Niko's PICKS: La Escapada de Marvin el mono

Niko dice: "A mi me gusta este libro porque en cada dibujo necesita encontrar un conejito, un gato, y un avestruz. Marvin es chistoso porque se escapó cuando el vigilante no estaba mirando y era la hora de comer. Marvin salió de la jaula y tuvo muchas aventuras. Y al fin del libro, el hipopótamo también se escapa!"

Lori says: "This book is good for immersion or FLES. There is some complicated vocabulary for younger/beginning kids, but the illustrations help scaffold the meaning well. The illustrations are delightful - and having to find the hidden animals is an extra treat. This might fit nicely into a thematic unit on the zoo, jungle animals, or leisure time activities. FUN!"

Niko's PICKS: ABeCedarios and Opuestos

ABeCedarios y Opuestos, por Cynthia Weill

                                 Hay dos libros: uno de abecedarios, y el otro tiene opuestos. Mi favorito de los dos es el abecedario porque para la letra "X," la autora no tenía un animal para esta letra, y deja que el lector decida el nombre. Que divertido! A mi me gustan estos libros porque todos los imagenes fotos de animales tallados en madera. Los libros son fáciles de leer porque tienen inglés y español.

NEW THREAD: Niko's Picks!

I have been remiss in my blogging duties! I have been posting a new link on my MisCositas FB page almost daily (!), but my poor blog has been suffering for it. So I am enlisting Sir Nikolas (of "Niko's World" and "Niko's Adventures" fame) to help out... We will be posting reviews of books in Spanish - sometimes in text, sometimes audio, sometimes with a video... Here's our first review - ENJOY!

FRIDA por Jonah Winter

A mi me gusta este libro porque es de una artista muy interesante que se llama Frida Kahlo. Ella era una artista mexicana que nació en una casa azul en Coyoacán, México. Ella tenía cinco hermanas, y con ella eran seis hijas. Sin embargo, ella se sentía muy sola. Ella tenía una amiga imaginaria que también llamaba Frida. Ella estudió ciencias en el colegio, pero ella se aburrió (como me pasa a mi a veces en la escuela!) Un día, ella tuvo un accidente horrible. Un tranvía se chocó contra un autobús y Frida necesitaba quedarse en la cama por mucho tiempo. En el hospital, Frida dibujó mucho. Yo recomiendo este libro porque Frida es un personaje muy interesante - muchas veces ella se dibuja con un bigote grande!

Questions about this book or review? Contact Niko!

Death by PowerPoint

Check out this SlideShare Presentation:

Death by PowerPoint

View more presentations from www.kapterev.com.

Skyping: Assigned Roles

Skyping: Assigned Roles
Originally uploaded by langwitches

From Langwitches, this is a great image/tool to help teachers assign very specific roles during a Skype phonecall.

New videos on MisCositasTV

I LOVE making videos! Check out our latest creation: "Los lugares de mi vecindario": http://www.youtube.com/MisCositasTV



This video was made with a simple Canon digital camera and MovieMaker software. SO easy to make! SO satisfying! And SO useful for teaching languages!

MovieMaker and PhotoStory

It's incredible what you can produce using MovieMaker and PhotoStory! With these two programs - both of them free and available for PC users - anyone can become a movie producer, filmmaker, director, actor, and sound engineer!

How to get these programs: MovieMaker is probably already on your PC. Look in your Start menu, click on "all programs" and then look for "Windows Movie Maker." It's most likely been on your computer forever, but you probably never noticed it (at least that's what happened to me!). The other program, PhotoStory, is available for free download (click here).

I use MovieMaker to edit videos that I record using either my Canon PowerShot SD800 (an excellent digital camera that also has digital video capabilities) or my Flip camera (I also recommend this - it's VERY easy to use and also lightweight and inexpensive!). I use PhotoStory mainly with still photos (digital or scanned in from "old school" prints!).

Click here for a full selection of videos I have created for use in teaching Spanish, French, English, Italian, German - and even one in Indonesian!

Quiet on the set... ¿listos? y... ¡acción!

Ning, and Twitter, and Flickr... oh my!

I have been exploring three new sites: Ning, Twitter, and Flickr. I include them all together in this blog post for several reasons... First of all, they all allow users to share information with other like-minded people. They all have potential uses for education (though I'm still working out what those could be!). And finally, they are all social networking sites that seem fun and easy to use. I'll start with Flickr first, since at this time, it's the site I know best.

As I mentioned in my last blog post, last month we were visited at our school by Will Richardson last month. He urged us to become familiar with web 2.0 sites for our own personal uses - and THEN we should explore the sites for educational purposes - only after we fully understand them ourselves. Well... I agree! I got into Flickr due to my current collecting obsession: vintage Pyrex (!) I am crazy for Pyrex bowls from the 50s, 60s, and 70s, and this mania brought me to a website for other Pyrex entusiasts like myself: PyrexLove. From that site, I was drawn to the Flickr site, where folks post photos of their latest Pyrex acquisitions. I now find myself checking Flickr on a regular basis for my own interests - and miraculously, ideas for teaching languages are starting to come... I could see sharing photos from the target culture and asking students to add comments and mark their favorites.

I am less familiar with Ning and Twitter, but have signed on for accounts on both. With Ning - a service that allows you to start an easy social network, I could start a simple website and have students sign on and share information (in the target language, of course). I plan to start a Ning for our upcoming participation in the North American Computational Linguistics Olympiad (NACLO). Twitter is a site that allows you to update your friends and family about your daily activities. It is what they call "micro-blogging." I am still exploring the use of this one for teaching world languages.

Does anyone have some creative ways to use these new web 2.0 sites for teaching languages?

Blogging in the language classroom

Little by little, teachers -- and their students -- are getting into blogs in our ESL and World Language Department! It's amazing what students are able to write in the target language, and they report having tons of fun while doing it. Check out some of our language blogs:

Palabras Pintadas - Spanish 5AP blog by Ms. DeSimone

Italiano Tre - Italian blog by Mr. Vittorino

El Blog de la Srta. K - Spanish 4 students by Ms. Kirschner

Cuna de Lobos - Spanish 3 students also love novelas!

Español 2 blogs by Ms. Reiss - period 2, period 3, and period 4

Italian blogs by Mr. Vittorino - Italiano Tre and Italiano Quattro

ESLebration - Middle School ESL classes


...and so much more to come!!!

Will Richardson and Web 2.0

On November 4, a day that will long be hailed as historic in the United States, another sort of history-making event was happening at my school. We were fortunate enough at Herricks UFSD to be visited by Will Richardson, author of the book: Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms. During his talk, Mr. Richardson inspired us to think about ways in which web technologies can transform what we are already doing in our classrooms. He shared many sites and tools that will prove useful in our daily teaching. Among these "gems" are:

• Will's article "Footprints in the Digital Age" from Educational Leadership.
• The "21st Century Frameworks" (what students should be learning in the 21st century)
• A blog by a young girl doing extraordinary things! twentyfivedays.wordpress.com
• Thinking about how to "get your big red dots"? Try: http://www.clustrmaps.com/
• Will's blogs: willrichardson.wikispaces.com; weblogg-ed.com
• A place to chat with other educators around the world: http://www.classroom20.com/
• Follow Will on Twitter: willrich45
• An amazing video that shows how project-based learning connected to technology can achieve amazing results - after watching this 10 minute video, you might want to think about ways in which a world language component would make the project THAT MUCH BETTER!: