Episode 106: From High-Frequency to High-Impact

I've been so excited to share about what I've been doing with my 8th graders! I hope you enjoy this episode! 

Links mentioned in this episode: 

• Episode 105 ALL about PRAISE!
• Historic New Orleans Collection* - The Trail They Blazed 
• Sooth Research Tool
• My Interview on the "That Teacher Next Door Podcast" with Helena Hains

*I misnamed the Historic New Orleans Collection in the episode, not the exhibit itself but the non-profit. It is FANTASTIC and if you ever visit New Orleans I strongly encourage you check them out! 

YAY! Spooky Season is here! Check out this blog that highlights all my BEST Spooky Season resources! Your students are going to LOOOVE them! I know you will too!

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Transcript

Hello! Hi, it's me, La Maestra Loca, and before you listen to this amazing episode of Teaching La Vida Loca, I want to first allow a message from our sponsors to play. Hello, my name is Annabelle, and I am the sponsor of Teaching La Vida Loca podcast, and yes, it is in fact me, La Maestra Loca, one and the same. And today I'm so excited to tell you about my spooky season resources that are all available on my TPT and soon will no longer be available there and only available on my website. Get excited! But right now, you can head over to the blog post from last year, which is in the show notes, and it includes a whole bunch of my favorite resources that I have available for you for the season of October when kids are really excited about spooky stuff. I have a lot of legends that are really fun to teach that give you ideas for how to teach and lead into projects where students can write about what they create. I also have an amazing activity that's a pumpkin glyph that went over so well with my students last year, and it's a really fun thing to display, really easy thing for you to display.

It's also great for a sub day. And then there's some also some legends and other easy low prep and no prep resources from my dear friend Viviana that are linked there. Viviana is the person who helps me with all the resources in Familia Loca. She's awfully talented and makes everything really beautiful in a way that I can’t, or I haven't learned to yet. So, I'm really excited for you to explore these. Head on over to the link in the show notes and check out my spooky season. And thank you so much for supporting me and supporting this podcast.

I know you're gonna love these resources and guess who's going to love them even more? Your kids! It's gonna be great! Okay, enjoy the episode. Take care. Okay. Bye-bye, then.

Welcome back to Teaching La Vida Loca, the podcast you come to for short and sweet and sometimes spicy episodes full of enthusiasm, magic, and tips and tricks for your classroom. I'm Annabelle, your maestra loca, and I'm here to bring you inspiration, unapologetic authenticity, and ideas to spark more joy in your teaching journey. I'm turning up the excitement and elated to have you right here with me. I'm not just your host, I'm your cheerleader, and I'm thrilled you're tuning in. So, let's do this. Let's tackle Teaching La Vida Loca together.

Hi there. Hello. Welcome to episode 106 of Teaching La Vida Loca. I'm so glad you're here. I know what I'm gonna talk about, but I have no idea like what the theme is. 

Because as per usual, I'm not scripting. This is totally off the cuff. And I came here thinking, okay, I really want to tell you about what I've been doing with my eighth-grade honors, and I can connect it to my theory of sequencing and how I teach without following a curriculum but following like a sequence. 

But I literally I was like, what's the title gonna be? Because sometimes I start with a title and go from there, but tonight I'm just gonna talk to you. That's what I always do, but it feels even more unscripted and all over the place than usual, but I think it's gonna be a really great one. So welcome. I'm so glad you're here. 

Wherever you're listening from, I want you to start by stretching in a way that feels comfortable for you with your arms above your head if you can. If you can't, then put them, stretch them in a way that feels good for your body. Mine are straight above my head, and then I'm leaning back a little bit. I've been having a lot of neck and shoulder pain lately, and so I've been trying to remind myself to just do simple stretches lately throughout the day. And then we're just gonna take a deep breath in and out. Do it again. In, out. One more time. In and out.

Awesome. Thanks for doing that with me. Okay, let me tell you about what I've been doing with my eighth graders, y'all. It has been so wildly amazing to have an eighth-grade honors class. If I'm totally honest with you, I love and hate honors. Here's why.

Sorry, I should correct myself. I love and hate honors for middle school. Here's why. At my current middle school, we allow students to test into, or not test into, but switch into an honors track beginning their seventh-grade year. What this means is that there's an immediate divide between the classes. There's an eighth grade regular, a seventh grade regular, and a seventh grade honors. Same thing. Eighth grade regular, eighth grade honors. So, I have two sections of eighth grade, but my eighth-grade regular has even less kids than seventh grade regular did because quite a few of the seventh-grade regular kids moved into honors at the end of last year and they definitely should be there and they're doing great. They're struggling a little bit, but they're keeping up because of the praise that I'm giving them.

