Become a more confident language teacher.
Whether you are on a block schedule and are always left with time after you finish asking a story or a story carries over into a second class period and leaves you with 30 minutes of time to fill, you’ve probably wondered “what activities can I do with this story NOW?” Some of my favorite…
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The Unfair Game® is about to become your new favorite class activity, and your students will love and hate you for it. In any situation that you might be inclined to play a game of Jeopardy, Trashketball, or Grudgeball, instead… make it unfair with The Unfair Game®! The Unfair Game® is designed to be played with…
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I’ve seen a lot of posts recently by teachers that are teaching novels for their classes and feeling like it is not going well. In many ways, teaching a novel as a unit is easy: most publishing companies have provided very complete Teacher’s Guides for their novels, and a teacher simply needs to use the resources…
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Volleyball translation is a go-to activity for many teachers that have been to TPRS workshops. Essentially, students pair up and take turns reading and translating a text, helping each other when they get stuck on a word. It is an excellent activity for students and the teacher alike to check and confirm students’ comprehension of a text,…
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Instead of playing with a deck of cards, play this familiar children’s game with original cards filled with images or text as an opportunity to to get students speaking in low-risk situation even as they continue interacting with a text (’cause it’s all about the input, baby!). Before you play Go Fish Prepare students for…
Read MoreBeing a comprehensible input teacher demands that students have opportunities to produce output. Read why here. Once we understand output is not a taboo for a TCI teacher, we can start the search for fun ways to allow students to build productive confidence and competency! “People searches” are one of the fastest, easiest, and lowest-anxiety output…
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We had a small but fruitful First Second Friday meeting last night. For those of you that don’t know, Michele Whaley organized a group back in 2010 that meets once a month to discuss and practice anything and everything that might be of interest to World Language teachers. The April 2014 issue of The Language Educator featured…
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Generate comprehensible input and provide opportunities for output from a traditional vocabulary-review game that is played with a partner! This activity makes for a great sub plan component, even when your sub doesn’t speak the target language. PREPARE THE WORD RACE STORY WORKSHEET To get started, download the game template here! Once you’ve got the…
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Freeze Frame is a fun, interactive way to review a story by assigning to students to groups that create physical depictions of scenes from a story (short film, class story, novel, etc.) in ‘freeze frame’ vignettes. If you’ve been to a TPRS training in the last few years, it’s likely that you are familiar with the…
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“There is” or “There are” is one of the highest frequency word(s) in any language. In Spanish, the word “hay” is nearly unavoidable as we share stories with our students. Because it is difficult for students to form a mental picture for the word, however, the lack of visualization presents a challenge for getting the…
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