My STORY
Flying overseas...
I was born in Spain but I have been studying and living in different countries: Italy, The Netherlands, Wales, England...
I speak fluently Spanish, Italian and English. I can talk a bit of French and understand a bit of German.
I have a daughter. Her name is Vega. I named her after my grand-mom and after the Summer star, main one of the constellation of Lyra.
Educational credentials
Shining like a sunflower in different classrooms, schools, parishes and countries...
- Educational instructor in a Science museum in Spain for a year.
- Science, Spanish and Math teacher in Spain for four years.
- 6th, 7th and 8th grade Spanish teacher at Ridgewood Middle School (Shreveport, LA) for three years.
- Science teacher in an Spanish Immersion program at Oak Park Middle for three years.
- 6th, 7th and 8th grade Spanish teacher at SJ Welsh for five years.
- Currently teaching Spanish and 6th through 8th grade Science Spanish Immersion at WW Lewis Middle.
Presentations and special projects
There still is a long way ahead towards the horizon... One step at a time.
2015-2017: Oak Park Middle Spanish Club sponsor.
2015-2016: M3 Mentor of two new Spanish teachers
2017: LFLTA Annual Conference round table presenter (Using iPads to engage students in communicative and collaborative activities)
2018: LFLTA Annual Conference round table presenter (games and technology in the Spanish classroom)
2017 - Present: SJ Welsh Spanish Club sponsor. Right before Covid-19 emergence, I was working with my Spanish Club members creating a digital story in Spanish to be shown at the Central Library.
2018 - Present: LFLTA board member, region V representative.
2020: LFLTA Annual Conference session presenter (Puppet show created by Spanish learners)
As Spanish teacher I have been performing a Cultural exchange with different schools in Spain for four years. My students at SJ Welsh have used Skype, Handouts and Flipgrid to communicate with their Spanish pen pals successfully throughout the year.
2020/2021: Series of webinars for World Language teachers organizer/presenter for the LFLTA.
2022: LFLTA Annual Conference roundtable presenter (Virtual field trips)
Spring 2022 Spanish Embassy webinar series presenter: "Ideas prácticas para la clase de español o en español: Cómo aprender sin libros".
Teacher Leader Summit 2022 (New Orleans, Louisiana) session presenter: Virtual field trips in the Spanish classroom.
2022-2023: W. W. Lewis Spanish Club Sponsor.
2023: LFLTA Annual Conference - roundtable session presenter (Digital Escape Room and Scavenger Hunt created for Spanish Club)
From January 2023: LFLTA Vice-president, elected during our annual conference.
From Fall 2020 to Spring 2023 organizer of LFLTA Lagniappe monthly webinars.
ITEC Year 1 ISTE Student Standard of Focus: empowered learner
1.1.c. Students use technology to seek feedback that informs and improves their practice and to demonstrate their learning in a variety of ways.
Right before LEAP testing, I prepared two different Escape Room experiences for my 6th and 7th grades to review learned contents throughout the year. I combined reading comprehension, graph and data table analysis, real life research articles, diagrams, classification and analysis questions. I also combined hard copy materials and a Genially presentation that was the guide to follow to be successful and open the 6 real locks which opened the cage where students found a prize.
REFLECTION
When preparing this activity, I realized that this kind of project is better to be prepared by a team. I went over everything at least 4 times and with both groups there were a couple of details wrong that I did not see and had to change throughout the way. I also realized that activities must be easier or less locks need to be used, in case you want the activities to be more rigorous so students really use their acquired knowledge and skills. Otherwise, the hour of class is not enough for them to breakout, as it happened with my 8th graders, and they feel a bit disappointed. With my 6th graders I was able to give them extra time and all of them made it. Combining technology and hands on-hard copy materials makes the experience more complete.
In addition to this, after LEAP my 6th and 8th graders worked on projects with Sphero and Makey Makey.
My 8th graders worked in a challenge to build with different materials (cardboard, paper, pipe cleaners, tape, hot glue, wooden craft popsicle sticks) a cariole that could be attach to a Sphero and was sturdy enough to carry our classroom pet, Ms. BBB, to her dreamed vacation destiny. Students worked hard but only one of them was able successful.
