Using Charlala for Card Talk

Card Talk:

In the world language classroom, Card Talk is a great way to facilitate conversations that are unique to each group of students that you get to work with. The traditional approach to card talk is to give each student a piece of paper (card) and markers, some sort of prompt, and a few minutes to draw. At the end of the drawing time, you show off a couple of cards around the room and spin a conversation about it.

The beauty of card talk is that you can spin it in any direction you want and reinforce important words and phrases in the target language, and each class period winds up with something different, making everything more memorable to the students because it's actually about them instead of a generic textbook. Some possible prompts for Card Talk include:

• What do you like to do?
• Where did you go last weekend?
• What is your favorite food?
• Where would you like to go on vacation?
• What do you wear in October?
• What do you like to do for yourself?
• What do you do for your loved ones?
• What is your favorite book about?
• What makes you happy?
• What makes you sad?
• What's in your locker?

The down side of Card Talk is that you can go through a ton of paper if you have a lot of students or if you do it very often.

This is where Charlala comes in.

If you're not familiar with Charlala, it can be used kind of like a doodling version of Kahoot, and it works great in One To One classrooms with tablets or touch screen laptops if you have a projector. You can tell students a prompt out loud, set a timer for them to draw their responses, and then everyone's drawing will be visible on the screen at the end. You can then click on one drawing at a time to zoom in and have a detailed discussion with the class.

How to set it up:

Go to app.charlala.com. You can set up an account for free. I used my Google account to log in.

From the upper left hamburger menu, select the Draw Room. There is a video tutorial that you can watch on the website, or you can follow along here.

You can set up "draw sets," but I typically don't. Instead, I just jump right into the DrawRoom session.

For card talk, I always use conversational mode. Click on "Conversational" FIRST, and then set the timer. When you select the mode, it sets the timer back to 180, so if you want to adjust the time, do that as your second step.

At this point, it will feel a lot like Kahoot or Quizlet Live. Students will need to go to charlala.com/draw and enter the room code. The most common issue is that students go to app.charlala.com instead. Students will get a doodle screen while they wait for their classmates to join the DrawRoom, and their doodles will disappear when you click "start." If you don't tell them this right off the bat, you will have some broken hearts in the room.

When you click "start," the official drawing begins! There is some cute, peppy music in the background, and it cuts off awkwardly after 2 minutes. 

At the end of drawing time, the students must click "FINISH" for their artwork to show up on your end. Have them do this before you click the "END" button; otherwise, their drawing will disappear.

Once you can see a thumbnail of each student's masterpiece, select "End Room." At this point, you can move forward in a number of different ways, but I like to have the class point to a person in the room whose masterpiece they would love to see closer. Next, you can click on their chef d'oeuvre to see it up close and discuss to your heart's content!

In a world language classroom, you can ask all kinds of questions to get the conversation going! I always begin by telling my French classes to look at the masterpiece (Classe, regardez le chef d'oeuvre de Bobby!) and applaud it (Classe, applaudissez!) From there, I begin asking questions.

I usually start off with basic questions in the target language about what students can see. For lower level classes, it's easiest to start with yes/no and either/or questions so that students can easily respond in the target language.

Classe, est-ce que c'est un pingouin? (Class, is this a penguin?)

C'est un pingouin ou un cochon? (Is this a penguin or a pig?)

Depending on where you want to go with the conversation, there are all kinds of questions you could ask about someone's Disco Piggy (or whatever else) Masterpiece.

What color is it?

What is the pig doing?

What kind of music does the pig prefer?

What is the pig wearing?

You can also ask students their opinions of things in the picture or have the group use their imagination to add more characterization.

What does the pig like to do?

How old is the pig?

What does the pig want?

Where is the pig going tomorrow?

What did the pig do yesterday?

The options are wide open from there, and it can be easy to spend ten minutes on a single masterpiece, but you can spend as much or as little time on each one as you like.

Book Post: The Labyrinth of the Spirits

My favorite book of all time (at least so far) is The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón, and imagine my thrill when I found out that it would be continued into a series! Ruiz Zafón's gothic prose flows like poetry, fittingly translated from the original Spanish text into English by Lucia Graves, daughter of poet Robert Graves. The four books in the Cemetery of Forgotten Books cycle can theoretically be read in any order, although I feel that they are most impactful in the order in which they were written. All four stories take place in Spain around the time of the Spanish Civil War, each telling a different character's story at a slightly different time, but inevitably interweaving to create a rich narrative tapestry.

Title: The Labyrinth of the Spirits

Author: Carlos Ruiz Zafón

Premise: 

This story encapsulates both the beginning and the end of the Cemetery of Forgotten Books series, telling the origins of Fermín Romero de Torres, the future of Daniel Sempere's family, and interweaving a new character, Alicia Gris, into all of it. Daniel, who the reader meets as a child in the antebellum Barcelona of The Shadow of the Wind, is now an adult, grappling with rage from recent discoveries about his family's history. In a flashback, the reader learns more about Daniel's beloved and mysterious friend Fermín's dark past, showing his connection to Alicia Gris. By the 1950's, Alicia lives a dangerous and intriguing life in Madrid, but she is brought back to Barcelona to help solve mysteries that hit closer to home than she might have expected.

