Caretaker letter for Día de Muertos: Free template!

Many Spanish teachers will soon begin learning about Día de Muertos (Day of the Dead) and its related celebrations throughout América Latina. One hard part about this time of year is navigating conversations with caretakers who aren’t sure that they want their children to participate in lessons about Día de Muertos or any other celebration,…

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Reduce, Reuse, Recycle – Stick with what works in the classroom!

Yesterday was Earth Day 2020, and I celebrated with a romp through the woods and a spontaneous interview with Elicia Cárdenas during our #SOMOSathome launch party. The three big questions were: What have you REDUCED in your teaching in recent years? What activities do you REUSE over and over again? How do you RECYCLE content…

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What is Proficiency Oriented Language Instruction?

As language teachers, our goal for our students is to be more proficient in the target language when they complete our course than when they began. We probably have other goals for our students (being more kind, more empathetic, more responsible, more culturally aware), but all of these objectives fit into the overarching mission of…

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Weekend Chat: 10 ways to talk with students about the weekend

When I first ditched the textbook, Weekend Chats was one of the very first routines that I learned about and started using in class. I was introduced to it by Michele Whaley, and I remember reading about it on Ben Slavic’s blog soon thereafter. I used Ben’s idea of having students illustrate posters of places…

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