We presented a webinar, "Tools for Teaching World Languages at a Distance," via Boom Learning on effective resources for teaching world languages via distance learning. You can watch the webinar HERE. We presented the following tools:
Reading and Writing instruction with Boom Cards and Kami Listening and Speaking practice with Boom Cards and Flipgrid
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Here are some other helpful resources for distance learning: Quizlet
La Musique Always a fun way to incorporate listening into French! Don't forget les comptines...even with the older students. There are so many ways you could incorporate sound into your digital task cards at Boom Learning. In order to use the sound feature, you will need an Ultimate Membership. Boom is offering that free for through June 2020. We have come up with the following ideas to get students listening to French. We have explained how to create each of the 10 audio Boom cards below in our webinar titled, "Tools for Teaching World Languages at a Distance." You can watch the complete webinar HERE. There are so many other ways besides what is on this list, but this can get you started. We are always cognizant of lower order and higher order thinking. Lower and higher order thinking doesn’t just pertain to age and grade level. Lower elementary students are capable of doing higher order thinking and it is good for their brains! Vice versa for older students. Therefore, our ideas below incorporate lower to higher order thinking (identifying to evaluating). There is also an option to watch a video clip in Boom cards. That could be another idea.
*If you need directions on how to create any of these cards with sound, please email us at [email protected] and we will be glad to teach you! Below you will find a few other examples of audio cards in our current decks. Object Pronouns: me te nous vous Compare adjectives using farm vocabulary Colors We already have a blog on Boom Learning and their amazing digital task cards. Now, we’re going to go a little deeper into how writing and listening play into language learning. Or, you can tune in to our webinar, Tools for Teaching World Languages at a Distance and watch us explain the process. First up: Writing. Language learning = accents, right? How do students type in accents in their answers?
Here, you will decide color, font, and size of the writing. Click ok. The answer is ready but the accents are not. Let’s look at how to get the accents. You will want to go to Details at the top. Click on that. Click Subject. Find Online Keyboard in the middle of the menu. Drop down to French (or German or Spanish). Now go back to your cards and let’s preview what it looks like. This works the same for complete sentences, too.
Now, your cards are ready to go! Kami is your digital pen and paper! This classroom app helps students engage and interact with their reading and writing material. Plus, it’s free. There’s an upgrade option for a cost, but the free option has enough great features. First, you create an account. You decide the format of your account: I originally chose “Open from computer” and uploaded a PDF from my computer as a trial. But then I found opening from Google Drive was easier to organize and use/share documents with students. However, whether you use the Google option or not, both set-ups are easy to navigate and use with students. For students, they need to go to www.kamiapp.com and click “Sign In.” They will be given a choice like the blue boxes above. They can type in their email address. Then, they go back to Google Drive and find the document that needs to be opened. Click on the assigned document. Click on the three dots in upper right hand corner and click “open in new window.” A new screen will pop up. Now, choose to “Open with” and from drop down box, choose “Annotate with Kami.” NOTE: If students don't have Google accounts, they still open an account with their school email. In whatever fashion they receive the documents from you, they would just open the document from their computer via Kami. A new window with Kami’s tools will appear. It will look like this: You can see all the tools available on the left side. The images with a yellow lock are not available with free option. However, you can see plenty of tools available with the free account. Students will be able to highlight, comment, write, and draw on this reading assignment. Super! For this reading assignment, we might ask students to yellow highlight three drink vocabulary words, green highlight three dessert vocabulary words, etc. Next, we might ask students to write their opinions about three of the meals. Perhaps we will ask them to comment on a food item that looks appealing or new to them. Important! Make sure the document is saved during and after the assignment is completed. Now, it is loaded to the Google Drive. For students, they will need to return to Google Drive. There is a box that says “Turn In,” so upload the assignment there. In the drive, they should see this reading assignment as a recent document.
We gave this example with a reading strategy, but this could work with a worksheet that simply asks students to write and/or draw answers. Also, if you have a document you will be teaching from, students can open it and take notes on it as you teach. In review, why would you want to use Kami?
