collaboration
Seesaw vs Flipgrid
I sometimes wonder if I even need Flipgrid. Honestly, I feel like Seesaw can do everything Flipgrid can do better. Almost.
family
Madre del alma or “How did you learn Spanish?”
It’s really hard to explain how I learned Spanish without admitting failure. Oh, I aced all of the college and graduate classes. But a significant factor in my current fluency has always been relationships. The most important relationship in my life that Spanish has made possible is indeed a family Read more…
Reflective Teaching
Winners, Losers, and Participation Trophies
A motivational speaker once stood up and told all of our entire student body that they will have to cut some people loose if they want to succeed, that they need to separate themselves from certain friends who are bringing them down. While I cannot deny the truth–or urgency–of his Read more…
authentic texts
Gaming Language – A novice PBL unit
I started playing Pokemon GO! for my students and now I can’t stop. That’s right. It’s for work. As I harnessed the power of the Netflix binge with the telenovela unit, I need to harness the power of Pokemon, or rather of gaming, to “catch ’em all” in class this Read more…
authentic texts
Authentic Texts as Windows: Products and Perspectives
When I was in college, interpreting Spanish was like looking through a window. A very thick, very small, very dirty window. I could perceive what I was looking at, but just barely, and with great effort. You know how people used oiled skins to cover windows in medieval times? They Read more…
CI
The Best Worst First Day Ever
It almost didn’t even matter that my SMARTboard speakers wouldn’t work and that the broken air conditioning made my room so humid that I was literally slipping and sliding by the end of the day. And working on revisions to my syllabus up until the bell (if we had one) before my first Read more…
CI
HOW and WHY? The Most Essential Essential Questions for Spanish I EVER
Spanish I is going to be one big PBL project this year, all leading up to the answers to the biggest driving question in any novice Spanish class: Spanish: HOW and WHY? In fact, forget “Spanish I” or even “Novice Spanish:–this is the new title for our students’ first official Read more…
authentic texts
¡Pokemon VAMOS! Pokemon GO! for Spanish Class
Gaming, fantasy, escapism. I informally surveyed my soon-to-be students about their interests after exams last year, and these were the themes I gathered from their responses. Half of my soon-to-be students are way into videogames, from NBA 2K16 to Civ, and the other half are way into fantasy, from Star Read more…
CI
My Job – #iFLT16 Day 3
There is only one thing I really have to do as a language teacher: Make my students feel good. As my CSCTFL amiga and unofficial coach for the day, Michelle, said, it’s simple, but it ain’t easy. So many things go into making a student feel good! Before I start enumerating the many, Read more…
CI
Coming Together – #iFLT16 Day 2
I panicked. Tuesday night, after an hour and no fewer than 68 repetitions of the target structure, all I could get was something like Hatshepsut capisce kaput. I still remembered Shto eta? from Camp Musicuentos and could name blue and green balls. But NOTHING new from an hour’s worth of comprehensible Read more…