It’s May. If you’re lucky, you are wrapping up your last week or two of school. If you’re on the East Coast, you are staring down another month and a half of classes. Either way–the sun is shining, the birds are chirping, and you.are.done. Here are ten activities that you can use to carry through…
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Bottle Flipping and Trick Shots in language classes
Every year has its trends. I think the consensus for top 3 trends of last school year was bottle flipping, Harambe (RIP), and Fidget Spinners. Fun stuff 😉 On Friday night, we had our second NYVTy CI meeting. As always happens when you get a bunch of language teachers together in a room talking about…
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How to skip Christmas in Spanish and not be a Grinch
The time between Thanksgiving Break and Winter Break was always one of my favorite times of the year in class–it’s also one of the hardest because no one has their head in the game! I LOVED teaching about Christmas traditions from Spanish speaking countries. I LOVED using the commercials for the Spanish Christmas lottery (general…
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Food Unit in Spanish
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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MovieTalk + TPRS® = Magic
MovieTalk has quickly become a favorite strategy for providing comprehensible input to language learners since Michele Whaley brought it to the TCI world in 2012. Developed by Dr. Ashley Hastings as the listening module for the Focal Skills ESL program, MovieTalk is an incredibly effective activity because it provides loads of comprehensible input to students. I just…
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Learn language with the Elimination RPG… even if you don’t yet speak any of the language!!
Note to the reader: This post talks about a popular party game that has long been called “Mafia”, although I no longer advocate for calling it by that name. Mafia is a term that refers to crime organizations that are often associated with specific countries and cultures; most notably, Italian, Russian, Japanese, and Irish. In the same…
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Curriculum support for teachers using my Levels 1-2
A good number of you read to the end of yesterday’s post, but just to make sure I catch everyone– Sara Chronister, a Spanish teacher that has been using my curriculum units, started a Facebook group for curriculum support and collaboration for my Spanish Levels 1 and 2. I am really excited about this group and thankful…
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10 CI Activities for when you just can’t
Do you ever just need a day? You look at your lesson plans and think, “I…just…can’t”? A few days ago, I had a day. I got some news that knocked me out emotionally, and since I was 39 1/2 weeks pregnant (now 40 weeks pregnant…come on girl!….)…I just needed a day. I’m not teaching, but I had my three…
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Be like Bill.
Does anyone else have a Facebook newsfeed that is completely filled with ‘Be like Bill’ graphics? I haven’t generated one for myself, but I have seen lots and lots and LOTS over the past few days. The app that creates them notices a trend in your Facebook activity and turns it into a snarky meme that ends with…
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Formal Lesson Plans
This is a really fun post for me! After I graduated high school, the my alma mater back in CNY hired a really awesome Spanish teacher to replace one of mine that retired. My younger siblings LOVED her class, and I have saved several projects that my sister completed as a student in her class to use…
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