NOTE: We mentioned Kami in our webinar, "Tools for Teaching World Languages at Distance." NOTE: We shared FlipGrid during our webinar, "Tools for Teaching World Languages at a Distance." FlipGrid is an excellent way for students to speak and listen to each other. Whereas Zoom or Google Hangouts is where students all speak to each other at the same time, FlipGrid allows students to create short, timed videos for each other at anytime. It works like this: Teacher creates a “grid” for a class. For example, we created this grid below as an example. The “grid” is the home base for each class. Your grid is specific to where you and a class of students post their videos and discussion prompts. You will need to choose how students access your Grid Community. Students can access via Microsoft or Gmail email addresses. Another option would be to create a class list with their student ID number (this can be their real school ID or a simple one you assign). Lastly, you can create Grids for the world, meaning anyone with your Flip Code can access your Grid. This option works well across school corporations or with personal friends and family. Even for this option, however, users will need to log in with a Microsoft or Google email in order to respond to videos. Once your Grid is created, the next step is to create your first discussion post topic. Our first discussion thread was titled, “Qui sui-je?” for students to simply introduce themselves. When we taught a unit on “la nature,” we created “une chasse de trésors: Qu’est-ce que vous avez découvert ? » We asked students to record themselves finding some of the vocabulary words outside in nature. We have seen elementary teachers ask their students to show a favorite book and tell a little about it. The possibilities of topics are endless. You get to decide how long the videos will be: 30 seconds to 5 minutes. We like to post the first video for each FlipGrid we assign so that students can see an example of what we are expecting. So, for “une chasse de trésors dans la nature,” we took a tour around our backyard, pointing out different items of vocabulary words we saw (un gland, une fleur, etc.). Once our video was done, we uploaded it into our discussion thread, added our picture to it, and voilà! It is ready to go! You will see the Share button with a rocket on it. Click on that. You will be directed to your Grid’s flip code. That is the link you share with students (or parents with younger children). Once students have the link, they enter their school email address. They are taken to the page where they will see the discussion topic, the intro video, and a big green circle. By clicking on the green circle, they will now be able to record themselves answering the discussion question in the allotted amount of time. They can also watch anyone else’s posted video and respond with another video or emoji. This can get fun as students “interact” with each other, speaking and listening to all the prompts. There are fun ways to change the look of the videos, too. For the student who likes color variations in the videos, It's an option! For the student who doesn’t really want to be seen on the video, he can pixel his face. For the student who loves emojis, there are plenty of ways to get creative with those. We enjoy FlipGrid as teachers and our students enjoy it, too. And you know what is the BEST part? They are having fun speaking FRENCH with each other!!!
Here are directions taken straight from FlipGrid to help you as well: NOTE: All of the following information is available in our webinar, "Tools for Teaching World Languages at a Distance."
****** Teaching world languages via distance learning... exciting or overwhelming? Stressful or innovative? Tiring or energizing? A time to coast or a time to prosper? Teaching and learning? Depending on the day and the class, the circumstances might change your answers to those questions. As fellow French teachers with you, we’d like to share some of our favorite (and easy) resources we have found to use with students during our time of distance learning. As language teachers, we are always focusing on the core skills of language (reading, writing, listening and speaking) and how to incorporate those so that students are met with lower order thinking up to higher order thinking. Meeting Reading and Writing Core Skills Incorporating reading and writing is a bit more conducive to distance learning than listening and speaking. There is a plethora of ways you can ask students to read and write. We like Kami and Boom Learning digital task cards. Check out the detailed and more in-depth explanation of how those work in these blog posts: Digital Pen and Paper with Kami and Boom with Writing. Meeting Listening and Speaking Core Skills Getting students to listen and speak the target language is a bit trickier with distance learning. We have found these two resources to be effective: Boom Learning task cards and FlipGrid. We offer 10 different ways to create listening activities in your Boom cards in our blog post HERE. Boom lacks the speaking capability, so that’s why we have incorporated FlipGrid for speaking purposes and explained it HERE. With FlipGrid, it works simply like this: Teacher posts a video with a prompt/discussion/question. Students respond with a recorded video. Classmates respond to each other with additional videos or emojis. It is very easy to see who is replying to whom. It is fun... and the best part? Students are SPEAKING in the target language. Check out the blog post for more detailed ways to get started and use it in the distance learning classroom. There are so many other resources available for world language learners and distance learning. We wrote out this list of other resources you might want to try. Which mentioned resources have you tried? Which one(s) do your students especially like? Do you have any suggestions for us? Let us know! [email protected] |
Who are the Hobbs?Originally, we are from the Midwest and the East; however, our paths took us to Angers, France where we met and fell in love. Archives
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