Become a more confident language teacher.
It has been a long time since I have mentioned Grow Story Grow on this blog–years, maybe! As we near the end of the year (today was the last day of classes here in Anchorage, yahoo!) and teachers are thinking about what to change and what materials to order for the 2014-2015 school year, I want…
Read MoreI recently discovered this awesome website: http://www.superlame.com. Don’t let the title fool you–it’s great! Superlame allows students to upload photos and add speech, thought, etc. bubbles with text to them. What I love about this–as opposed to other, similar websites–is the ease of use. There are no ‘catches’ here! Unlike Bubblr (which requires students to use photos…
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Thank you to November’s winner, Kristin Duncan, for responding to my HELP! Tweet about ideas for the December giveaway. Thanks to her brilliant mind, I am very excited to announce that this month, one of my lucky readers will win a year-long subscription to http://www.textivate.com. I blogged about this awesome resource back in 2012, and…
Read MoreNovember is racing along, and so it is high time that I post this month’s giveaway, don’t you think? This month, we celebrate Thanksgiving here in the U.S., and so our theme for this giveaway is going to be thankfulness. Nothing original, of course, but I hope that it will be a good way to share some…
Read MoreThe Immigrant Archive Project is a really neat website that I found through the Esperanza Teacher’s Guide. It contains pages upon pages of videos of immigrants to the United States telling their stories. The possibilities for classroom use of this site are endless! The activity that is published in Chapter 9 of the Esperanza’s Teacher’s…
Read MoreThis.Prezi.Is.Awesome. Thanks to @vmorgana for Tweeting it out this morning! It explains various storytelling techniques, but also provides a compelling argument for how and why storytelling is an effective method of instruction in any content area. Awesome! …and four hours later, this great article Tweeted by @SenorG, ACTFL Teacher of the Year, about the power of…
Read MoreThis is a fantastic video from Frontline about how a student’s middle school experience–even in sixth grade–can predict whether or not that child will drop out of high school: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/education/dropout-nation/middle-school-moment/ The video states that if a sixth-grade student in a high-poverty school is present less than 80 percent of the time, fails math or English,…
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Original post: October 2012 I know that I am way behind the eight ball on this one, and I have a tendency to exaggerate things, but… This is the best 2.0 tool for comprehensible input classrooms. I only say that because I can’t think of one that I like better. This is EASY for teachers…
Read MoreHere is the link to a visuals database for world language classrooms, created by the University of Pittsburg. It has zillions of uses, one of which could be selecting one image to use as a class prompt for a universal screener or other writing or speaking assessment. You could print out one and leave it…
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