REFLECTION
The students who did not succeed realized that their cariole was whether not sturdy enough to hold BBB's weight or their wheels were not built good enough to roll and get inertia to get on moving. Some were crocked, some where irregular, some were too weak... The prototype of the student who succeeded did not work in the beginning, it was strong enough, it had good uniform wheels located in the perfect position to deal with balancing weight but it had problems because it hardly moved. It needed a stronger initial force. We changed the settings of the Sphero to maximum speed but we did not solve the problem. We decided to modify a bit the design to be able to add the force of TWO Spheros and it worked! BBB was able to get to Cozumel safe and sound! Woo hoo!
My 6th graders had to decide on a topic we had learned during the year, made a big poster on big Post-it paper with an illustration of it and a route throughout the contents. After the brainstorming of ideas and the drawing and coloring, they programmed a Sphero to go through the illustration in a specific route. The Sphero was also programmed to present the contents of the illustration through sound, lights and light patterns.
REFLECTION
My students realized that working with technology is not always easy and that you need to learn how to deal with frustration. Particularly one of the projects' programming took very long because they got the Sphero performed well the whole route and then when we wanted to record it, it continued failing over and over. When we got it done, we yelled with excitement so loud I believe we could be heard from Europe.
CLICK ON THE BUTTONS
A last project was building a game controller to be used with different Makey Makey Apps offered in their website: Make-a-Sketch, Makey Makey Soccer, Match The Beat, Dungeon Rescue, Space Rocks, Bouncy Face, and Pinball.
ITEC Year 2 ISTE Student Standard of Focus with 6th grade: INNOVATIVE DESIGNER
- 1.4.a Students know and use a deliberate design process for generating ideas, testing theories, creating innovative artifacts or solving authentic problems.
- 1.4.c Students develop, test and refine prototypes as part of a cyclical design process.
- 1.4.d Students exhibit a tolerance for ambiguity, perseverance and the capacity to work with open-ended problems.
With 6th graders we were studying UNIT 4: FORCE and MOVEMENT. In order to study the effect of friction and mass on acceleration. Students designed experiments to test different surfaces (plain ground vs. door mat) where they were making a golf ball travel a determined distance. They redesigned their experiments as they were trying to get more consistent results to prove that rough surfaces dealt to a higher friction and thus affected negatively acceleration starting at an initial speed of 0. Then, they used the SpheroEdu on iPads, Spheros, chariots and Lego pieces to create different mass scenarios. They used a balance to measure the mass of the Lego pieces together. They redesigned with different amount of Lego pieces (different masses) to have more consistent results and prove that the higher the mass the lower the acceleration was starting with an initial speed of 0. They used Classkick to record all the process and we all discussed the results together.
REFLECTION
My students showed a very positive attitude when dealing with technology issues and with redesigning their experiments to get more consistent results. They also helped each other with advices working in their group. We also had a great final discussion of our results and explaining reasons why they had stepped into minor problems and how they had solved them.
ITEC Year 2 ISTE Student Standard of Focus with 8th grade: KNOwledge contructor and creative communicator
- 1.3.d Students build knowledge by actively exploring real-world issues and problems, developing ideas and theories and pursuing answers and solutions.
- 1.6.b Students create original works or responsibly repurpose or remix digital resources into new creations.
My 8th grade students watched a video in Spanish about the great garbage patch on the Pacific ocean and we discussed what was it made of, driving us to the question what makes a material natural or synthetic. Afterwards, we defined what is a synthetic material and what is a natural material, classifying and describing their characteristics. Then, we had a look at different synthetic materials realia brought to the classroom and we named them. Their project in groups started at this point. They chose with their partner one of the synthetic materials to create first a index card with different information tabs they needed to look for using online websites wisely (we talked about criteria to identify good sources of information and they had to provide the bibliography with the links to their sources of information). After the information search phase made with Classkick, they had to prepare a good presentation with PowerPoint summarizing the information and adding adequate visual help to the slides. The students turned in their PowerPoint files using a request file link created from OneDrive opened in the browser, located in Canvas. Some students were not familiar yet with this way to turn in work as a file. As a final step, they presented to the rest of the class their findings and we were able to ask questions and discuss about their presentations.
REFLECTION
The project was a great opportunity for my students not only to learn about synthetic materials that surround us every day but we know little of, but also to use criteria to determine if the information they had found was good enough to be used in their project. They also learned about keeping a bibliography added to the project outcome. As an improvement for next year, I would add peer evaluation as well as teacher evaluation using Microsoft forms, since this year we did not have time. I would also review with the teacher before presenting to filter some possible misconceptions before presenting to the whole class.