Advice For Spanish 3 Class Taking the AP

A teacher emailed this week asking for advice on what to do in her Spanish 3 class that is taking the AP Spanish Language and Culture exam at the end of the year (an experimental idea at her school this year.)  I want to say that I still don't consider myself any form of expert on teaching AP yet, but this is what I told her:

...this week has been slammed (we had open house Wednesday night, so that 12-hour day always makes it hard to keep up with life in general) but here's the short answer about what I'd recommend for your level 3 class who's taking the AP.

1. Use my 3A&B lesson plans you just bought.  For me anyway, the "Preguntas del día" are good for getting the speaking levels you need, and the stories teach the types of vocab you need for AP (art, outdoors, news, weather, environment, etc.), and the writing.  The journal writing prompts in my level 3 stuff are challenging but doable for my students and feed right in to the types of writing and speaking they will have to do on the AP.

2.  Show a video news clip from BBCmundo.com every day and have the kids take notes on what they understood, then watch a second time and add to the notes.  On the AP this year they will be able to hear the audio selections twice and should be well-accustomed to taking notes.  If you want, and you remind me via email, I'll send you the links to the videos I am using in class.  I've already used 3 really good ones that I can recommend if you're interested.

3. Get a good AP test prep workbook that is aligned with the new test they are rolling out this year.  I'm using TEMAS from Vista Higher Learning this year, but there are other good ones as well.  Use it to practice the format of the exam.

Okay, that's the basics and all I have time to write right now!  Have to finish entering grades and then get to work.

Ideally of course, I would want to have my AP students at least one more year after level 3 before taking the exam if not two, but after using my own (new) level 3 lessons last year with the students I now have in my AP class, I can tell a major difference in their speaking, listening, and writing ability over last year's AP when I had kids who didn't have those level 3 lessons in full (I was writing them as I went that year, and didn't keep up very well at times.)  Not to brag too much, but the class I have now can be conducted completely in Spanish without complaint from them because they know what I'm saying at all times.

My MAIN FOCUS this year in AP is class discussion in Spanish, about culture.  More about how I'm doing that soon...

In the meantime, please chime in with any good ideas for AP that work well for you in your classes.

The Guy Who Insisted On Taking Spanish

Four years ago, I had a 9^th grader I'll call "Nick" in Spanish 1.  He had dishwater-blond hair cut to about ½” all over his head with a perpetual rooster tail sticking up on the crown of his head.  Glasses.  Tall, lanky, a little shy, and polite.  On an Individualized Education Plan, they told me before the first day of class that Fall.

Nick's IEP said that due to his learning disabilities, it was not recommended that he take Spanish at the high school level after he finished 8^th grade, but that he really wanted to take Spanish anyway. Due to his persistence, they had decided to let him try it, and he was allowed to enroll in my class.  I was asked by his case manager and his mom that if it didn’t seem like he was going to make it in Spanish, to be sure and let them know within the first few weeks of school so they would still have time to put him in a different elective before he got in over his head; they stressed that he was only in Spanish because he had insisted on being given the chance to try it.

As soon as I heard all this information, I made Nick the “presidente” (leader) of Costa Rica (the grouping of desks on my left) on my seating chart.  Any kid who insists on being given the chance to take Spanish against all the adults in his life deserves to be presidente, in my opinion. 

Other than that, I didn’t treat Nick differently from anyone else.  I was prepared to offer him extra help as needed to make sure he passed, but he didn't need it.  He learned like gangbusters in my class.  He participated, did all the written work, and had a big smile on his face every class. 

Nick broke his left wrist riding his bike after the first week of school.  Being left-handed, he had to do all his written work with his right hand.  He laboriously did every bit.  I have had students (not on IEPs) with full use of both hands that didn’t put half the effort he did into writing stories. 

Nick did awesome in Spanish 1 and went on to succeed just as well in Spanish 2.  Stories like this one that make me so glad I am a teacher.  It is my privilege to give access to and encouragement in learning to kids like Nick, because I believe that a kid who has full access to learning has access to the world. :)

Moments of Fulfillment Do Come in Teaching, Thank God

I just have to tell somebody what happened yesterday.  I was pushing my cart through Wal-mart, turned the corner and saw two of my students from regular Spanish 3 this year coming toward me.

