Become a more confident language teacher.
Running Dictation is a favorite activity among world language teachers, conceived by Jason Fritze and first taught to me by Michele Whaley. I first shared it on The Comprehensible Classroom blog here in 2011. In this high-energy game, students take turns with teammates to run to a poster, memorize a statement, and race back to…
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This guest post was written by Alyssa Blask Campbell, Founder of Seed & Sew. Alyssa has a M.Ed. in Early Childhood. Alyssa co-created the Collaborative Emotion Processing (CEP) method and now works with individuals, families, and organizations throughout the US and Canada to raise emotionally intelligent humans. Seed & Sew serves people all around the world…
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In the past weeks I have been flooded with questions from teachers looking for practical help in the area of classroom management. It’s no surprise, really, because winter is hard. Sunlight is fleeting and it has been very, very cold. As fate would have it, one of the people whose advice I respect the most…
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You have done your research and planned your year with lessons and activities that are guaranteed to help your students make forward progress on the path to proficiency. Your planned lessons are input-rich and you know how to keep it comprehensible. You can’t fail! …except, you are failing. You’re a few days in…a few weeks in maybe…and…
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Reading and listening are the core components of comprehension based language classes. We know that students acquire language when they hear and read messages that they understand–so read and listen they will! Sometimes, we share short, easily digestible texts with students. Other times, we need to read a text of a significant length in order…
Read MoreNote to the reader: This post was reviewed following an email to Jon & I by a reader in June 2020. Jon published a new blog post in response – Read it here. I met Jon Cowart for the first time at iFLT 2014 in Denver, and his passion for teaching kids in urban, low-income settings…
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On the last morning of iFLT16, I decided to visit the language labs one last time. There were many great sessions that I would have liked to attend, but I figured that I could read about the content of most of them online or interrogate a friend that was able to attend. I wanted to…
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Do you ever just need a day? You look at your lesson plans and think, “I…just…can’t”? A few days ago, I had a day. I got some news that knocked me out emotionally, and since I was 39 1/2 weeks pregnant (now 40 weeks pregnant…come on girl!….)…I just needed a day. I’m not teaching, but I had my three…
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Here in Alaska, we just wrapped up an incredible conference. Bill VanPatten of MSU and Scott Benedict of Teach for June were our Keynote speakers, and they joined with World Language teachers from across the state to inspire and challenge my ideas on language teaching and acquisition. I tweeted like a maniac, so check out #afla15…
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Because we know that students acquire language through comprehensible input, finding make-up work for students that miss class that actually helps them to make up what was missed is a HUGE challenge. I’m going to share some things that I have done, and I ask that you would add what you’ve done in the comments!! The most important…
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