My Thoughts:

I love this book. Since I have been reading my way through this series for well over a decade, I had forgotten a lot of details leading up to this story, so I buried myself in a pile of Carlos Ruiz Zafón's books in order to reread bits and pieces along the way. I'm not gonna lie -- I reread at least 50% of each of the earlier books from the series during my process of piecing all of the details together. No regrets.

As I was reading the series, I have to admit that The Angel's Game and The Prisoner of Heaven were nowhere as good as The Shadow of the Wind, but looking back on it all, the middle two books played integral roles in developing the world inhabited by these characters who I love so much. Since each book highlighted a different character at a different point in their timeline, I got to understand and care deeply about everyone. By the time I got to The Labyrinth of the Spirits, I was thrilled to piece everything together and fully understand how it all fit together, but there was no way to be emotionally prepared to let them all go. Did I cry at the end? You bet I did!

Bottom Line:

The Shadow of the Wind got a run for its money as my favorite book of all time when I read The Labyrinth of the Spirits, but the latter would not have the same impact without the influence of the former. Both books are dark, mysterious, and flow poetically from the pages like espresso from a moka pot. This is not a bright, sunshiny day kind of book; The Labyrinth of the Spirits is best suited for a cloudy winter day. When reading in the evening, you will crave white wine with this one.

Book Post: Emma

I'm starting off my book posts with what I finished most recently. I read my first Jane Austen title while in France, but really got into her novels over the last year or so. My friend Megan is owed all credit for my Austen kick, and she is the absolute best text message buddy for this type of literature, because she will switch from deep literary analysis to vulgar battery of our least favorite characters faster than Vonnegut can switch his readers from laughing to crying. If you do not yet have one, I recommend obtaining your own Megan ASAP.

Title: Emma

Author: Jane Austen

Premise: 

Emma Woodhouse lives with her dad in Highbury, England, in the early 1800s. They are a well-to-do family, and with Emma's mother long passed away, her older sister married and moved to London, and her governess recently married and moved to a nearby house, Emma is pretty used to running the show. She fancies herself a matchmaker, royally screws up some pretty important situations, and learns some difficult and important lessons along the way.

My Thoughts:

For me, this book had a slow start, but really picked up for the final third or so. Realistically, it probably wasn't the book being slow -- it was me. I felt unreasonably tired after reading just a few pages at a time, and then I finally pinpointed the issue: names. I have always been bad with names, and there are tons of them in this book. I eventually started listing them in a notebook, filling up a few pages with my "Who's Who," and I could finally cruise through the narrative.

I love the development of the characters in this book. This probably doesn't come as a shock to anyone, but this Austen lady really knows how to develop some characters and make the reader feel deeply about the story! I honestly didn't love any of the characters at the beginning of this book, but they grew on me as more was revealed about them and as they grew into better people. Most importantly, Jane Austen is an expert at creating characters that we love to hate. A lot of characters out there are the worst, but good ol' Jane's worst characters are The Most Worst. My favorite Most Worst character in this book really brings the word impertinent to life. Only Jane Austen can make me care about someone's level of impertinence.

Bottom Line:

Every book is right for a certain mood. Most books, in my opinion, are ideal for a rainy day, snuggled up on the couch with a cup of coffee and a puppy warming your feet. Being a British tale, rain is always fitting for this one. I also recommend a cozy cup of black tea within reach, maybe even a whole pot if you're in it for the long haul. If you enjoy music while you read, I accompanied this one with the Pride & Prejudice soundtrack on repeat.

Emma is a sweet, clever, sometimes frustrating, and overall wholesome read. It provides some good eye rolls about silly people. It renews one's love of love. It strengthens one's belief that people can better themselves and that good things come to good people. If you need a break from dark and heavy stories, Emma is here for you.

Let's Talk About Books

Why hello there! It's been a hot minute since I've opened up my blog, and although my European adventures have been on hold since I last posted here about them, there's plenty of other stuff that I'd like to write about.

How many years has it been since my last post? How much has changed? Beaucoup. Since returning to the States, I began teaching 8th grade French (currently in my 6th year of teaching), took up running (currently training for my 2nd half marathon) and painting, married the fella that I began dating just before writing my last blog post, and bought a house with him. A lot of amazing things have happened in my life over these years, and I feel incredibly blessed to look back on it.

One thing that has not changed is my love of reading. I've thought on and off for quite some time now about writing a book blog, so why not start now? Some of my posts will be about books just after I have read them. Some posts will be throwbacks to books that I read a long time ago but hold an important place in my heart. Some posts will have absolutely nothing to do with books. We'll see what happens.