"Regular" Spanish 3 means the two 40-student classes I had this year that were comprised of students who did not want to enroll in Pre-AP Spanish 3 because, in general, they were only getting a third year of Spanish 3 for college and really had no personal passion for learning it, as many of them frequently informed me loudly throughout the year.

I pushed those classes hard all year, basically at 95% of the level that I pushed my two Pre-AP Spanish 3 classes.  They read a page of Spanish every day, had at least a basic conversation in Spanish about the "Question of the Day," learned a new set of complicated vocab phrases, heard me tell a story, answered questions in Spanish about the story, and went through page after page of grammar worksheets on Preterit, Imperfect, Preterit versus Imperfect, Subjunctive, Future, Conditional, Present Perfect, and Past Perfect.  (That was in the fall.  In the Spring Semester, they went through every single grammar topic again.)

I grilled and drilled those classes, and yes I did have some major whining at times.  In fact, one of the students I ran into yesterday was hands-down my Most Vocal in letting me know she did not like the class, did not want to learn Spanish, was only taking it for college, wasn't learning anything because she didn't feel she was good at it, etc.  Pretty much every day she played on her phone as much as she could before I'd insist she participate, which only worked occasionally, and usually if I did get her to put up her phone, she would put her head down on her desk.  Lots of sighing and eye rolling from this one, too.  (Now let me also say that personally, I have absolutely nothing against this girl, and understand that when you don't like a class's subject matter or workload, you just don't.  And she did let me know a few times her attitude was nothing personal against me as well.)

The other girl was a good student this past year, but also not necessarily the eagerest beaver in love-love-loving Spanish class.  Neither of the two girls loved Spanish 3 enough this past year to continue on to Spanish 4 or AP, let's put it that way.

Okay, so the two of them spotted me in Wal-mart, and immediately brightened and made a bee-line to talk to me.

"We just got back from Nicaragua," they told me.  (I remembered the Vocal Girl telling me several times in class that she was going to Nicaragua for a mission trip or community service type thing in the summer, and she would usually add, "And nothing I'm learning in this class will help me communicate there."  This seemed to be her opinion because my vocab phrases are too "weird" and not "normal speech."  I get that a few times a semester in class, actually.  "When are we ever going to need to say this???"  I tell them, the reason you're learning Le enseñó a saltar con el Pogo Stick all as one phrase, is so you can learn le enseñó a; I just need the Pogo Stick so you'll remember the other part.)

"Oh, Nicaragua--you already went and came back?" I asked, cringing a little waiting for Vocal Girl to let me have it about how little she understood or was able to communicate.

"Yeah, and I spoke way more Spanish than I expected," Vocal Girl told me.

I could hardly believe my ears.  "Did you understand them, too?"

"Yeah.  I would understand a lot for awhile, and then all of a sudden someone would talk way too fast."

"I was pretty much fluent by the end of the week," the other girl chimed in.  "I was conjugating verbs in my head at night in bed, and they all made sense.  And then the next day, I would use them on people, and they understood me, and I was like, 'YES!'"

Vocal Girl had a lot more to tell me, too.  "At night, when we would get back to the Quinta, I'd still be speaking Spanish.  Then I would go, 'Oh, I guess we can speak English now.'"

The other girl said that all the verb conjugating that was so hard and didn't make sense in class, suddenly made total sense to her.  "And I don't know why!"

I was beaming by then.  "Because you're using it in real life.  I wish I could take the whole class to a Spanish-speaking country for a week, because then they would really get it."

So they held me there for a few more minutes, telling me all about how well they did in Spanish in Nicaragua, until I told them for the third or fourth time how proud I was of them and how they'd better come by my room next year to say hi.  They promised they would, I wished them a great summer, and we parted ways to finish shopping.

And I still have this huge grin on my face.

Lesson learned?  NEVER give up, on any student, ever.  Never give up teaching the best I can, every day, knowing that even when it looks like a total waste of time, it isn't.  I'm just telling you that if THAT kid, that particular Vocal Girl, learned usable Spanish and felt proud of herself in a real-world scenario, then all my hard-fought teaching was worth it because it DID accomplish something.

Transitioning to Past Tense with Stories

Had another couple of questions from my friend Jeanette in Iowa, about teaching past tense.  I've had these questions from others so I'll go ahead and answer them for all interested.

Transitioning to past tense - here is how it works in my books (more or less following Exprésate's curriculum sequence:)

Past tense is first introduced in the last five lessons of Spanish 1B 2009 Version, in the readings only.  I still tell the story in class in present tense, then have students read a version of it in past tense aloud with a partner (reading for me in class = translating it out loud into English so I know if they know what it says.)  This is pretty much no big deal for the students; they can easily recognize and read "miró" in context after seeing "mira" a few million times in the course of my Spanish 1A & B 2009 Version.  I might have to explain that "fue" means went, but that's about it.  

I don't prepare for these past tense readings in Spanish 1B 2009 with any kind of preterit/imperfect lesson; they just get the page of reading, I tell them it's in past tense Spanish and I want to hear them read it in past tense English please, and they read.  No big deal.  My goal here is that they simply start seeing and recognizing past tense Spanish verbs in context.

As they are getting these past tense readings at the tail end of 1B, I might do a grammar lesson on preterit and/or imperfect if I have time, but not until they've already read a few stories in past tense and had time to notice the change in endings on their own.  (I really think I'm wasting my time teaching explicit grammar when they have had no contact with that particular grammar structure already via comprehensible input, but that is just my own opinion.)  I haven't taught Spanish 1 in a couple of years, but I know my colleague Alexis didn't quite get to the final 5 lessons and that's fine.  We plan for her to pick up where she left off in 1B at the beginning of Spanish 2, which will work just as well for my purposes, which is for them to truly acquire Spanish proficiency in speaking, reading, writing, and listening and not just rush through the material trying to memorize for tests.

Past tense continues of course in Spanish 2A and 2B 2009.  The first couple of chapters of Exprésate 2 are a huge review of Spanish 1 (and there are long, long lists of new vocab,) so I wrote the scripts to tell in class as well as the readings in present tense in order to hopefully give students more time to nail down present tense more fully before heading into past tense.  Starting after the midterm, the scripts in 2A are in present and the readings are in past, through to the end of the first semester, much like the last few lessons of 1B.

My Spanish 2B 2009 is all in past tense, scripts as well as readings, with the vocab list shortened and simplified so we could focus 100% on getting preterit and imperfect down pat.  My 2A stories are actually pretty hard to understand and read vocab-wise, so in 2B I took it down a notch like I said to try to make past tense verbs more of the focus than complicated, endless vocab lists.

My Spanish 3A & B 2012 is all in past tense, scripts and readings, with present tense popping back up mostly in the conversation and class discussion topics and journal writing prompts.  I find my students still need plenty of practice in present tense in order to prepare for the AP Spanish Language and Culture exam, and this fall I intend to step that up quite a bit.  You can't make a lot of errors in present tense and make a 3 on the AP Spanish exam, because that's considered "frequent errors in elementary structures" (and a 2) on the AP grading rubric.  So I say you really can't overteach or overpractice present tense, and I'm happy with how much I kept it going through the end of 2A.

Anyway, that's my method for now!

More BBCmundo links for "Las noticias"

For any who are interested, here are six more links to bbcmundo.com articles (most with video) that I found in the past couple of weeks and plan to use in class during the month of January.

This one I used this past week, and my students loved it.  The little boy they interview is so cute, and when he names off the instruments, students can totally understand him.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/mundo/video_fotos/2012/12/121228_video_cultura_acapulco_orquesta_juvenil_.shtml

Others I haven't used yet...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/mundo/noticias/2012/05/120519_video_republica_dominicana_elecciones_voxpops_lav.shtml

http://www.bbc.co.uk/mundo/noticias/2012/12/121226_video_cuenca_ecuador_inmigrantes_bueno_pea.shtml

http://www.bbc.co.uk/mundo/noticias/2012/12/121227_video_manzanas_estados_unidos_cuba_pea.shtml

http://www.bbc.co.uk/mundo/noticias/2012/12/121227_economia_motor_vehiculos_suv_irm.shtml

http://www.bbc.co.uk/mundo/noticias/2012/12/121228_salud_noticias_2012_men.shtml

25 Ideas for Extending the Learning With Each Story

Just received a question from a friend via email asking if I had  written a post about ideas to extend the learning/practice the language more with stories. Which made me think, well, I haven't written a specific post about strategies that would be used more than once with different stories,  but maybe I should.  Here was my response:  

To extend learning and language acquisition in general, I simply keep adding more vocab sets and telling more stories (of gradually increasing language complexity and sophistication.)  If you want to give students more practice with the same stories, here is the most complete list I can think of right now for what can be done with a single story:

