Become a more confident language teacher.
It seems like I have a new revelation of a better way to use the Write, Draw, Pass activity each time I use it. Today, I realized when using it as a story review activity that it can be an INPUT activity instead of an OUTPUT activity by leaving a copy of the story projected…
Read MoreThis morning, I stared at the pile of Write, Draw, Pass papers that my students had completed with events from El Nuevo Houdini on Friday, trying to think of what I else I could do with them to review the story. I ended up chopping up the completed papers and choosing nine sentence/illustration combos. The…
Read MoreToday, I used Write, Draw, Pass to review a story. Super fun! Instead of having the students invent sentences from out of nowhere, I asked them to write down something that happened in the first five chapter of El Nuevo Houdini. After the activity was complete, I collected the papers and showed them to the…
Read MoreWhy I didn’t think of this before, I’ll never know…but I realized this week while playing Write, Draw, Pass with my students that I can get lots of reps and stories out of what they’ve written–duh! I tell students to write simple, amusing, short sentences. This means that I end up with a lot of…
Read MoreI first played Write, Draw, Pass at our Bible Study end of the year party, and it quickly became one of my favorite party games! At a recent PD class, my colleague Ashley VanHemert pointed out how perfect it is to use as the starting point for communicative input in language classes! Ashley first made…
Read MoreWhether you call them Stations or Centers, you probably love them—and so do your students. Stations give you a laissez-faire teaching day and provide lots of movement and small group interaction for students. Stations do not, however, come without challenges. Stations often take quite a bit of prep work. For the proficiency oriented, comprehension based…
Read MoreIt’s May. If you’re lucky, you are wrapping up your last week or two of school. If you’re on the East Coast, you are staring down another month and a half of classes. Either way–the sun is shining, the birds are chirping, and you.are.done. Here are ten activities that you can use to carry through…
Read MoreIf you are in need of a low-prep, low-key interpretive activity, Mind Reading is for you! Mind Reading is a Language Gym activity from Dr. Gianfranco Conti. Dr. Conti and his colleague and frequent partner-in-crime, Steve Smith, have taught me much through their shared resources, training materials, and critical questions over the years. Mind Reading…
Read MoreThis fall, teachers are facing an unprecedented instructional challenge. While plans for re-opening school are in a constant state of flux, we know that many teachers will be required to manage students in multiple instructional contexts: in-person, online, and combinations of the two. Just as SOMOS has given thousands of teachers the confidence to step…
Read MoreThe most successful synchronous lessons are often game-based. As a parent, I have been spying on my own kids’ synchronous classes. As a curriculum coach, I’ve been debriefing synchronous lesson plans with SOMOS teachers. GAMES make online classes feel less like a chore, and they allow us to do what we miss most about being…
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