Ah, the affective filter, our old friend. It’s not that students can’t do what we ask most of the time, but that they have this little barrier that inches higher and higher the more they stress out. The higher the barrier inches, the less language can get through–coming or going. It Read more…
I thought we had an understanding. You can use the T-word or WordReference on practice assignments, as long as you put what you look up in bold (or CAPS if it’s a Blogger comment or something that doesn’t allow formatting). And keep it under 10% of what you’re writing. And for interpretive Read more…
“I honestly believe that if you incorporate Class Craft from the beginning and change the way portfolios work, Spanish will be everyone’s favorite class.” I generally take what the end-of-course surveys with a grain of salt, but even if Spanish won’t be EVERYONE’S favorite class, that’s still a pretty Read more…
Entry Events are the first step in my Alphabet Soup unit model, which combines Project-Based Learning (PBL), Target Language instruction (TL), Teaching Proficiency through Reading and Storytelling (TPRS), Integrated Performance Asessments (IPA), ACTFL Assessment of Performance toward Proficiency in Languages (AAPPL), and Teaching Like a Pirate (TLAP).This process gives my units a Read more…
Students need nourishment, and they rely on us to providetime, techniques, and sustenance their budding palates can handle In my quest to include everything as a baby teacher, I made it impossible to keep up with…well, anything. I constantly bit off more than I could chew instructionally speaking. And goodness knows if I couldn’t Read more…
My first PBL + TPRS/TCI story went over pretty well, so I’m trying it again. We are working on coming up with inventions that could make daily activities better and then marketing them–in two languages–for their Public Speaking class. So I decided the story would be about THE best invention Read more…
Since my mixed Spanish II/III class decided to write their competition skit about the situation in Venezuela, I have been collecting tweet to update them each day from #SOSVenezuela. I just take a little five-minute cross-section from the day, sort it into major topics for the day, and I walk Read more…
They originally wanted to make their skit for the upcoming language festival a talk show, full of celebrities and gossip. So we looked up some celebrities on People en Español (and on MSNLatino because of People’s lack of diversity–but that’s another post) and narrowed down countries we’d like to focus on. We Read more…
At an unconference you can learn about anything you want to learn about as long as you’re willing to facilitate and have enough kindred spirits in attendance. I attended my first Edcamp last week in South Carolina, and I had the pleasure and honor of co-facilitating a session on PBL Read more…
Blogging in the L2 is something that I’ve researched a good bit. Vygotsky would say it’s awesome for capitalizing on the social nature of learning, and if I may speak for Sr. Krashen, it’s also pretty nifty in how it helps lower ye olde affective filter. And everyone seems to Read more…