One week down!

     It's the first day of the second week-- a 5-day week!-- and I have now had 4 days of class.  The model I discussed in my last post, webbing the unit with the end result in mind, has worked really well.  I was not prepared for how much time it takes, though!  I could spend hours on my lessons!
     I have adopted some tips from Ellen Shrager that I found in the Daily Tech Guide: A Survival Guide for Using Technology to Improve Classroom Management and to Visually Support the 90% Target Language Goal for Level One Students at the Secondary Level.  I made slides to use today in my classes, and they worked really well.  One set was a review of classroom procedures, and one was a review of vocabulary from Spanish 7 last year.
     There was a lot of chatting in my 4th period class today, so much so that many students missed part of the directions.  I will return their HW to them tomorrow to correct.
     I'm excited about the LingtLanguage summative assessment I assigned my 8th grade classes.  Instead of just speaking in response to oral prompts, students will write responses to some questions, speak to some written prompts, and reply to oral questions that I ask.
     I can keep me on target with 90-100%, but how do I keep my students committed?  I like the idea of a candle; when English is spoken, I blow it out, and we try again the next day.  When the candle is burned down, we earn a reward (making tortillas?  a party?).  I also like the "Language Masters" tags from Concordia Language Villages: students who choose to can wear a tag that identifies them as a Language Master, which is a commitment to speak ONLY in the target language during class.  They can track their success, and also earn a reward.  Of course, I'd love for the reward to simply be that we all just get better at Spanish!