Women’s History Month in French and Spanish classes

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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6 strategies to spice up a Shared Reading

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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READING IS BREATHING – Give your students oxygen!

Note to the reader: This was originally published as a guest post on the CI Peek blog, which has been archived.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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Try this instead: Running Dictation Plan B

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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“What ACTFL level is this text?”

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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Mind Reading: an interpretive activity

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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