1. Tell story with actors

2. Ask questions about the story with choral response

3. Ask individual students questions about the story

4. Do verbal fill-in-the blank with choral response

5. Do written fill-in-the-blank by making the story into a cloze exercise (blanking out some of the key words)

6. Have students tell the story to a partner

7.  Have students tell the story Round-Robin style in groups

8.  Have individual students tell part or all of the story

9.  Do Whole-Class Acting where class stands up and acts the story out as you re-read it aloud

10.  Have students put sentences of the story in order (you have to pre-make sentence strips for this) - they can either do this on their desks, with a partner or individually, or as a whole-class Line Up

11.  Have students arrange pics of the story and then tell story to a partner

12.  Have students arrange pics of the story and then write the story

13.  Have students think through and complete a graphic organizer about the story (I have a gazillion different graphic organizers copied in the file cabinet handy)

14.  Have students write a different version/different ending for the story

15.  Have students reenact their version or ending for class

16.  Send a translation (Spanish to English) version of the story home for homework (double-spaced, size 12-14 font, so they can write under each line)

17.  Have students translate a paragraph of the story (written) in five minutes

18.  Have students read the story with a partner, switching off after 1 minute intervals (translating out loud into English, usually, although I sometimes have them read out loud in Spanish and then ask them questions in Spanish to check comprehension)

19.  Have students make a video of the story and turn it in as a project for a film festival

20.  Have students write a new story using the same target vocab

21.  Have students write a children's book using the target vocab (this can also be a project)

22.  Have students fill in a Mad Lib version of the story

23.  Have students write T/F quizzes for each other about the story

24.  Daily matching vocab quizzes with the most recent target vocab

25.  "Vocab Bowl" game where students translate each vocab unit for points for their team

Some of these things work better with middle school classes, others with differing levels of high school Spanish; some of them depend on the size of your class and how much they can move around.  Almost all of them are included at some point in my lesson plan books along with a set of vocab and a story that I think they compliment well.

The activities above that I use pretty much daily in Spanish 3 and 4 are #1, 2, 6 or 11, 18, and 24.

The activities that I use frequently are #16, 17, and 22.  I would say that as a rule, you want to focus more class time on actual reading, writing, speaking, and listening than on things like the Vocab Bowl (which I mainly used in level 1 as a way to review for a test.)  Everything else for me is once in a while, although now that I've made this list, I'm inspired to shake up my routine a bit this Spring.

With Spring semester starting in a couple of days, it's a perfect time to sit down and generate some creative ideas, so I appreciated this prompting from my friend.  Wishing you all a fun, productive semester...

Spanish 3B up for sale!

My Spanish 3B (second semester level 3) book went up on my website as of an hour ago available for purchase (thank you web guy.  I still owe you some homemade clam chowder...)  It's actually been finished since August and sitting on my worktable in manuscript form waiting for the final, picky little touches on the 3B final exam before being hauled to the printer.  I'm going to be needing it soon, can't wait to use it, and hopefully those of you who are using 3A feel the same way.

I just have to say that it floors me how much more Spanish I can teach in a given amount of time when the lessons are all planned out and everything written.  My threes are miles ahead this semester of where last year's threes were by this time.  Miles and miles ahead.  They know more usable vocab, can write, read, and speak better, and know more grammar, believe it or not.  We've been working on Future Tense and Conditional over the past couple of weeks, and I've got several students who already have them both down pat.  My 3B book rehashes all the complicated 3A tenses again (as well as adding a touch of Past Subjunctive at the very, very end,) and I'm hoping to have even more students who are grammar wizards by then.  I love how I was able to work the tenses into the stories and conversation topics as well to reinforce actual contextual usage of the different tenses.  That's always been a struggle for me in teaching grammar--how to get it in context "on cue" while I was teaching the rules.  Otherwise, the rules go in one ear and out the other pretty quickly with no actual gain in proficiency.

Right now I have plans to write 4A and B summer 2013, mostly because I desperately need something better (more targeted, purposeful, efficient, and results-producing) than the materials I'm using now in level 4.  I feel like my fours are actually starting to lag behind the threes now, simply because I don't have materials written for them yet and I'm not great at teaching with textbooks or novels.  My level 4 needs to be a direct stepping stone into AP Spanish Language and Culture as we flesh out our fledgling 5-year Spanish program with level 1 starting in 8th grade for some students ( those who elect to do so.)  And when I say "direct stepping stone," I mean that they need to be learning AP level vocab and grammar and using it fluently in speaking, listening, reading, and writing, as well as getting very familiar with past and present Spanish Speaking World affairs.  So that will be my focus in writing my level 4 books.  I'd love to just teach Spanish literature and art in level 4, but unless the lessons specifically target AP vocab and skills, in my situation I'd be wasting my time.  (AP vocab for me = the 900+ words listed in the back of Pearson Prentice Hall's AP Spanish prep book by Diaz, Leicher-Prieto, and Nissenberg.) 

Level 4 teachers, please chime in about what the ideal level 4 program needs to do in your opinion. Unless you just trust me to work it out. :-)

Doing "Las noticias" - Part 2

Okay, right after I posted the other day about my great idea for how to do "Las noticias" in levels 3, 4 and AP consistently and really work in the language, culture, etc. I morphed it again.  Here is my latest method.  (You need to be able to project from your computer onto a screen to do it this way.)

1.  Go to bbcmundo.com (this site is my new best friend in the upper level classroom)
2.  Specifically look for articles/news bits that have a video (either by looking for "Lo más visto" usually on the right hand side off the home page, or, if nothing there suits, go to either the América Latina tab or some other tab and just start searching the lists of articles for those that have a white "play" sign on the picture.)
3.  Copy and paste the first paragraph or so of the article's text onto a Word document, make it huge font, save and title it "Las noticas Oct 23" or something along those lines.
4.  When the class comes in, project the Word document on the screen and question through it with the question words as described before, talking about unfamiliar vocab, etc.
5.  Follow up with the 1-2 minute video, sometimes with some prepping of what they should expect to hear in advance (my students seem fascinated by these videos and really do listen and try to understand.)
6.  Pause the video a couple of times to see what words anyone picked up (if desired)

The awesome thing about the videos to go with the news bit of the day is that my students are hearing different accents from all over the Spanish-speaking world.

I look for articles that aren't overly controversial or upsetting.  (I want them to focus on the Spanish, not on screaming at each other about the results of the latest presidential debate.)  I look for articles that will feature cultural facts, places, famous people and leaders from Spanish speaking countries because that will contribute to AP knowledge nicely.

Here are some articles with videos I've used recently in class and really liked:

Art and Culture - Picasso exhibit in New York, et al.:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/mundo/noticias/2012/10/121011_video_movida_cultural_10oct_jg.shtml

Cuba's new law eliminating the need for permission to travel abroad (video has "Key Questions" that are written out on the screen for your teaching/reading pleasure):
http://www.bbc.co.uk/mundo/noticias/2012/10/121016_ultnot_cuba_permisos_viaje_extranjero_jmp.shtml

"Latin Beats" with some Chilean band that has really fun music and an interview with the lead singer:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/mundo/video_fotos/2012/10/121015_latin_chico_trujillo_aston_pea.shtml

How to Do "Las noticias" daily using the Question Words

Okay, I'm finally doing "Las noticias" every day at the beginning of the block (in levels 3, 4, and AP) in a way that seems to be working consistently and meeting my objectives of speaking more Spanish in class, talking about current events, teaching real-life vocab that might not otherwise come up on textbook vocab lists, and using authentic resources.  I've been looking up articles on BBCmundo.com (especially under the "America Latina" tab) and taking headlines or opening lines from them to write on the board before the class comes in.  I spend about 5-7 minutes on this first thing when I get to school, and that prep time has been well worth it.

When class starts, I start pointing at the "News" and saying, "Clase, mira las noticias.  ¡Mira!" until everyone is looking at it.  I may or may not confirm their understanding of key words, unknown words, and/or the entire news bit, depending on how I feel like working with it that day, but either way, I ask whole-class questions about it in Spanish.  I have my Question Words posters on the wall directly above this whiteboard, and I go down the list of Question Words asking questions about the "noticias."

Example of Las noticias questioning:
"Clase, ¿Quién anunció que no disputaría el Abierto de Estados Unidos?"  (Rafael Nadal.  If no one answers, I give choices.  "¿Andy Murray o Rafael Nadal?")
"¿Quién es Rafael Nadal?"  (un tenista español)
"Por qué él no va a disputar el Abierto de Estados Unidos?  ¿Alguien sabe?"  (Here we talked about Rafa's "rodilla izquierda" that's injured, etc., information I got from skimming the BBCmundo article.)
"¿Cuándo es el Abierto de Estados Unidos?  ¿En septiembre o agosto?"  (agosto)
"¿Qué fecha?  El..." (27 de agosto.  If they answer in English, I say, "¡En español!")

