In case you haven’t seen it, my guide to becoming a 21st Century world language teacher is THE SINGLE MOST POPULAR THING I HAVE EVER POSTED. I collected resources from a lot of the big brains around our little Twitter PLN for this page. It’s not a “post” per se, but Read more…
We’ll celebrate at the Mexican restaurant after the language festival whether or not we take home a trophy like last time. However, if we’re going to go, we’re going to go big, and we’re going to put on a performance we can all be proud of. Once the class narrowed Read more…
Literacy expert Tim Rasinski gave me an idea for a bellringer that I think will improve students’ vocabulary, fluency, listening, reading, and speaking skills and get them hooked. Rasinski proposes an acronym for those wishing to improve students’ literacy skills, and although Rasinski’s research and strategies revolve around L1 literacy, I Read more…
If I just push play to start the lesson, I think I can get the flamenco version of “Born This Way”* to teach ser for me. One of my favorite ways of explaining ser came from a student who said you use it for “how you were made.” This is slightly closer to Read more…
My students had two requests for the weekly “opciones” assignment for next year: more music and more food. We’ll get to the food later, but I have a few ideas for how we can work some more Spanish music into students lives outside Spanish class. Since I stole Sra. Cottrell’s Read more…
Two things were missing: interpersonal interaction and sufficient authentic input. Also, engagement had been stretched a little thin, either by note-taking (although in a form not quite as dry as other methods) or a pretty solid week of writing and revising. My Spanish 3 pack needed to be exposed to more Read more…
I have been rolling this idea around in my head since last year, but just now feel ready to take it on. Below are my ideas for a unit on narcocorridos and the proposed ban on their production. Think it’ll work? What can I do to make it work better? Read more…