If you've been to a TPRS® training in the last five years (or more), it's likely that you are familiar with the "Freeze Frame" activity. I know that Carol Gaab often lists it as an activity to use when reading novels from TPRS Publishing, and many of my favorite bloggers have shared their versions of … Continue reading Freeze Frame
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, … Continue reading QAR en français!
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) … Continue reading QAR Strategies for Differentiating Questions
Pencil Grab is a super simple activity that I learned from Carmen Andrews-Sanchez via Kristin Duncan’s blog. It’s so simple and so fun! I pair up students and give each one a pencil. Then, I say a series of true or false statements, and students try to grab a pencil before their partner does anytime that … Continue reading Pencil Grab True-False game
It's a matching activity in disguise! Well, not so much in disguise as pretending to be cool. 'Cada oveja con su pareja' is the Spanish equivalent of 'Birds of a feather flock together'. I'd love to hear if there is a similar expression in other languages (post them in comments, if so!). Matching activities are … Continue reading Cada oveja con su pareja
It's pretty easy to come up with many different ways to review portions of a story, but I've always had trouble thinking of unique activities that allow students to re-generate an entire text. Cynthia Hitz's "Back At'cha" works well for this, as does creating a Class Storybook. These activities are great, because they allow the … Continue reading Story Strips Activity
A great reading activity shared by Maris Hawkins!
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 … Continue reading CCSS Aligned L2 Reading Comprehension Questions
My favorite kind of writing activities are the ones that are actually reading activities in disguise. Shrinking Summaries are just that: incognito reading activities that allow your students to feel the pride that comes with output and benefit from critical reading at the same time. What is a shrinking summary? To write a shrinking summary, … Continue reading Shrinking Summary: A reading activity disguised as writing
I love this simple activity that I found on Pinterest because it is just so adaptable and takes zero preparation! As Comprehensible Input teachers, we are always looking for new ways to revisit stories, readings, and discussions so as to provide students with additional repetitions of target structures. Jeopardy Q&A is backward questioning--providing students with … Continue reading Jeopardy Q&A
