Twitter for Spanish Classes

We live in northern New England and as such, there are not many opportunities for my students to use Spanish outside of the classroom. In order to provide another opportunity for my students to practice Spanish outside of the classroom, they are going to start tweeting via twitter. I would like to invite other Spanish speakers--novice to native speaker to join us. All you have to do is add the following hash tag to your tweet #esp4me My students are going to begin with introductions and from there, my hope is that this will take on a life of its own and I can fade out. If all else fails, I will assign topics to my students. Please consider joining us.

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Permalink Reply by Esther Maria Vieira on April 2, 2011 at 8:32pm

Hi Fred

I tried the #esp4me and nothing could be found. Did you quit the idea?

I've been using #spanish4 with my spanish IV where they have to answer daily questions or use a specific word into a sentence. I like your idea of having them meeting somebody else.

If you want to get back to that, I have 3 groups of Spanish native speakers to whom I teach reading and writing, and they would profit for this kind of exchange.

Por favor, me avise.

Esther Vieira

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Permalink Reply by Fred Ravan on April 3, 2011 at 7:53am

That would be great. The group I have this year hates to speak Spanish. All they want to do it book work. It would be nice if we could connect. What types of things are you reading? We could read the same thing/ ideally a Spanish version and then they could all comment. E-mail me at fravan@breweredu.org

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Permalink Reply by Esther Maria Vieira on August 19, 2012 at 4:45pm

Hi Fred

I am part of a group of Spanish teachers in Iowa. We have a collaboration going on: a blog with topics by week and the students names with blog addresses. Each students needs to post a 50 word entry on his./her blog and 3-4 questions about the topic. Then he/she needs to find 2 other students ( not from the school he/she attends) and answer the questions on their blogs.So far it is working fine. This is going to be our 2nd year and 3 rd year among the other 3 teachers.

would you like to be part of it? My email is: teca0607@hotmail.com

Gracias

Esther Vieira

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Permalink Reply by Laura Rinehart on February 17, 2013 at 7:17am

I also tried using twitter this year in my classroom. I teach 8th and 9th grade students so many of them do not have twitter accounts. Did you have this problem in your classroom? Do you have any ideas how to get past this? I have them use post-it notes and they “tweet” them on the wall in my classroom, but I would like any new ideas if you have them. Thank you!

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Permalink Reply by Esther Maria Vieira on February 18, 2013 at 2:31pm

Well, I have them open an account during class. One student wanted a different account for the Spanish class. That is okay. During 4 weeks I told them to follow 4 different tweets from Peru( to get some cultural insights) and reply to 1 every day. They also had to follow me. At the end of the week I entered the "followers" and check individually each student page and posts. I grade for starting conversation and using new vocabulary. At the end of the 4 weeks they wrote a blog entry with a brief reflection. You can take a look at : http://sravieira.wikispaces.com. search for BLOGS and you will find the students blogs.

I think it worked well because it was a real world situation not me as a teacher throwing a subject or topic and they respond to it. Next time I would like to be more specific in the reflection and maybe in the replies.

I also used twitter for Spanish 3 when studying Imperfecto. They needed to use #cuandoeranino and retwit a couple of posts and complete the sentence every day. It certainly got into them the idea of- when I was a kid I used to...... Some students didn't do it as frequently as I asked and they could notice that during the classes because it was missing that practice.

If you like to try, how about we put together a # and a topic and our students ( mine and yours) would retwit and reply for an amount of time and we would ask for some reflection to see how it went.

What levels do you teach? Do you teach Spanish? Do they have easy access to computers at home or in the school?

My school have mobile labs throught the wings, my wing with 9 teachers in different areas have 2 mobile labs with a total of 60 laptops available every day. I learned that for any computer based activity it needs to start with the students doing in the classroom for a couple of times until it becomes a habit and then asked them as out of classroom assignment. They can accomplish during study hall, before or after school, during lunch hour, or at the library ( public, or school) or home.