They're feeling competent, and if you don't, if you didn't listen to my episode last episode, please go back and listen to it because it's a really important piece of why they're finding success and not doubting themselves so much this year. A specific instance, I don't know if I mentioned this in the podcast last time, but a specific instance last week was one of my eighth-grade honors students said, like snapped back at me really hard because I was like, stop y'all. No más inglés. Stop speaking English because so much of their side Conversations that they were having really quick on topic, mind you, on topic side conversations were in English, and I'm like, stop y'all. You were so incredible with your Spanish. You can be having those side conversations in English or in Spanish, and this girl clapped back and said, I'm not good at circumlocution and then I looked at her like, um, excuse me, and she said, yet, and I said exactly because the only way you get so good at something is by what? And they all said practicing, and I said, okay, Ahora no más. No vamos a hablar Inglés porque esta clase es increíble. Esta clase puede, puede hablar en Español. And I know it's something that they're capable of doing. I'm not asking my novices to not speak any English at all. Heck no. But with this class, they've had an amazing acquisition-driven instruction teacher for two years now. I am their third year and the person they had before me is phenomenal. I know what they're capable of, and so I'm gonna hold them accountable to that. And guess what? By the end of that class, the thing she was doing with language was insane.

So much so that by the end of the week, I called her mom with a positive phone call home to just say, my goodness, your child at the beginning of the week said, well, I'm just not good at circumlocution, yet. And by the end of the week was speaking in circles around her peers, confidently showing everybody how it's done and using the language she knows to communicate about language she doesn't yet. And that's what I want in my class. So anyways, what unfortunately happens is the kids who are left in eighth grade regular have some serious self-doubt issues and confidence issues, and I don't like the way they talk about themselves when it comes to language. And so, I'm on this like mission to get them to love language. A couple of them on Friday during an outdoor gallery walk activity in my eighth-grade regular were literally discussing with me, like, how much Spanish do I have to take in high school? And I'm like, I'm giving them the facts because we live in Louisiana and I know it's a lot like a lot of places in the U.S.

And I'm giving them the facts, but I'm also saying, y'all, you do realize by the end of this year, my goal is to make you realize that Spanish is the course you should stay in because it's fun. It opens new windows and new doors for you, and they're rolling their eyes. And I'm like, no, it's okay. You roll your eyes. Go keep going. Keep rolling your eyes because we're gonna get there. We're gonna get there. 

So anyways, it's just, it feels like an uphill battle and challenge with my eighth grade regular. But we're making, we're taking baby steps. We're literally taking steps forward every day. But with my eighth-grade honors, my gosh, can I fly with them? It is, it's wild. It is wild. They are so eager and so driven and so Curious and so determined. And the thing I'm really having to break them of is their perfectionism, right? So, I'm careful with how and when I do pop-up grammar with them. Because their little perfectionist brains are like, ooh, now I know the rule to this. I need to be very careful. And I'm like, ooh, you're starting to slow the way you talk. Is that perhaps because you're thinking about rules before communication? Don't worry about it. Let it spill out. Talk to me. Think about what you were gonna say. 

Because I really care that they just continue to communicate in the way that they do so well and not worry about the rules that they're starting to notice and that I'm naturally kind of, you know, drawing their attention to a little bit more. Like, okay, we've been reading in the past tense all week. What do you notice? What do you notice? Oh, tenía. No "tiene" — tenía. Muy bien. So really pointing out those differences without making it like, this is the rule. You should follow it. Does that make sense? Okay. 

So now let me tell you about this little project I've been doing with 8th grade honors. It's so good, y'all. Okay, so we had the Historic New Orleans Collection put—used our school, thank goodness. Our school advocated to host one of their exhibits recently and for a month we got to have their 'The Trail They Blazed' exhibit on campus and it is incredible. I will link to it in the show notes so you can see it, but it's an exhibit that's all about the civil rights movement in New Orleans and what people did to really lead the work of the civil rights movement here and it specifically focused, oh, there was a whole section that specifically focused on the desegregation of schools.

So many of you listening may know or you may have heard of Ruby Bridges. Ruby Bridges walked into her school, which was William Frantz Elementary School at the time, but it's actually the high school of where I was teaching now. And it's really cool. You can see the classroom where she sat and did sit-ins, but Ruby was just one of four young girls who courageously did the work to desegregate all white elementary schools in New Orleans in the 1960s, early 1960s, and those four girls were Ruby Bridges, Leona Tate, Gail Etienne, I think is how you pronounce her last name, and Tessie Prevost. So, they are known as the New Orleans Four. If you look up the New Orleans Four, you can learn more about them, but the school's exhibit, they had a specific section, very specific to those four girls and the movement to desegregate schools. And Dr. Leona Tate came and spoke at the school. I've seen her speak in New Orleans several different times, but it was just a really incredible opportunity, okay? So, we had this display up and we were encouraged to bring our classes if we wanted to for different assignments, And I was thinking, gosh, I really want to do this, but how can I make it Spanish? How can I make it Spanish? How can I make it Spanish? Because all of the boards, all of the displays in there are all in English, and they are interactive, which is also really cool, but I'm thinking, how can I connect it? How can I connect it? Well, I find out that my eighth graders had already gone with their English teacher. How did I find out? Talking to my colleagues, y'all. If you work at a school like I have before previously where you don't have any time, then send an email. Send an email to your team and say, hey, we don't have common planning. I can't check in with you, but I'm just wondering, have any of you done this or have any of you taught this yet. 

