I keep getting asked why I don’t sell all of my units for any given level in a bundle on TpT so that it would be easier to find and purchase them. Here are some reasons: My curriculum is not complete. I have almost everything that I taught in Spanish 1 on TpT, but some…
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Paperless hoarding
My husband’s real estate business is completely paperless (you can check it out here–it’s awesome), and he is constantly harassing–I mean encouraging–me to become a paperless teacher. Ha! I mean, seriously. I was just down in our “dungeon” (most people would call it a crawlspace), where all of my teacher materials are stored, and I think…
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QAR en français!
Thanks to Samantha Uebel, who sent me French translations for my QAR materials, all of you French teachers out there can rest easy knowing that you can pop into class tomorrow and try out QAR without having to do the grunt work of translating everything for yourselves!! Yippee! Click here to download the materials in French,…
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QAR Strategies for Differentiating Questions
If you attended my workshop on QAR Strategies for Differentiating Questions at iFLT this past summer or its condensed counterpart at AFLA just a few weekends ago, you will be happy to see this post! If you didn’t, I hope that you will be happy to have found it once you’ve read through it. QAR (Question-Answer Relationships)…
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CCSS Aligned L2 Reading Comprehension Questions
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…
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Comprehension Checks
It is important for all teachers to informally assess students’ comprehension throughout any lesson in any content area. When we ask a comprehension question, we use students’ response to determine whether it’s time to move on to the next topic, or if we must spend more time on whatever we are studying at the moment.…
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Special Person Interviews
Special Person Interviews build community. When done well, students find connections with all of their classmates. Teachers learn more about each one of their students, and everyone’s voice and presence is valued. And oh yeah–all the while, students are acquiring language. What’s not to love? HISTORY OF SPECIAL PERSON INTERVIEWS As far as I am…
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#authres are overrated
I think that authentic resources are overrated. This is coming from the lady that just presented at ACTFL on the importance of authentic resources, or ‘ #authres ‘, and how to use them in novice language classes… kind of a contradiction? How important are authentic resources in a language curriculum? #authres are important, but they…
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Tips for finding images online that you can use in your documents
With billions of images and other resources available with just a few clicks of your finger, it can be very difficult to use only those images that are licensed in such a way that allows you to use them in class and, for some my readers, for commercial use. It is difficult in two respects:…
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Warning about the new Pages!
To all my fellow Pages addicts, I would strongly, strongly encourage you to NOT update your iWork suite! I have been IN LOVE with Pages’ power and simplicity since I first started using it in 2009. However, the latest version eliminated many of the features that I love about Pages ’09! The new version is…
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