Today I bring you some integration ideas I learned from Joshua Cassellius, a spanish teacher at Union Pines High School. Mr. Cassellius has been doing an exceptional job, smoothly incorporating technology into his daily instruction. He was an early adopter of Google Classroom to manage workflow and now runs a largely paper free classroom. Mr. Cassellius understands well that Chromebooks are a teacher’s tool for instruction that doesn’t fit every instructional situation. Accordingly, students move their devices back and forth from desktop to backpack efficiently several times in a class period.
Mr Cassellius has been particularly good at using Chromebooks this year to 1) increase student-teacher communication and 2) increasing the rigor of student mastery assignment through creation, collaboration, and publication.
In a recent training session we discussed Today’s Meet. Mr. Cassellius volunteered to his colleagues that he uses it with great success. He make one “room” per course, sets the time limit for 1 year, and posts the entrance code on the “About” tab of the course’s Google Classroom page. Before tests and quizzes he asks students to post any questions they have to the wall. He credits the anonymity afforded by Today’s Meet for the increased increase in student requests for help and as a result better student performance on the quizzes. Similarly he solicits student responses in spanish to verbal questions and as responses are collected peers critique the grammar and word choice without the fear of judgement by peers.
http://blogs.nvcc.edu/kriddick/files/2013/10/todays_meet2.jpg
Mr. Cassellius has also asked that students work in groups to create video presentations with cell phones and WeVideo to demonstrate their mastery of elementary spanish. This one activity allows Mr. Cassellius to reach all 4 of the central components of spanish skill instruction: speak, writing, listening, and presentation. The task is made challenging and relevant because these students have to collaborate with each other to produce mastery work while navigating the non-native language.
Here are a few sample products by Mr. Cassellius’ students
Learn more about Mr. Cassellius’ tools featured above by clicking the icons below
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