I'm spending about 5-7 minutes at the beginning of class on this whole Noticias/question and answer session, maybe 10 when we get off on a tangent (like talking about Hidalgo, etc. from the Noticias this past week: "El presidente de México dio el "Grito" de independencia el domingo, el 16 de septiembre, desde el balcón del Palacio Nacional.") I'm finding it reasonably easy to hold their attention on the Spanish sentence as well as my Q&A, possibly because I act so interested myself in the "news" and then act really impressed when they understand it as well as respond.  I'm re-teaching saying numbers, dates, and of course the Question Words as I go, but all of that is needed (to a highly fluent/natural level) for the AP Spanish Language and Culture exam.  The "noticias" are also good for highlighting names and details of important Hispanic figures, some cultural info, current events in Spanish-speaking countries, etc. without spending much time on it or doing time-consuming, class-time-wasting projects.

I'm leaving the same "noticias" sentence there for 2 days (all A and B blocks) and using it in all 3 levels (3, 4, and AP,) although I might add something to it for AP at times.  So really, I only have to look up a new news bit every other day, and like I said, it's meeting a lot of my goals for things I wanted to include this year.

If you have my 3A book you'll notice I mention talking about "Las noticias" approximately every other lesson, but I'm actually doing it every single lesson now since I figured out exactly how I wanted to do it (using the list of Question Words, by rote.)

Happy teaching...

Getting Actors part 2

Okay, new method for getting actors this fall that is going really well for me:

1. Write a list of characters needed on the board (Chico 1, Chico 2, Chica 1, etc.)
2. First day - ask a confident, bossy student to choose all actors.  Write their names in the list on the board as he/she picks them.  This works best if the choosing student is popular; other kids want to be picked by that person.  (Fair or unfair, just telling you how it is.)
3. After first day - whoever played the main character (Chico 1) in the last skit chooses all actors for the new skit.
4. Variation - whoever played the main character (Chico 1) chooses the main character for the new skit, then that (new) person chooses Chico 2.  Chico 2 chooses Chica 1, and so on.

Getting actors for skits has suddenly gone from big Argument/Whine Time to pretty fun, actually.  Mine really like getting to choose actors, and everyone else in the class seems to enjoy waiting to see who they are going to pick.

Going back to my previous post about getting actors and how students will get up to act as long as they are being "forced" to do it (NOT volunteering on their own)--being chosen by other students is probably the best "forcing" method I've found because they like the attention from each other.  So far this year, I've only had one student beg not to act after being chosen by classmates, complaining he had already acted a lot (which was true) and that he didn't feel good that day.  So, I let him choose someone to take his place, and that person acted willingly.

Another fun thing to do with the board list is add a few story details to it, like "Coche, Animal," etc. and ask for those up front as well.  I owe that idea to my friend Jennifer Noonan who taught with me a couple of years ago here in Colorado, now moved on to Chicago.  (Hi Jenn!)

Roger el Romántico y La Sra. Doubtfire

My door faces my colleague Alexis' door, and she usually teaches with her door open, which offers me a clear view of her acting area and her students' engaged postures as they sit in their desks, leaning forward, fascinated with the lesson.  At the moment, they are in the midst of the Roger el Romántico stories (that teach greetings, introductions, and goodbyes) and it has been such a joy and delight for me to spy from a distance.  Or sometimes up close, because every so often a smiling Roger, complete with purple velvet hat, invades my room to give me silk flowers.

This is her second year to teach through the 1A stories and she's really pulling them off well.  I always found that my second year through the same set of stories goes better as I have more confidence, get more ideas about what props to use, etc.  That is true for me right now with the 3A stories for sure.

Alexis came over yesterday after school to show me a music video one of her classes made to the song "Call Me Maybe" starring Roger and La Sra. Doubtfire.  I wish I could post the video, but unless the kids themselves do it, I can't put their faces on the internet.  I am still smiling this morning just thinking about it.  This is the first time I've taught right next to someone who is using my stuff, and I just can't tell you guys how gratifying and fun it is to see my stories that I wrote coming to life and bringing such fun to someone else's classroom.

And of course, I love getting flowers from Roger el Romántico.  Who doesn't????