1) Set up a separate Twitter account for you to use with your students. I use Twitter regularly for professional development. I do not want to combine accounts! I also teach both French and Spanish, so I created a Twitter account for my French students to follow (@ritzyfrancais) and a Twitter account for my Spanish students to follow (@ritzyespanol). This sounds like a lot of logging in and out to check accounts, but...
2) Download TweetDeck to your computer. This free program allows you to follow multiple accounts, so no logging in and out required. Also ask your Tech administrator at school to download it to your school computer for you. That way you can check posts from school as well.
3) Establish safe and clear guidelines for students to create accounts. I teach high school students, so this is very important. On my class website, I gave clear instructions on how to set up an account. We use a lot of websites in my class, so the students know that they shouldn't give out personal information. For Twitter, I'm insisting that they choose to "protect their tweets," meaning that only people they approve to follow them can see what they're writing. And, I insist that they only follow other students in the class. If I catch them following a trashy celebrity, for example, their parents will get a call! Check out my class website for more details on the rules for Twitter: en español ; en français. Make sure all of this is clearly communicated to parents at the beginning of the year. Send home a letter with kids on the first day, or ask for parent emails and send them an explanation of why this is important in a foreign language class.
4) Create an immersive language environment. As part of your instructions on creating a Twitter account, make sure the students set the language to the target language of your class (thankfully, Twitter has many options!). And make sure that they understand ALL posts must be in the target language.
5) Insist on at least one post per day. This is my first year using Twitter with my kids, but from the teachers I've talked to, most students go beyond this requirement. Encourage students with Smart phones to download a Twitter app, so they can tweet any time. By the way, YOU should respect this rule as well! To help students along, you can post questions they can respond to, or odd comments they'll ask you about.
6) Keep it fun. Don't be an overbearing grammarian on Twitter. Keep the focus on communication. If you really can't understand what a kid is saying, tweet back asking for clarification, or restating what they wrote using better grammar. But don't nitpick. You want to encourage language use and show them that communicating in a foreign language is fun. Don't control what they write unless it's inappropriate. Let them feel like it's their space. If the enthusiasm is lagging, try creating a poll using TwtPoll. You can create a silly poll about something in the media the kids are into. I'd give an example, but I'd really just embarrass myself by referencing some outdated pop star (Britney Spears is all that comes to mind for the moment). Hopefully, this will help jump-start their enthusiasm.
7) Bring it into the classroom. If you have an LCD projector or active board in your classroom, show the kids the most recent tweets and turn it into a conversation. If you don't, print out a screen shot of the tweets before class. You can photocopy it, or play some of the below games to get the conversation going.
Twitter Conversation Starters
- Try reading off a tweet without the kids seeing who wrote it and have them guess the author. Make them justify their guess.
- Any shocking revelations on your Twitter feed? (Or at least mild drama?) Act like you're horrified and ask the student to explain themselves.
- If a student posts an obscure or vague comment, play 20 questions to have the class guess what's going on.
- Have students tweet two truths and a lie, then review the tweets in class and have them try to guess which is the lie.
- Start a story on Twitter. Just write one line, then have whoever tweets next continue the story. Review the story in class, having students retell what happened or change the plot. Use a hastag (#) to track the story. (So if your story is about Cinderalla, type #frenchcinderella, for example, at the end of each tweet. Then, when you do a search for that tag, all the tweets about it will come up in the order they were posted.)
- Have the kids vote and give out Twitter awards: "Funniest Tweets," "Most Random Tweets," "Weirdest Tweets," "Best Grammar," "King & Queen Twitterer," etc. (All in the target language, bien sûr.)
For more information on using Twitter in the classroom, check out some of the resources I've collected:
28 Creative Ways Teachers Are Using Twitter
An Educator's Guide to Twitter - LiveBinder
How Twitter Can Help Teachers Connect with Students
Twitter Increases Student Engagement
Twitter in the Classroom
Can Twitter Make Students Smarter?
I'd love to hear other great idea for using Twitter with students or resources you may have! I hope this helps get you going!
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