Wooly Week Day 4 - New Support Materials

It's the second-to-last day of Wooly Week, and buckle up, because I have a LOT to share.

Mind you, there's no single, big-ticket item today, but there are a lot great things that you'll definitely want to hear about.

And then tomorrow will be the last day of Wooly Week. And I've got something extra special to close out the week. You'll want to check that out. [Chuckles malevolently]

BILLY Y LAS BOTAS GRAPHIC NOVEL:
The Online Curriculum

In the fall, I released my first graphic novel, Billy y las Botas.

It was a success beyond my highest hopes, selling out of both the first and second printing very quickly. Fortunately, the third printing will be in my hands within weeks!

Today, I'm releasing something that will give even more support to the PRO users who have bought (or who plan to buy) class sets of these graphic novels.

Today, I release the Graphic Novel PRO curriculum.

People who buy class sets of 10 or more graphic novels will receive a unique code in their email that unlocks the graphic novel curriculum (i.e. nuggets) on their account and, more importantly, that of their students.

If you already bought a class set, you'll be getting a code in the mail in the next 48 hours. If you don't receive it by Monday, please respond to this email and let us know.

An example of one question from the 100+ activities available in the online graphic novel curriculum.

Some important notes about this new online curriculum:

• You must be a PRO user to access this curriculum. If you are a BASIC user, you'll still get a code, and you can apply it at any time, but you won't actually gain access to the curriculum until you upgrade to PRO.
• Only customers who have bought 10 or more books will gain access. At this time, there is no other way to gain access to the online curriculum.
• Once you gain access, you will never lose it (as long as you keep your subscription active).

New Support Documents:
Slideshow of Stills

Starting today, all stories have a new support document in the "Extras" tab called "Slideshow of Stills". This document, like all resource documents, is available for PRO users.

Quite simply, the document is a large collection of still photos taken from the videos.

Why do you need this document?

Because using stills is one of the best ways to introduce a video.

Once you click play on a video, it belongs to your students. There's nothing you can do about that. They're going to form opinions about it, get attached to it (or not), and they'll know all the big surprises that the video has to offer.

But, if instead, you start by showing them screenshots of the video and talking about it with them (in Spanish, of course), a few things happen:

• You can front-load structures and vocabulary, so they're better prepared for the video.
• The class can make predictions about what will happen.
• Talking about the visuals adds a whole new layer of language, separate from the music's lyrics, which allows you to better scale the language of any video up or down to meet the needs or your students.

For a demonstration on how to teach with still images, I recommend you watch my tutorials on teaching with a graphic novel. Although the tutorials are about the graphic novel, the concepts are exactly the same.

Embedded Readings

Embedded Readings are not a new type of resource, but I want to let you know that today I added a few more embedded readings for PRO subscribers.

The following embedded readings are new:

• La Dentista
• El Recreo Ha Terminado
• ¿Adónde Vas?
• El Banco
• No Lo Tengo
• Billy la Bufanda Enseña Los Animales

A big thanks to Kelly Ferguson who wrote the beginner versions and to Angel Benito who wrote the advanced versions.

You can find the embedded readings in the "Extras" tab.

Embedded readings, like all support documents, are available only for PRO subscribers.

Site Improvements:
Viewing Student Progress

It's no secret that the teacher's view of student progress is one of the weaker areas on SenorWooly.com.

Therefore, it should please many of you that I have finally started to make some improvements in that area.

Improvement #1:Download Progress

Now, teachers can download a document containing all student progress. For those who use Sr. Wooly Nuggets for grades, this feature will be a godsend. You can find this feature on any of the individual story pages under "Class Progress".

Improvement #2: Details

For each assignment, teachers can now click on a "Details" button next to each student name. Doing so reveals a dropdown of their work on each assignment, how much they completed, and when they finished.

NOTE: If you see "No timestamp", that means the student did the work before this feature was implemented.