock room, turn on computer, and take lunch to the prep room fridge.  Fill up water bottle.

6:55 Update the Macht jetzt (do now) for today and make sure everything is ready for German 1 block 1.  Work on German 3/4 enrichment activity some more and chat with early-arriving students.  

7:20 My student teacher, Matthew Hurley, arrives.

7:25 Bathroom stop and hall duty

7:40 Block 1, German 1: We start with a quick game of Ich habe, wer hat (I have, who has) to review before the vocabulary quiz.  This class beats the previous class's time by 2 seconds and is very pleased.  Students take their vocabulary quiz and then have time to work on their meine Familie presentations.  Manage to keep most students on-track and not playing video games on their computers.

8:30 Finish presentation work time and watch a short video about Angela Merkel.  Then, we read a paragraph (all in German - pretty good for German 1!) about her family.

9:05 Block 1 ends, hall duty, assist teacher next door who had a student pass out at the end of class

9:10 Block 2, prep: I make a cup of tea and eat some yogurt during announcements.  Work with Matthew to edit guided notes and practice activities on the past tense for German 3/4 that he made.  Finish the enrichment activity.  We still have some prep time, so we look at plans for German 3/4 for next week and I get some computer triage on my school laptop from our wonderful tech team.

10:40 Tutorial: I have about 10 students signed up.  Several are here to make up the course pretest which was given on a day they were absent.  I get them started on the pretest.  The other students are here to practice vocabulary for the quiz this afternoon.  They don't need any help, so Matthew grades German 1 quizzes, and I work on speaking cards for the current units.  I also eat most of my lunch!

11:25 Block 3, German 3:  We begin with the vocabulary quiz and a lot of complaining about how difficult the words are.  

12:00 Differentiation: last class students took a "pre-quiz" on the review topic of past tense forms.  Those who scored 90% or better do an enrichment activity about Sternsinger (star singers - children in Germany who go door to door on Epiphany, singing and collecting donations for children's charities), while the rest of the class reviews and practices verb tenses.  

12:30 Not much class time left after that, but get the whole class back together for reading passage about an 18 year old German boy's university and career plans.  Energy is low but we get through it.

12:50  Lunch: Finish my lunch with a few world language colleagues in the prep room.  Quick bathroom stop, check my cell phone and home email, and get my stuff out of the way so Matthew can teach Block 4.

1:30 Block 4, German 3/4: Same plan as Block 3, except Matthew is teaching and having his first (informal) observation.  He does just fine!  

I try to stay out of the way and grade quizzes in the back of the room.  Students did better than I expected, given all the complaining.  The English-German and German-English vocabulary is actually very good, but the irregular verb forms are a mess.  Must think of some way to get the students practicing this more effectively.  

2:15 I take the German 4 students to the language lab to watch a short film while German 3 does the reading with Matthew. 

2:55 School ends: Meet with Matthew and his student teaching adviser to discuss his observation.  He's doing great - just needs the confidence that comes with more experience!  Side note: His observer happens to be the husband of my older son's kindergarten teacher, and his daughter babysat for my kids.  This is typical for Bloomington, where everyone knows everyone somehow.

3:30 Leave school and drive home

3:45 Arrive at home.  Have a snack and watch Elementary with my kids.

4:45 Debate whether or not to go to exercise class.  It's a rainy, dreary Friday afternoon and I'm tired from the week.  It's tempting to curl up under a quilt and relax, but I really should go.  It probably helps that I'm blogging my day, and I don't want to appear too lazy to readers.

5:00 Debate which class to go to and decide to try a barre class at 5:30.  I love to run outdoors, but when the weather is bad and for cross training I go to the IU Student Recreational Sports Center, which is closer to my house than the Y.  Non-students can join for a fee, and they have a huge variety of drop-in group exercise classes, as well as an indoor track and tons of cardio machines.  You have to get used to the idea of working out with people half your age, but a lot of IU faculty and staff use it too, so I'm usually not the only non-student in the class.

6:15 Finish barre class and and SO glad I went.  Though I think I was the only person over 30 in that class, it was a lot of fun and I feel more relaxed and energized.  Not sure my legs and I will be on speaking terms tomorrow, but it was good for me.  I actually exercised 4 out of 5 days this week - proud of myself!  (And I am a more pleasant person to live with!)

6:30 Get home, eat dinner - leftover night at our house.  I have spinach stuffed shells and salad.  

7:30 My husband and kids leave for Friday night indoor soccer league.  I skip it this week and settle in to watch TV and grade quizzes.

8:00 I'm hungry, so I try a new recipe for 5 Minute Chocolate Mug Cake, and it is delicious!  I highly recommend it, and it really does take only 5 minutes.  It's very chocolaty, so I recommend paring it with a big glass of milk and possibly sharing it with a friend.   

