Crawling isn’t bad walking; it’s just a developmental stage– and we should view the stages of language acquisition in the same way.
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Crawling isn’t bad walking
Arcoíris dice game for class
Playing input-focused games in class can be a great way to boost student motivation, and Arcoíris, or ‘Rainbow’, is a game that you’ll be excited to add to your repertoire for the coming school year. Arcoíris is a simple group game in which group mates are competing against each other to earn the most cards…
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Free self-paced training for Somos teachers
Most of our readers are now on summer vacation, and we hope that you are taking your vacation seriously– whatever that looks like to you. Splash in rivers, get your hands dirty in your garden, sip icy cold beverages, play with your pets and your kids, veg out on the couch, clean out your closets……
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3 ways to co-create inclusive stories
Teaching Proficiency through Reading and Storytelling (TPRS®) is a method for teaching language in which the teacher and students co-create stories. While some teachers prefer to create stories from scratch, many others have found it helpful to have a starting point–a script– and there are many scripts available to language teachers. Every script is an…
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TpT Sale is coming: 3 tips to get ready
IT’S TEACHER APPRECIATION WEEK! …and almost time for TeachersPayTeachers’ annual Teacher Appreciation Sale. The Comprehensible Classroom is IN! On May 4-5, teachers can save up to 25% on EVERY product that we sell: lesson plans, curriculum bundles, digital resources… everything! Knowing that you can get a deal NOW can sometimes leave to frantic shopping. With…
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What standards should I set for my language students?
As language teachers begin to consider implementing Standards Based Grading, a question quickly arises: what standards should I be grading? Typically, Standards Based Grading in language classes means basing student grades on their interpretive, presentational, and possibly interpersonal performance on summative assessments. Students complete interpretive reading and listening tasks and presentational writing and/or speaking tasks,…
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Calibrate scores to grade with confidence
When a teacher is working alone to figure out how to grade students’ work in reference to a standards-based rubric, it can feel very daunting. It is hard to feel confident that you are making sound determinations when you are looking only at pieces of evidence produced by your own students. For that reason, teachers…
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Annotation Walk Reading activity
An Annotation Walk is a simple reading activity that will help learners process and connect with a text and provide them with an opportunity to move around the room and maintain a safe distance between classmates. Meghan Loveless, who is a teacher in Colorado, designed this activity to get more mileage out of Annotation activity…
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Easy midterms & finals for language classes
In language classes, we believe that midterms and finals should be easy for teachers and easy for students. But before I tell you why, let me tell you a little story. The First Year Teacher and the Semester Final Once upon a time, there was a middle school Spanish teacher. It was her first year…
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FREE lesson plans: 2020 Lottery Anuncio
Each year, I wait with great anticipation to see what story the National Lottery Commission will share through their annual anuncio for the National Spanish Christmas Lottery. These stories, told in short films, are a great teaching tool to use in class to promote a spirit of generosity and community among our students. Over the…
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