I’m not really happy with the jigsaw model for Project-Based Learning that I instituted for our festival project and school supply drive last yer. It did not really fit those kiddos–who are now in my Spanish II classes. In retrospect, I don’t think it really fit the projects, either. So instead, I think Read more…
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…
Last fall, the Civics and Public Speaking teachers popped in my lonely little windowless room with a proposal for a unit for the sophomores–a PBL proposal no less: a proposal to let me in on the action. Public Speaking had done cool things with developing and marketing products in the Read more…
Can you tell what this student is interested based on her word cloud? Word clouds are a great way for students to analyze authentic texts and determine the vocabulary they need to talk about something that interests them. They can also help reinforce basic vocabulary like articles and prepositions, but Read more…
I spent less than 15 minutes in front of class the first day. I explained the stations and set them loose. I wandered around just watching, troubleshooting here and there, suggesting where to go next as a group or individual wrapped up an activity. I think I’ll do this every Read more…
Last year we made piñatas for Día del Niño. This year, we made maracas to accompany our musical performance at the local language festival in April. Since each student chose a specialty, and the music group finished pretty early, I set them to finding videos to create the musical instruments 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…
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…
I am determined to prove that Genius Hour is possible at the novice level in world language classes, without completely sacrificing target language time. I believe that the proper scaffolding allows students to pursue their passions in the target language at whatever level. Now, students won’t necessarily be making Earth-shattering Read more…