Become a more confident language teacher.
I just got back from another Cooperative/Social Emotional Learning class session with tons of ideas from the brilliant minds of my colleagues. The course followed an intensive, full-day workshop with a trainer from Kagan Cooperative Learning, and it is run by the district Director of World Languages, and course credit is offered through University of…
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*Reflection, 5 years later…I left the classroom three years ago, and I have attended many, many conferences and workshops since then. I’ve read a lot of research, books, and blogs, and I think that I can say honestly that I have considered all of it. I am confident that output doesn’t lead to language acquisition, so when I said…
Read MoreHere is a communicative activity that I did with my Spanish A students. Students need to interview classmates with the questions provided, and each classmate should sign their paper twice. (Each students will end up with a total of 24 signatures provided by 12 classmates.) Afterward, each student should compare him or herself to three…
Read MoreHere are some other Cooperative Learning ideas that are TPRS-compatible. They make for great brain breaks and opportunities to build the student’s comfort with speaking in the target language. For each activity, students should use the Stand-up/Hand-up/Pair-up structure in order to find a series of partners. Give students just two or three minutes (enough time…
Read MoreHere’s another idea inspired by the fabulous Diana Painter (how’s that for a link, Diana?!) at our Cooperative Learning class on Wednesday. For this one, her brilliance came from just being difficult and lying about where she had spent the previous weekend during an otherwise serious activity. This activity (download the worksheet here) starts out…
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I’ve used ‘Two Truths and a Lie’ many times in the past for various activities; usually for grammar related purposes (practicing a particular tense or verb), but this is a TPRS variation that can also Cooperative-Learning friendly! Two Truths and a Lie is an activity in which students develop two statements that are true about…
Read MoreWe had our first Cooperative Learning class meeting last night, and thanks to some high-quality ‘Think-Pair-Sharing’ with the lovely, hilarious, and supremely talented Ms. Diana Painter, I left with some great ideas about how to use Cooperative Learning structures with TPRS. This was one of her ideas for using the Kagan structure ‘Hands-Up, Stand-Up, Pair-Up’…
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