9:30 Bed Time.  The soccer players arrive home shortly thereafter and report that both boys' teams won easily.  Next week is the tournament, in which they may play against each other, as they have already once this season.  Swank vs. Swank, the rematch.

That's my day!  Hope it wasn't too long or excruciatingly detailed.  I tried to take pictures during the day for the post, but I noticed that as the day went along, I got absorbed in what I was doing and forgot.  That probably explains why I only manage to post a #teach180 picture abut half of the time! 

Telling Time

This week students learned how to tell time in German 1.  Here's a look at the guided notes we used:

I've emphasized writing out and spelling numbers correctly more this year than in the past, and I think it helped students when we got to this topic.  For homework, students practiced writing out the time in German on a straightforward worksheet.  

I've noticed this year that my German 3 students are struggling with listening to people other than me speaking German.  If there's a word or two they don't understand, they tend to panic and give up trying to figure out what they can understand.  I've been trying to give them more practice and help with this, but I also want to get students used to hearing native German speakers before German 3.

So, a few days after we started working with telling time, I gave students a listening practice assignment using audio from our textbook.  The speaker describes 8 different activities she does at different times.  Students had to listen for the time at which she does each activity.  I put the assignment into Canvas, our district learning management system, so that students could enter their answers and Canvas would check their work.  They were allowed to try as many times as they needed and received a participation score for the number of correct answers they ended up with.  

This was TOUGH!  I spent a lot of time that day saying, "Yes, it is hard, but you can do it.  Listen again."  But, most of my students persevered, and I was really proud of them for this.  Two of my students decided it was more fun to listen together:

I noticed that students who weren't solid on numbers and the vocabulary for telling time had the most difficulty, but it was challenging for everyone.  And I think it was a good thing for helping them develop their German listening skills.  I don't think I can do it too frequently, or I'll have a full-scale rebellion on my hands, but it is something we'll do more often.

Verb Kickers

I've noticed that a lot of my recent posts have been about things I've done with my German 1 classes.  Here's a look at what we did yesterday in German 3/4:

Our primary grammar topic this unit is subordinating conjunctions and dependent clauses.  It can be tough because the word order changes in the clause when you use a subordinating conjunction.  The verb gets "kicked" to the end of the clause, so subordinating conjunctions are sometimes called verb kickers.

In the previous class, students reviewed coordinating conjunctions (und, oder, aber, denn, and sondern) and also recorded the meaning of some of the most common subordinating conjunctions (there are lots!).  

So now students were ready to take a look at some sample sentences and to color-code the different parts of the sentence.  Here's how it looked:

After we labeled the parts of the sentence, we summarized the word order for sentences that start with the independent clause and for sentences that start with the dependent clause.   The assignment was some straightforward practice with these two types of sentences, and then we'll continue with more practice next class.

Back from Fall Break

We're back from a week of fall break.  It was great to have such a long break, but after a whole week off, I can definitely tell that my students' German skills have gotten rusty.  Maybe a four day weekend would give everyone a break without quite so much learning loss.  The calendar for the next three years is being discussed right now in my district, so we'll find out soon if that's what the district decides to go to.

But I digress...

Really the only way to start back on a Monday after a long break is with a foldable.  Two foldables would be even better, right?

So, here are two foldables for Interrogatives (Question Words) in German 1.  The first one is a 6 petal foldable for our first 6 question words:

We wrote the English meaning of the question words on the undersides of the petals and the word order for questions in the center.

We put the German question words on the other sides of the petals:

That was probably enough for one day, and in retrospect, I think I would split this topic into two days.  But we forged bravely ahead with a three petal round foldable for the three different words for "where":

Finally, we talked about the word for "which," which changes depending on the gender of the noun after it.  By this time, students' eyes were definitely starting to glaze over, so I will definitely save that for a separate lesson next year.

Overall, though, my students did a great job with Interrogatives on the first day after break.

DIY Document Camera

I tweeted a picture about my DIY Document Camera this week for #teach180.  Here's a little more about it:

I use guided notes frequently with my students.  Prior to this year, our district's textbook was written all in German (even for first year) and even then offered very little in terms explanations of concepts.  It was basically like teaching without a textbook, so my students needed a lot of additional teacher-created material in order to have an opportunity for success.  It was a lot of work!

This year, we have a new MUCH better textbook.  (Thank you, thank you, thank you to everyone who helped in the textbook adoption process!)  Our new textbook, Mosaik, is designed so that it can be used at either the high school or college level.  It is very well written and I like it a lot, but some of my students still need some support to go along with the book.  So, we do foldables and guided notes.

It works best for me to fill out the notes with the students as we talk about new topics so that they can see what they need to write down.  Which means I need students to be able to see what I'm writing.  

