Education Blog Browsing 

I've been doing a lot of browsing of Spanish teacher blogs in order to find different ideas to incorporate into my lesson plans. There is a wealth of knowledge out there but it can be a daunting task to sort through it all and find the hidden gems. I was really excited to find a blog called "The Organized Señorita" which is also written by a young student teacher who is in an education program somewhere out there. She had some really creative ideas for activities to make things like grammar and vocabulary more engaging and fun. I commented on one of her activities which I really wanted to use in my own classroom. I asked for her feedback on how to control behavior during such an activity and also told her how I planned to incorporate the lesson into my classes. She has not responded to me, which is fair because I only made the comment yesterday, and we all know how busy student teachers' lives are!!

It's been fun looking through this blog and seeing another young, like minded individual's opinions on how to run a Spanish classroom. This particular blog is run by a student teacher who is in a middle school, but I find that the activities are still applicable in a high school setting. 

The other blog that I looked at is absolutely fabulous and is called Zambobozo. This blog is incredibly organized. I have been looking a lot through the "Unidades" (Units) section of the blog where it is divided up into grammar points. It's a fantastic resource for activities based on certain tenses and grammar concepts! He also has funny things like comics and "Miaúcoles" which is... cats.. on Wednesdays. He really likes cats. I'm cool with it. Unfortunately there was not a method of commenting on his blog. I really would have liked to thank him and tell him how much of an awesome resource he has created for struggling Spanish teachers out there! 

Overall, blog browsing is an intimidating but exciting activity. There are some pretty bad blogs out there, I'm not going to lie. However, the blogs that are creative, organized and thoughtful definitely outweigh the unhelpful resources out there. If I had to sum up this perspective in one oversimplified statement I would say that good blogs are good, and bad blogs are bad. It's as simple as that. If the writers put time and effort towards their blogs, it really shows. I will be using more blogs to keep my ideas fresh and bring new materials into my classroom. I do not want my classroom to get stagnant.