I have a side job, but it’s not that I need the money. I need the peace of mind the job itself brings. I have gone through months where I could barely make myself write, much less grade or plan a lesson: things that usually made me feel confident and creative. Read more…
It was me and two other English teachers. We about had a knock-down-drag-out with a teaching guru visiting our district who told us in no uncertain terms: RUBRICS ARE BAD. We were told that the rubrics were slayers of creativity, that they stunted our students, and moreover, they were for Read more…
So throwing a bunch of ideas into Common Curriculum and then sorting them out as I went, it worked super well today! I managed to connect grammar, music, and project goals as if I weren’t kind of mentally checked out before Spring Break Part 2 already. I could have been a little Read more…
When I am planning my lessons for the week, there are several questions I try to ask myself–actually about 25. A part of me feels like I have to ask myself all of these questions every day to be connected, but that can’t be right. There simply aren’t hours in the Read more…
I could hear Dave Burgess scolding me every second I wasted that first week. I should have had the map handouts printed and copied, waiting on tables with the necessary number of markers for the activity with nice, neat SMARTboard pages with complete maps (sorry, Uruguay–you weren’t in the clipart) 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…
The first day will be a day of PIRATE stations this year. After Tuesday’s #TLAP chat, I’m all revved up to start the year with choice and activities that get students engaging with the target language from the start. I got some ideas from some whiz-bang kickoffs from colleagues who Read more…
It’s that magical time of year when students’ research and reflection pay off and come together in an experience that is both enlightening and engaging for the rest of the class. I hope. The topics are diverse, and I want to give students as much choice in the outcome as Read more…
We are founding a new country with new laws, new leaders, and above all, a new language. No, this is not political commentary (however timely such a revolution might be), but an exercise I’m trying to flesh out to help kick off the new year. I would like to do Read more…
Early in Teach Like a PIRATE, Dave Burgess asks three critical questions about the passions that drive us as teachers: content passion, professional passion, and personal passion. To be perfectly honest, I had a hard time coming up with anything remotely satisfactory for the content question: “of all of the Read more…