Become a more confident language teacher.
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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Teaching Proficiency through Reading and Storytelling (TPRS®) is a method for teaching language in which the teacher and students co-create stories. While some teachers prefer to create stories from scratch, many others have found it helpful to have a starting point–a script– and there are many scripts available to language teachers. Every script is an…
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As language teachers begin to consider implementing Standards Based Grading, a question quickly arises: what standards should I be grading? Typically, Standards Based Grading in language classes means basing student grades on their interpretive, presentational, and possibly interpersonal performance on summative assessments. Students complete interpretive reading and listening tasks and presentational writing and/or speaking tasks,…
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I grew up in New York. As I began traveling to faraway lands, I’d answer the question, “Where are you from?” with “The US, New York!”. The reaction from the listener almost always had something to do with the Yankees, or Broadway, or Times Square, or simply an exclamation of how exciting that must be.…
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This is a guest post authored by Elicia Cárdenas, Director of Training for The Comprehensible Classroom. In response to the many atrocities that our nation has witnessed at the expense of Black people–and other people–, more and more discussions are happening online and in-person about racism and anti-racism. It is wonderful to see educators coming…
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If we want language to come OUT of our students’ mouths, we must get language IN to their heads. They need INput so that they can produce OUTput. » Input is reading and listening » Output is speaking and writing This is common sense. A learner cannot utter an expression in a new language if…
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The outcome of an assessment is never entirely dependent on student competency. There are a bazillion factors that influence student performance on an exam, and truly very few of them give us information about how well the student knows the material. With regard to assessment, it is our responsibility as teachers to limit the influence of those…
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Here in Alaska, we just wrapped up an incredible conference. Bill VanPatten of MSU and Scott Benedict of Teach for June were our Keynote speakers, and they joined with World Language teachers from across the state to inspire and challenge my ideas on language teaching and acquisition. I tweeted like a maniac, so check out #afla15…
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For my student’s writing assessment today, I allowed them to “choose their target”. I gave them the expectation for what Advanced, Proficient, and Developing skill level would look like and let them choose how to proceed. Proficiency-based Performance Assessment All assessments in my classes are Performance assessments that are proficiency-based. Remember that Proficiency is what…
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