Become a more confident language teacher.
It’s a matching activity in disguise! Well, not so much in disguise as pretending to be cool. ‘Cada oveja con su pareja’ is the Spanish equivalent of ‘Birds of a feather flock together’. I’d love to hear if there is a similar expression in other languages (post them in comments, if so!). Matching activities are…
Read MoreI think that I have thought of a good way to add value to Wordoku puzzles. (A Wordoku is a Sudoku puzzle that contains words instead of numbers.) I’ve created several Wordoku puzzles for my students to use that contain thematic vocabulary. (Click on this link to see some examples.) I like having puzzles on…
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Have you ever made a time capsule? I never made one intentionally, but there was this small space between my classroom cabinets and the wall that I was not aware of until student projects started disappearing from on top of the cabinets…I tried everything to pull them back out of that 8′ deep hole, but…
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“Odd one out” is a fun game commonly played by language teachers, whether first or second+. You may have played it under a different name, or without naming it at all! The basic concept is that students are given a list of three to four items, and they must identify the “odd one out”–the item that…
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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…
Read MoreMy 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,…
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I am a very bossy person by nature, and unfortunately I didn’t realize it until right after I graduated from high school. By the grace of God, I’ve learned how to tame my nasty natural instincts…although it’s not always easy! Being married helps 🙂 I think that this is why the game that I’m about…
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Scott Benedict is the king of assessment, so if you have never before pondered accurate assessment, standards-based assessment, etc., you should probably hop on over to his site, Teach for June, and spend the next few weeks there before you come back and finish reading this post. If you have already reached the conclusion that it…
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I used this activity for the first time as an icebreaker at our MOPS group, and it was so fun! I love using it in class, because it is a great way to give everyone an opportunity to speak without eliminating teacher-guided discussion. So here’s what you do: Decide how many groups you want to…
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Some of you may know that I have the mother of all multi-level classes this year: 6th-12th grade, 1st-7th year Spanish. I asked parents and students for grace during the first few weeks as I figured out how to meet everyone’s needs, and they did. We are now finishing up week four, and I have a…
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