Many of us pursued a career as a Spanish teacher because at some point we became connected to a Spanish speaking culture. Maybe we were born into one, maybe we traveled, maybe we studied abroad, maybe we met a cute guy at a salsa lesson and now we’re married and have a pile of salsa-dancing…
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An 8.2 earthquake shook southern Mexico on September 7, leaving Oaxaca completely devastated. It was the strongest earthquake that Mexico had felt in 100 years. Just 12 days later–when relief efforts were still in their infancy and aftershocks continued to rock the area–a second earthquake of magnitude 7.2 struck central Mexico. The 7.1 quake occurred…
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La paz empieza conmigo. Say it! This article about today’s terrorist attack in Barcelona is written in super simple Spanish–almost entirely cognates–so that you can use it with students that just began their Spanish study. Even still, it will not be ‘highly comprehensible’ to fresh Spanish students because it is lengthy. It is up to you…
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Today and tomorrow (May 9-10, 2017) is the annual Teachers Pay Teachers sale, and I want to share with you some of my favorite teacher-authors so that you can stock up on materials from their stores!! While many of us sell complete units on TpT that we have created for our own classes, there is…
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News summaries in the target language are such an easy way to provide cultural, comprehensible input to your students. You can write summaries that are as simplified as your students need in order to be comprehensible to them. Inspired by Maris Hawkins, I began publishing weekly news summaries of stories from the Spanish-speaking world last spring, in Spanish, written for…
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As a follow-up to our donation to their Ecuador Earthquake Relief fund, Samaritan’s Purse sent me this update about the work that they have done in Ecuador to date. I am sharing it here because so many of you contributed! As always, I am so pleased with their stewardship of the funds that we donated.…
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Thank you, Gracias, Merci, Danke, Grazie… The Art for Ecuador fundraiser wrapped up 10 days ago, and in total we raised over $7000.00 (that I know about–not all of it went through our CrowdRise campaign). I am so grateful to all of you for sharing the articles about the Ecuador earthquake and Gianina’s project with…
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I just heard from some more teachers today that are working on fundraisers for our Art for Ecuador CrowdRise campaign! If your class is doing a fundraiser for Ecuador earthquake relief efforts, inspired by Gianina’s story, please contribute the funds raised to our CrowdRise campaign by this Friday, May 7, so that we can see…
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There is one week left in our CrowdRise campaign to show students that they CAN make a difference and raise money for earthquake relief efforts in Ecuador. Rincon Valley Middle School in California wrapped up their fundraiser today with a smashing $1,005.00 raised! If you are looking for ways to continue talking about the earthquake…
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Faith Laux shared with me a summary that she wrote about the story of a brave rescue dog that gave his life to earthquake relief efforts in Ecuador. She gave me permission to share the story here, and I’ve written a second, even more simplified summary so that more teachers can use it in their classes. Thank you…
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