Because it's so much easier to link to the kids' prior knowledge if they've already done something, right? So, I found out that my eighth graders, all of them, had already gone to this exhibit with their English teacher. I'm like, oh, that's so great. I decided to take the vocabulary from the unit that we had been working on, which was all review. Well, hopefully all review. All around wants to be, wants to have, wants to go, wants to buy, wants to, all the wants to's, Works, I can't think of the other ones, but oh, is it important? No, okay. Anyways, works and wants to with all of the Infinitives after, okay? So, I decide, and we're doing, we're working way more in the past tense. I'm just trying to work a ton with the past tense with them. Only when it's natural. If it's natural to speak in the present tense, we're speaking in the present. If it's natural to speak in the future, we're speaking in the future. If it's natural to speak in the subjunctive, we're using the subjunctive, okay? I'm just not labeling it that. So, I decide to go and I gave them a notes page and I just said, take notes on what you learn specifically about the girls fighting for their right to education. What did they do to work towards their right to an education without racial discrimination in the city of New Orleans? And so, they took notes and there were different sections on these guided notes page that I gave them, but there was a second column that I didn't get to tell them about yet. 

We spent one day in the exhibit, and they were forced to use circumlocution. I only translated three words. If they asked me for three words, I would give them three words. I think only one kid used all three words and then I gave them a little word bank at the bottom of the second page of the notes page that was like justice, fight, discrimination, words like that that I knew that they would need that happened to be a lot of cognates, which was nice, but I gave them a short word list of maybe eight extra words that they might need, okay?

Then we came back to my class the next day and I taught them using all those same high frequency words about the current fight for a right to education without racial or linguistic discrimination that the Mayan girls in Guatemala are currently fighting for. Because there is a huge population of indigenous peoples in Guatemala right now who are fighting for their right to education and interestingly enough, using a new research tool that my school has which is called Sooth. I'll link to it in the show notes in case you're interested in looking it up. It is really cool.

Using Sooth, my kids looked up and found an article. They found an article that was about four young women who were who are kind of leading this movement in a specific area of Guatemala, which how amazing that they found four young girls and were connecting it themselves to the New Orleans Four. Couldn't have worked better. So, on day one, I had them look for articles using Sooth. Most of them used and found English articles, two people found Spanish articles and decided to use those, and I just tasked them with reading those articles and writing a short summary in English about what they learned, okay? 

That's it. Yes, it was in English, but I really wanted them to have a solid background to what we were going to talk about only in Spanish the next day. The next day I spoke only in Spanish about the current fight for the right to education of these girls in Guatemala. We watched a video. I found a special video of somebody in their community speaking their indigenous tongue, the specific community that we were looking at.

It was only like a minute and 30 seconds long, but they absolutely loved it. They also heard two words that sounded very similar to Spanish words and based on the translation they were very similar and we talked about why we thought that was and where and how language evolves. And then, and this was all in Spanish, this is crazy. It gives me goosebumps even just retelling it. And then as I was talking about what these girls are doing, what they're facing, what the numbers and statistics look like in Guatemala, what they're up against, what they're facing, right? It's all the same vocab as what they were looking at for New Orleans and the New Orleans Four. And so, they're taking notes on that same note page and then the next day I introduced them to A slide that explained in Spanish that they were going to do a project with two to three people. They could decide to work with one person or two other people, and they had to come up with a visual representation of what they've learned. And I told them straight out, I said normally when I do a project I like to have an example for you, but I've never done this before, so I don't have an example, but I'm really pushing you to be creative with your visual. I do not necessarily need drawings, but I need some sort of comparison. And they were like, well, can we do a Venn diagram?

And I said yes. However, I'm going to push you again to think outside the box. How can you show this what you've learned, similarities and differences between the two movements, the two fights for equal rights to education. How can you represent that visually on a poster with your team? And then I gave them a rubric and I said you only have two days to do this. Ready? Go. I also on the rubric said that if they're going to use any Dictionary it must be word reference and ideally, they are focusing on language they already know. And my goodness! I will share a reel later this week and some posts with their work and I will link it back to this episode. If you follow me on social media just keep your eyes out. If you don't then go and follow me or come back to this episode so that you can see the visuals. They did an incredible job. Some of the words they looked up were afro-americanos Enfrentan like things that they are facing or encountering. What was another one?

