Señora Cummins' Reflections

While I'm working on my hybrid classes for fall, I'm focusing on Bloom's Taxonomy.  Students love face to face time.  It's my goal for every minute we have face to face to as beneficial to students as possible. Students can learn the bottom levels--remembering & understanding--by reading the ebook.  Connect even has a cool assignment tool that reviews the information with them.  They will be expected to do both of these things before class so we can really work at the applying level up to creation level in class. I've written up notes guides for each chapter, vocab and grammar.  My plan is to give students the notes guide for the assigned concept/s.  They are to complete it for a participation grade.  This will give them an active learning activity while reading to help encourage them to achieve the remembering and understanding levels of the concepts. In class, I'll put them into pairs and they will compare their notes.  (This gives accountab...

When I began teaching college classes, I was an adjunct.  At that time in my life I wanted a part-time job and teaching college classes was perfect fit.  I started out teaching 1 section face to face.  For 4 hours a week, students sat in a classroom with me and I taught them. Those were good days.  I had a lot of control of the pace of the class, the presentation of the material and how they were assessed.  Looking back, there was a lot of wasted time with too many quizzes, me talking too much and students not being actively engaged in their learning.  I was like a tour guide that narrated what they saw as we drove on by.  At the time I thought I was serving them very well but now I see ways to improve. Fast forward a bit to being full time.  Instead of 1 class, in the fall I will teach 1411 online and hybrid (hopefully) in various sections.  I'll also be teaching 2311 face to face (hopefully).  The pacing will be different for different...

Yesterday I spoke to a friend who teaches English at a private school.  I told her about my desire to add more to the cultural component to my online Spanish classes by adding videos.  She asked an excellent question:  what was the point?  What did I want my students to walk away with by adding these videos? I'm wrestling with the answer.  The big answer is I want my students to have a bigger understanding of the world around them.  I want them to understand that people are different and by being different we all create a beautiful mosaic.   According to the state, students in 1411 should able to identify & discuss the values, customs and traditions of the Hispanic world.  How can they do that if they don't know what those values, customs and traditions are?  The book is great, but sometimes I wonder how much students actually take away from the "culture sections."   Before speaking to my friend I started making the culture...

When I was studying in Spain for grad school I remember a professor talking about "culture with a capitol c" which many people think of as tacos, bullfights and Picasso, Dali or Frida Kahlo.  At the time I didn't really understand why she felt like culture was so much more. Now, I have the maturity to understand that culture is so much more than the food people eat in a specific region or artwork produced by artists of a certain ethnicity.  Culture is the fabric of who we are--what makes us, well us. My own culture is a mixed bag.  I grew up in Norman, Oklahoma but am not a Sooner.  I'm a Christian but I don't identify with a lot of the loud voices who share my faith my not necessarily my values.  I'm a redhead but I was adopted--who knows if I'm Irish or whatever other ethnicity.  I personally choose to claim Scottish because I love the movie Brave and when I hear bagpipes something deep inside me wants to roar and go into battle.  Also I'm great at r...