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 […]
I ordered 50 books from Fluency Matters in anticipation of my Spanish 2 animals unit. The thinking was that these would build students’, well, fluency, as well as their contextual vocabulary and grammar as they prepared to make a plan to help their amigos animales. I have been kind of […]
It’s a little rush of adrenaline when you catch a cheater. We language teachers, we can spot a translator sentence just skimming. That rush, though, it’s always a teeny tiny tempest of emotions: a little bit of anger and insult with a touch of vindication and “I told you so!” […]
I had a choice. In theory my students have been working on one self-improvement goal since the snow days in January. In practice not so much. The cool thing is that they can totally express to me in Spanish “No he cambiado” perfectly clearly and explain how they need their goal, […]
You know when you get a great idea at a conference that you can immediately implement Monday and change E-V-E-R-Y-T-H-I-N-G? Well this isn’t one of them. I implemented it on Tuesday. We had an interdisciplinary marketing project thing scheduled with Public Speaking for Monday. Our AATSPSC keynote speaker pointed out […]
I put out the call on Facebook and Twitter for some Spanish speakers. I was inspired by a call this summer for Introducciones from hispanohablantes. What an awesome, easy way to collect samples of native speakers for your students to listen to! However, I have spent many wasted hours and […]
First world problems are so 2015. Still, I thought that brainstorming problems they could personally relate to would inspire and motivate the young inventors in my class to come up with something, you know, useful. Little did I know that current events across the Caribbean would prove more inspiring. […]
So you make a template–with instructions repeated on the template–and they still get confused. I mean, I thought portfolios could have been smooth sailing if I could have just shared a template on on Adobe Spark or Blogger or VoiceThread. I thought Google Slides might FINALLY be able to offer that perfect mix of customization […]
Integrated Performance Assessments typically have three components based on the modes of communication: Interpretive Interpersonal Presentational In my class, each component is a separate test grade, making it easier for me to compare and contrast progress in the three modes–since I can’t technically do standards-based grading. I have a sequence that […]
David Bisbal, I still love you, but it was time to retire “Te mueves tú” last year. Last year, Nicky Jam took my pop latino novio‘s place (I am eternally grateful to Sra. Whisenhunt for the suggestion!) It was the perfect attention-getter all semester and beyond–they physically COULD NOT resist the call and response that […]