Become a more confident language teacher.
March is Women’s History Month, and we have the BEST resource for language teachers looking to celebrate amazing women in their language classes! We have paperless, printable, projectable, multi-version biographical texts about 31 inspiring women from throughout history that represent many different cultures and career fields. Here are 10 ways to use our Women’s History…
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If you are a content-based language teacher, Shared Reading is likely a big part of your classes. Whether you are reading a story you have co-created with your students, an article, or a descriptive slideshow that came with your curriculum, it is important to use strategies that keep your students engaged with and attending to…
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Note to the reader: This was originally published as a guest post on the CI Peek blog, which has been archived. Some links and references have been updated for this new publication. Of all the different kinds of things that you do with your students—games, conversation, grammar or vocabulary drills, cultural exploration, etc.—what do you…
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Running Dictation is a favorite activity among world language teachers, conceived by Jason Fritze and first taught to me by Michele Whaley. I first shared it on The Comprehensible Classroom blog here in 2011. In this high-energy game, students take turns with teammates to run to a poster, memorize a statement, and race back to…
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As teachers are trying to decide if a text is a good fit for their learners, they will often ask us the question, “What ACTFL Level is this text?”. Unfortunately, it’s a question that we can’t usually answer, and I want to explain why. ACTFL Proficiency Guidelines do not describe texts; they describe people. Specifically,…
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Guest post by Meghan Loveless, Assistant Curriculum Developer for the Comprehensible Classroom I’m always looking for new activities that I can use to get my students on their feet and moving around the room while still engaged with input. When Hayley Ross, who is an incredible English Teacher in my hallway, shared with me a…
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If you are in need of a low-prep, low-key interpretive activity, Mind Reading is for you! Mind Reading is a Language Gym activity from Dr. Gianfranco Conti. Dr. Conti and his colleague and frequent partner-in-crime, Steve Smith, have taught me much through their shared resources, training materials, and critical questions over the years. Mind Reading…
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Alphaboxes is a fairly common activity that is most often used at the elementary level for the purpose of reviewing content. As I worked with Meghan Loveless to finish up the last of the Flex units this spring, she suggested we find an Acquisition-friendly way to use it in the curriculum. We did, and we…
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An Annotation Walk is a simple reading activity that will help learners process and connect with a text and provide them with an opportunity to move around the room and maintain a safe distance between classmates. Meghan Loveless, who is a teacher in Colorado, designed this activity to get more mileage out of Annotation activity…
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