LAUNCH

June 19, 2018 The Center Convening Conference Presentation

Watching our own children's inquisitive learning process provides a foundation for what school could look like. How do we continue to foster that inquiry as students grow and become young adults? How can one turn that inquiry into innovation, understanding into application, and learning into honor and compassion? Can you imagine your students connecting with CEOs of top businesses in Europe, interviewing former FBI agents, or discovering veterinary practices from the veterinarian that oversees all animals in central Spain? 

This past year, after exploring, researching, piloting, and visiting schools that implement personalized learning through interest-based projects, I created. LAUNCH. This is a program that guides and mentors students to create projects that implement student-created essential questions, community collaboration, and are focused on individualized instruction. After the first year of the LAUNCH program at at my school, students left lasting legacies through ongoing conferences such as a STEM conference and Dance Marathon. One student created a podcast with the intent to educate the public on social and political issues. They also were able to explore and foster possible career paths, communicating with community partners overseas and throughout the country. Students compared business hiring practices, teaching methods, equine practices, and culinary influences locally and abroad. 

The LAUNCH program offered students a way to explore topics that the regular curriculum does not present, such as using photography to break down stereotypes of the midwest, doing a deep dive into Greek culture, researching the personal backgrounds of high profile criminals, exploring ancient cultures from the Americas, and why a medical university abroad produces the highest success rate of doctors.

¡A la cachi cachi porra!

A number of years ago when I still had satellite TV I recorded tons of shows onto DVDs. I still use these today in class for listening activities. One of the shows was a game show called ¡A la cachi cachi porra! It's a version of an academic decathlon or a quizbowl. While watching with the students I realized, hmmm I could totally make a game show like this in class! This past week was our state assessments so it was going to be perfect as we had a mixed up schedule. Our state AATSP also hosts a Spanish Quizbowl on a college campus so we were also practicing for some of that. Yeah, that's right, I sneak in learning when they think they're just playing. So this is what I have created for all of my classes.


Monday: TURISTA
This game on the game show was answering questions about different countries around the world. Since I teach Spanish, I focused on Hispanic countries. It was a team attempt and the I handed out an individual 12x12 marker board to each team. One person wrote as they collaborated on their answers. The first correct group with an answer won a point for their team.




Tuesday: MAPA
This was a fun game to watch as it is a life-size game board and the participants are the game pieces! I made a game in which the students are being sacrificed to the Aztec sun and moon gods. It included aspects of the actual game, such as a "de regreso" point in which they had to return to the beginning. There were also points on the board that they had to do physical activity, such as sit ups, jumping jacks, or push ups. There was also a giant, knee-high fabric die that was rolled. I solicited my PE department and they had one that was, well, a bit smaller, but it totally worked for what I was doing. The "game piece" rolled the die, moved that many spots on the board, and answered a question. They could go and conference with their team. If they got it correct, they got the number of points they rolled on the die. Here's the movie walk through of the game board in my classroom.



Above are the game pieces that I taped to the floor of the room and below are the questions that I asked in the notes section. Some were specific to what we have been studying in class and were able to be answered across Spanish II, III, IV, and V.






Wednesday: PALABRAS
This is was a very easy one to reproduce; one that I'm sure many of you have played in your classrooms in the past. Participants are given a list of vowels and consonants and they find as many words as possible. There was a point for each correct word. I also wanted to reward "wow" words so I doubled it to two points for any word they created that was 5-7 letters or tripled for any words using 8+ letters. I was so amazed what they were creating and the creativity they had to get more words. Even though I am a TPRS/CI teacher who doesn't directly teach conjugation, they had tons of conjugated words on their lists.





Thursday: GEMAS
Wow how exciting this game was! On the show there were two participants going head-to-head. They drew a colored "gem" out of a bag. The color determined the point value of the question. Yeah, this will be easy, too. Again I solicited the help from my PE department to get some wiffle balls. I put colored dots on them with a board marker so I could easily wash it off. I put them in a big box and shook them between each round. Students pulled out a ball and the dot determined the difficulty and point value of each question. Green signified a 5 point question; blue, a 10 point question; red, a 20 point question. Obviously I had a longer list of easier green questions than the shorter red list of more difficult questions. My ratio of green:blue:red was about 3:2:1. I used questions from an older version of Brainquest that I got at a local bookstore.





FRIDAY: CIERTO/FALSO
On the actual gameshow two opposing participants were sitting back to back and given a question. If it was correct, they would rotate one direction and if it was false, they would rotate the opposite direction. Again, another easy game to reproduce. I used the questions from the previous day, Gemas, and rewrote them as true/false questions.