Back when I first taught math and physics from 1999-2001, I used an overhead projector for this.  When I returned to work in 2011, I started as a half-time English as a New Language aide in my children's elementary school.  (Which was a fantastic way for me to go back to work after being home full time for 10 years.  I learned SO much from those fantastic elementary teachers!)  The teachers there all had document cameras, and I immediately fell in love with them.  It was like an overhead projector but so much better.

When I started teaching high school German in 2013, I was dismayed to find that the high school teachers didn't have them.  I asked and asked for one, but apparently it was viewed as an elementary tool.  So, about mid-way through the year, I came up with a way to make my own.  At that time teachers had iPads, and we have AirServer in the buidling, which allows me to project whatever is on my iPad to my computer screen and thus onto the projector for students to see.  All I needed was some sort of stand to hold the iPad at the right height so that I could write.  After some trial and error, I found that two cabinet shelf thingies from Goodwill would do the trick nicely.  

I put this on an old wheeled overhead cart, and because it's cordless, I can move anywhere in the room.  There's normally no delay between when I write on my notes and when the students see it on the screen.  Once in a while AirServer gets cranky, and it freezes for a few seconds, but then it catches up.  Occasionally AirServer won't work at all and we have to go old school and use the chalkboard, but that's only about once or twice a month.  I can definitely live with that!

And, just recently, I've tried using my iPad in this way to record a video of our notes for students who are absent or need a review.  More on that in another post!

Week 3 in Review

I started participating in #teach180 on Monday, and it's been a lot of fun so far.  (Though I do have to admit I'm a little nervous about forgetting to take a picture one of these days.  It's possible that I am a little bit of a perfectionist.)  One of the benefits of taking a picture of my school life and tweeting it every day is that I have a record of some of the highlights of my school week.  

So here's a review of my third week of the school year:

Monday was Tough Love Day, which I've already blogged about.  

Tuesday was Gold Star Day: Although a lot of my students struggled on their first quiz, I did have quite a few students who scored 90% of better.  Those students got a gold star with their name and class period on it which I put up on my back chalkboard.  The title "Wir können" means We can, and then I have the topic of the quiz posted (German 1 Greetings and Alphabet on the left, German 3/4 Conversational Past, Narrative Past, and Past Perfect on the right).  The stars have magnets on the back so I can move and change them as we go on to new topics.

On Wednesday my German 1 students made their first foldable when I taught them the subject pronouns.  We used a Shutterflap 6, which is perfect for a lot of grammar topics because it has a spot for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd person in singular and plural.  

These are the student supply boxes which I have at every table.  The cards on the left are conversation practice cards - one set for 1st year and one set for 3/4.  They are available to students whenever they finish early and need something to do.  I though I had blogged about these already, but I guess not.  A topic for another post...

We also played Ich habe, wer hat? for the first time Wednesday in German 1.  Some of the students had played I have, who has? in elementary school, but it still took the classes some time to get the hang of it.  So, times were slow, but everyone had fun.  (For the record per. 4 had the fastest time, but they messed up and had to do a re-start to get that time, and per. 5 had the fastest time on a first try.)

Here's a look at my new alphabet in my new room for this year.  The colorful letters are Alphabet Circle Stamp Clip Art from Mr. Math Coach's Teachers Pay Teachers store and cost only $1 - a great deal!

On Friday, German 1 students took their first vocabulary quiz of the year.  Scores were MUCH better than on the first quiz: in one of my sections, the average on the first quiz was 64%, while on this one it went up to 87%.  I think Tough Love Monday may have had the desired effect... I hope!

Tough Love Monday

I did my first #teach180 tweet today.  I won't always be able to blog about my picture, but today I do have time to write about Tough Love Monday:

I gave my first quizzes of the year in both German 1 and German 3/4 on Thursday and Friday.  The results were mixed, which is kind of what I expected.  Some of my students have a solid understanding of what we've done so far in class and know how to prepare for an assessment.  Other students aren't always focused in class, haven't completed assignments on time, and aren't sure how they need to study for a quiz or test in German. These students did not do well.  

Before I returned quizzes today, I told students about how their quiz score gives them some important information: if they scored well, they are on the right track and should keep doing what they are doing.  If not, they need to make some changes: either in their participation in class or in how much or how they are studying.  

Then, I showed them how to fill out a retake form, using my sample quiz (Schülerin Swank = Student Swank) as an example.  This year I am requiring students to correct their first quiz or test before signing up to retake.  I hope this will push students to work harder at figuring out what they didn't understand before retaking, rather than just trying again without any serious practice and hoping they will magically score better.  We'll see how it goes...

#teach180 - I'm in!

My blogging inspiration (and friend who I have yet to meet) Sarah Hagan at Math = Love is going to do 180 tweeting this school year, and has invited members of the #MTBoS to join her.  Even though I'm not currently teaching math, I get a lot of inspiration from the #MTBoS, and I'll be joining in.

First tweet should be tomorrow...