Engaging discussions in Spanish? On the second day of Spanish ONE? How is this possible?? I’ll tell you: * clear expectations and support * functional chunks * Google Apps * and three magic words Preparation We spent most of the first day of class talking about the HOW and Read more…
Interactive Notebooks were a disaster my first year. It was mostly because I jumped in feet first and just made it up as I went. And that’s okay. As Thomas Sauer is fond of saying, no one ever died of bad language instruction. But with more anticipation, planning, and having Read more…
Thank you to everyone who joined me–or tried to join me–this afternoon at my first Central States Conference! For those who couldn’t make it (or who want to review), here are some resources, including the presentation audience Nearpod responses session tweets and the handouts! Check out the ideas from the 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…
I originally set up daily chorus bellringers based on a strategy designed to improve reading fluency. I had assumed that listening and speaking skills would naturally follow, too, and results from last year’s final IPAs suggested I may have been right…on everything but listening. Enter Gianfranco Conti and The Language Gym. Since those IPA results–and Read more…
Are they still First Day Fun Stations if it’s their second time doing them? It’s not their first day of Spanish, so the element of surprise is out the window. Plus they’ve already built up their own ideas of what “fun” means in Spanish class. But there’s still too much Read more…
Puedo is for permission; quiero is for YOUR mission. Earlier in the semester, it became apparent that I needed a way for students to get what they needed, so I whipped up an interactive notebook page on Piktochart, and we ran through some gestures. (While I was at it, I included Read more…
I resolved to do less in 2015, and I achieved that, partially through Google Classroom, partially through more careful vocabulary and language selection, partially through a carefully designed focus on performance and proficiency. Some of it was just deciding to stop while I was ahead. And so this year, instead of Read more…
So my students were getting stuck at Novice Mid. Their writing has been so simple and repetitive, plus they’re getting a lot of simple little words confused when they’re interpreting. Of course they’ve seen and heard these words in context in multiple different infographs and our TPRS story, at least Read more…
Ayudando Ando sent me a list of over 50 things that the rural mountain school they sponsored needs: Of course we couldn’t get all 50+ things on the list (much less ship them). But we could use that list as a starting point for our project. And as a perfect excuse Read more…