Low-tech smiles

Although I've moved to a completely paperless classroom at grades 6th, 7th and 8th, K-5 are still more conventional foreign language classrooms (I typically lean towards TPRS storytelling and communicative-language methods).

The tools we use to develop language at these levels still tends to be technology-driven, but usually for assessment or practice (and less of student-created projects). Google voice has been a friend of mine, but I also would like to throw a favorable reference to BBC's interactive language program "La vida loca" (http://www.bbc.co.uk/languages/spanish/mividaloca/). The story is wildly compelling (my third graders are obsessed with the plot, and talk about it in the hall way between other classes).

That all being said, my first grade lesson from today was decidedly low-tech, but was maybe the most fun I've had in a month or so.

Our focus was on food vocabulary in Spanish, so we created a kitchen of raw vegetables and fruits (the fake kind you can find in toy stores). Each student was blind-folded and had to pull a fruit or vegetable out of a bag. Using only their hands, or descriptions of the fruit using only Spanish (mostly colors), each students had to guess what the fruit was in Spanish. Halfway through the game, the they voted to blind-fold me so I could try. We then proceeded to bring in random adults into the room to try the exercise. They were so excited to prove to old people they know more Spanish than they do (and the adults were nice enough to oblige some extra naivete for effect.

As much as I love what technology has done for my classrooms, today was a really nice example of how engaging some of the things we've always done are, and how tactile and material connections with objects still are important (Andrew B. Watt had a similar fuzzy feeling a few days ago: http://andrewbwatt.wordpress.com/2010/01/05/quick-video/)

I feel the zest for technology makes me want to privilege a day like to less, when rather, I should privilege it more. I've been thinking really lofty as of late, but I forgot how good it sometimes feels to cherish the little things. I'll do more of that in twenty-ten.

photo via flickr http://www.flickr.com/photos/duncansample/4039992744/