I first heard the idea for “Today in History”; or rather, “NOT Today in History" by reading a blog post from Justin Slocum Bailey on the Indwelling Language blog back in 2014. Click here to read the first post: and here to read the second. Recently, I have been looking for new kinds of ‘puzzles’ that … Continue reading Today in history: engage students with a simple critical thinking activity in the target language
In a Title 1 school on a Level 5 plan for improvement in the heat of Common Core adoption, the standards were a big part of our daily conversation. While I oppose the adoption of the CCSS, I do not deny that in and of themselves, the individual standards are worthy goals to work toward. … Continue reading Close reading annotations
Michele Whaley, a Russian teacher at West High School in Anchorage, invited me to her classroom in 2009 to observe a TPRS® lesson. I went in expecting to see a glorified version of Simon Says. What I saw bemused me, and it drove me to park myself in front of my TV for the next … Continue reading TPRS®/CI as Explicit Instruction
Thanks to Samantha Uebel, who sent me French translations for my QAR materials, all of you French teachers out there can rest easy knowing that you can pop into class tomorrow and try out QAR without having to do the grunt work of translating everything for yourselves!! Yippee! Click here to download the materials in French, … Continue reading QAR en français!
About two months ago, I wrote a post explaining how second language teachers can use the Common Core Anchor Standards for Reading to give depth to their reading assessments and challenge students to think critically in the target language. Read it here. Understandably, some readers were left wondering what an assessment composed of CCSS Aligned questions … Continue reading CCSS Aligned L2 Reading Comprehension Questions
My favorite kind of writing activities are the ones that are actually reading activities in disguise. Shrinking Summaries are just that: incognito reading activities that allow your students to feel the pride that comes with output and benefit from critical reading at the same time. What is a shrinking summary? To write a shrinking summary, … Continue reading Shrinking Summary: A reading activity disguised as writing
Over the last year, I have received many email requests from teachers, administrators, and conference planners that need to know how TPRS® and other Comprehensible Input strategies meet Common Core standards. Teachers must explain the connections so that they are permitted to use these best practice strategies in their classrooms, administrators seek to know whether … Continue reading TPRS®/CI and the Common Core
Grab and Go is a during reading activity. Students are seated in small groups and interact with their group members on paper as they read independently. Students write questions for their group members and answer the questions written by their group members.
Note to the reader: this post should have been published on 2/12/13. Too many distractions!! Kristy's recent post on #authres reminded me that it was sitting in my draft folder waiting to be published. ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ I had to settle to be a passive participant in #langchat tonight. … Continue reading National Standards
This is a fantastic video from Frontline about how a student's middle school experience--even in sixth grade--can predict whether or not that child will drop out of high school: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/education/dropout-nation/middle-school-moment/ The video states that if a sixth-grade student in a high-poverty school is present less than 80 percent of the time, fails math or English, … Continue reading High School Dropouts and Middle School