Derechos, which I was like you have a resource for that, but okay. Derechos are rights. There were like five others that were commonly looked up but other than that they just used the language that they know and they did an amazing job. And I can already see them starting to play with the past tense like they're already starting to play with those tenses that we've been like seeing so much this year and here we are. It's the barely beginning of October and I'm so proud of what they're doing and I'm so confident they're going to be able to do so much more by the end of the year. But it's because I'm really pushing them to use the language that they know and I'm holding them accountable to using that language in class as well.

The thing I really want to focus on with this because you may not be able to do this project, but I really if you're a person who really enjoys doing clip chats and TPRS and one-word images with your classes, I really want to challenge you to focus on how can you go from that silly fun storytelling mode and switch into, okay, how can I take this same language that we're using flip it to talk about current events or culture somewhere? 

And when I say current events or culture, sometimes oftentimes with current events things can feel really heavy. How can you find current events that show stories of resistance and resilience and strength and community? Because we really need more stories like that, right. So how can you take the same vocabulary that you're currently working on and flip it and do something with current events and culture? Because it can be done with your very novices you can do this and I know that it takes time and practice to get there. 

I actually just recorded a podcast recently with my friend Helena and I'll link it in the show notes too, but my friend Helena has a podcast called That Teacher Next Door and I was her first episode of season two and she interviewed me about my first year of teaching or my first few years of teaching compared to now and one of the things I talked about was specifically my ability to Take just words and turn entire lessons like make them into entire lessons because I'm so familiar with what it means to stay comprehensible and how to really shelter grammar and or sorry shelter vocabulary not shelter grammar and it was something that it took a long time and a lot of practice to get really comfortable with, right? In my first few years I was having to script a lot of what I was saying in order to be confident that I could stay in bounds and that I wasn't using too many out of bound’s words.

Now I don't have to script my lessons and I'm pretty good at staying in bounds and I know right away when I'm using too much out of bounds. Oh, sorry. Oh my gosh. My watch was recording all of that. Anyways so it's okay if you're immediately like, oh, I don't even know where I would begin with this. My advice to you is to take deep breaths, step back, look at your words and then think about what cultural celebrations, cultural traditions, cultural practices are you crazy about in another part of the world and how can you talk about them using just the high frequency words That you've been focusing on that week or that mini unit with your students. For me, I've taught familia loca for the last couple years about my sequencing method and how I teach without a curriculum following a very specific sequence and this is step six of my sequence. Specifically linking our current high frequency words to something cultural or current events. I'm sorry if you can hear my dog going crazy in the background. He's rolling around on the floor behind me. He's I don't know what he's doing. Anyways hopefully you can't hear it and hopefully I just introduced you to that with no need whatsoever. But it's just so powerful y'all because one of my students in eighth grade honors literally pointed it out themselves. They said maestra we're using the exact same vocabulary that we did for our one-word image And I said, mmm, qué interesante. Like yes child, I have planned it that way.

My goal is to repeat it as many times in different contexts as possible so that you are acquiring all the time and it's getting deeper rooted in your brain and really cemented there. So that eventually you start using it yourself. But I love that they literally pointed it out themselves. Maestra, this is the exact same vocabulary we're using for our one word image and it was and it was so powerful that they were able to make that connection but even more powerful that they are learning this really important information That's currently happening in the world that they're like, oh my gosh, this happened in the 1960s in the US but look at what's happening right now in Guatemala.

So anyways, I hope this was helpful. I hope that it gives you some ideas and inspires you to start thinking about how you're being intentional about integrating more culture and current events in the target language but really looking at your high frequency words and how you can do that.

And I can't wait to hear in what ways that you're putting this into practice. Please make sure and share. I'll make a post later this week on my Instagram that will give you and others the opportunity to share ways that you've been connecting culture and current events to the language that you're teaching. And I hope that you'll leave a comment there or at least leave a thought that you've had because sometimes talking it out can help and also then getting the support and feedback of others. You never know what inspiration you might glean. 

So, make sure to look for that post too, as well as the amazing pictures of what my eighth-grade honors students were able to do in this recent project. Until next time, I know I'll be teaching La Vida Loca. I'm sure you will be too. If you would do me a favor and take a second to send this to somebody who you think might be interested in listening. I really appreciate you and your support and you allowing me to support you in this way. It brings me such joy every week, truly. And now it sounds like my dog is going to eat something in the kitchen. So, I'm gonna go on and intercept that and until next time, I'll be teaching La Vida Loca. I'm sure you will be too. I already said that. Okay. Take care. Bye. Bye.