My students were laughing out loud and retelling this story in detail almost immediately. I can cite details from the story at any time, even weeks later, and get a giggle out of more than one kiddo every time. This is bar none the best TPRS story I have written. I Read more…
Correcting errors is not really a priority for me as a Spanish teacher or an English teacher anymore. Drawing attention to patterns of errors, though? That is my job. So I’ve found a colorful way to help students see the pattern and then do something about it. I first tried this collage Read more…
Each week in January I’ve featured insights on the blog from some ladies with great ideas from my PLN. This week, I chatted with Wendy Farabaugh, (@MmeFarab) who had “A rough start” to her school year, but a lot of the problems she’s facing as a young world language teacher Read more…
Goodness knows I’ve done some experimenting with portfolio platforms. I’m pretty satisfied with the VoiceThread option at the moment, but when my Pinnacle amigo, @jkylewood demonstrated Seesaw (that’s web.seesaw.me NOT seesaw.com, by the way) after #langchat amiga @alenord had already been talking it up, I saw something broader than portfolios. Now Read more…
The goal for this IPA is not just to measure performance, but also to find the right resource to inspire my students to inspire others. Here’s how. Finding the right infograph I can find SO MANY AUTHENTIC INFOGRAPHS that my students can understand halfway through their first semester of Spanish! Read more…
This page is the first in my Essential Verbs series for the interactive notebooks. We start off with just the singular first, second, and third person combined with visuals, as well as some additional novice-appropriate fundamentals to actually build a conversation. And THEN we can get into what they REALLY Read more…
Verba was one of the most exciting misiones we’ve had in Classcraft so far. When I gamified Genius Hour for the end of the semester, I set up about 10 misiones or “eventos aleatorios” for us to start each day. In one misión, the student with the most Action Points on each Read more…
Groups of 10-15 students had positive, productive conversations before break, conversations lasting fifteen minutes or more in the target language. What’s more is the conversations affirmed good feelings among collaborators and kept the conversation positive and the energy controlled and calm. I had been out sick most of the week before Read more…
I like graphic organizers, especially those that students can always have on hand. Now I haven’t taught a traditional conjugation chart in a few years, but, as Garnet Hillman once told me, the brain craves organization. I’ve also noticed my students feel more confident if they have memory devices they Read more…
A Spanish teacher learning Portuguese really does have an unfair advantage. I mean, there’s no question that I’m still in the Novice Low, maybe Novice Mid range, but I do not have the pleasure of the utter blankness that takes over when faced with letters strung together in swaths of Read more…