Heidi

April/May Entry
Spanish 1 students played Pictionary with the verb vocabulary list to help reinforce vocabulary acquisition. media type="custom" key="16176728"

March Entry
These are 2-column note-taking sheets that I use in Spanish 1 at the start of each chapter. This is how the cultural information for each chapter is introduced. Normally, students skip over the information presented at the beginning of the chapter, the 2-column note-taking helps them focus on this information.

February Entry
These are templates and scoring criteria for the reading logs I use with my English students at Dirigo. I needed something to keep students accountable for their homework reading assignments, and these, even though they are simple, do the trick. Sometimes you just have to K.I.S.S.!

January Entry
Students received a new vocabulary list and in order to help them learn the words and definitions, we played Around The World with the word list.

December Entry
This is a multi-day lesson from my English 12 class at Dirigo. The students were preparing to read the book Siddhartha by Herman Hesse. For introductory/background information, we read the Dhammapada, which is a Buddhist doctrine, and also an informational packet on The Introduction to Buddhism. (See links below.) In order to help students with comprehension, I created several graphic organizers. We split up the work so that some students did certain parts of the reading and then we "jig-sawed" to share the information. I believe this made the reading more manageable and less intimidating for some students. After reading Siddhartha, students had to write an essay demonstrating how the characters from Siddhartha followed of the organizers. (It's complicated, I know... but it worked.)



Click here to go to online copies of [|The Dhammapada] and [|The Introduction to Buddhism]readings that were used for this lesson.

November Entry
Success

Spanish students were separated into groups of 3 or 4 and then assigned a color. Students then collected several phrases in their color which collectively create an introductory conversation between a boy and a girl in Spanish. Students had to organize the phrases in a logical order. More than one right way of organizing the conversation existed.

Success
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Spanish I classes played memory in groups in order to reinforce the definitions of the Spanish subject pronouns. Each member of the team flipped cards until they had a teacher approved match and then the next person from the group came to the pile to find a match. Teammates were allowed to use notes or textbooks to help, but no notes were allowed at the pile. The first team to correctly make all matches won cheesy prizes from the cheesy prize basket. :o)