senoracmt

Let’s Chat about Charlala

The pandemic left me scrambling to fill my class time with just the basics. I needed to cut away some of my very favorite things just to be able to cover some content. Let’s face it, we went through a pretty miserable couple of years.

I had forgotten how much I LOVED Charlala! I was at the ICTFL (Illinois Council on Teaching of Foreign Languages) fall conference in October and I ran into the founder, Chris. It was the little jolt my mind needed to get Charlala back into action in my classroom!

In two years, there have been some upgrades… so I KNOW there are more amazing things for me to find as we explore this year, but I wanted to share what we have already done with you! The holiday season is in full swing so you’re going to need a few tricks up your sleeve!

First: When we did our Spanish 3 predictive unit to practice the future unit (The Switch), I had them use Charlala to do the Doodle Noodle activity predicting what was in the box. They enjoyed this so much more than doing it on paper and it was much easier to see the drawings on Charlala than AirPlaying our iPads!

Another day, when I had just 10 minutes left in class, I had them join a Charlala draw room and I gave them all a sentence to draw. They drew their images and we selected our four favorites. We were able to fit two drawings in our 10 minutes.

On another day, we had finished a reading and I used a “set” (a pre-made set of sentences) to play a guessing game with the students. They each see a sentence on their own iPad and draw a picture of what the sentence says. When our draw time is over, students have to look at each picture and select the sentence that describes it from a group.

I love charlala.com because you can prepare a “set” and use it in class as part of your lesson plan OR if you have a little extra time at the end, you can just open a draw room and give students oral prompts! And they LOVE drawing with it.

I can’t wait to explore the new story feature! Hope you are able to use the (limited) free features to get you through these next few crazy weeks!

Published by senoracmt

I began teaching Spanish in Illinois in 1994. I have taught levels 1-4 in a small rural high school, 8th grade introductory Spanish, Biology 1, and 101 and 102 at the community college level. My Spanish classes are partnered with the community college to offer students 8 semester hours of dual credit on completion of Spanish 4. In 2011 I met Carol Gaab and Kristy Placido and have since co-authored the book "La hija del sastre" with Carol Gaab and authored the novels "La Calaca Alegre", "Bianca Nieves y los 7 toritos." "Vector," "48 horas","Bananas", "Sostenible", and "Papálotl" through Fluency Matters. In 2006 I became National Board certified and I have been serving as a mentor both for candidates seeking certification in world languages other than English and a virtual mentor for candidates in all certificate areas. I completed my Masters degree in Spanish education in 2011 and did my research on the use of Understanding by Design to create meaningful cultural units for the language classroom. I am a frequent presenter on this topic, please consider me if you are interested in a workshop on backward design. In 2013 I was named the ICTFL Foreign Language teacher of the year and in 2014 I was selected as CSCTFL's teacher of the year. In November of 2014 I was lucky enough to be one of the five finalists for the ACTFL National Teacher of the Year in San Antonio, TX. What a "Cinderella" experience! You can reach me via email at carrie at somewheretoshare dot com.

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