Become a more confident language teacher.
Who Said It? is a simple activity, really, and it’s excellent to use after any story or reading that has multiple characters–whether or not the text contains a large amount of dialogue. Who Said It? reviews the story, offers repeated exposure to the linguistic features in the text, and makes it easy to practice the…
Read MoreNeed a quick way for students to find a series of partners on the fly and with ease? The Kagan “Stand Up, Hand Up, Pair Up” strategy is just what you’ve been looking for! Step One: Stand Up! First step? Easy! All students STAND up! Step Two: Hand Up! Is everyone standing? Great! Put one…
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I’m still on Plan B for one of my classes. Every day, I test the waters by doing PQA at the beginning of the period, and every day they continue to talk and talk and talk. The good news is that they are great at working independently and even with partners, so even though they…
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I love using QAR with my classes, but it’s always difficult to train students how to (1) write questions themselves and (2) write questions that fit into a specific QAR category. This year, I am trying to ease my students into question writing gently before we learn actually tackle QAR. First, I gave my students…
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Today, I had to switch to Plan B. Plan B… but what’s Plan A? Plan A is personalized questions and storytelling in order to facilitate language acquisition, but sometimes Plan A just doesn’t work. This seems to be the case with my class of third-year students that I see immediately after lunch. The time slot…
Read MoreIn February, I posted an awesome idea by the seductively fun Deb Abshier on this blog: The Jigsaw Puzzle. After several moderately successful uses of the Jigsaw in class, I think that I have finally found two perfect recipes for success. FIRST CHANGE, OPTION A–Time consuming, but doesn’t require much on the tech-end. First, cut…
Read MoreI.Love.Logic.Puzzles. Specifically, I love grid logic puzzles. I’ve been addicted to them since I was in middle school. There is something so wonderfully satisfying about unlocking the key to the puzzle that has had you stumped for the last 20 minutes and, with a flurry of your pencil, filling the entire rest of the chart…
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Write Draw Pass is fast becoming one of my favorite activities for stories, and there is no end to the possibilities.It seems like I have a new revelation of a better way to use the Write, Draw, Pass activity each time I use it! Today, I realized when using it as a story review activity…
Read MoreThe perfect song to kick off your Hispanic Heritage Month Celebration!! Gina Chávez is from Austin, Texas, and her family is Mexican. She did not grow up speaking Spanish, but studied abroad in Argentina in college. She also spent time teaching English in El Salvador and later established a fund to help some of the…
Read More¡Feliz Mes de la Hispanidad! Today marks the beginning of Hispanic Heritage Month in the United States, and I have been working hard to create readings to discuss our nation’s Hispanic heritage with my students during this month-long celebration. I will be posting the readings on TpT as I finish them, but for starters I…
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