Become a more confident language teacher.
Something that I lovetty love love about the ability to connect with other teachers via Ye Grande Ole Internet is the way that ideas expand exponentially as they are kicked back and forth among us. Fan N Pick has long been one of my favorite Kagan Cooperative Learning structures, and I used it quite often…
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Waaaaay back when I was a baby language teacher, I attended a writing workshop for world language teachers here in Anchorage. Dr. Amy Wright, then-professor at the University of Alaska-Fairbanks walked us through a powerful strategy to personalize and break down a complex text. In Dr. Wright’s workshop, we worked with an excerpt from La…
Read MoreI have just stumbled upon the most wonderful way to get your students writing without having to produce any output at all! They can write with INPUT! Crazy, right? How to do it? BLACKOUT POEMS! They are great! Simply take a text in the target language (a newspaper article, a story…anything) and hand it to…
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Word Sort is a fantastic higher-order thinking activity that you can use to explore a text or topic. I first learned about Word Sort in the Teacher’s Guide for El Nuevo Houdini; I believe that the brilliant Kristy Placido came up with it. It’s used in one of the last three chapters, because we’ve not…
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This is a character map that I adapted from Laurie Clarcq after a workshop that she did with us at the AFLA 2010 Conference in Talkeetna. I made my own form so that it fits on a half page, saving some trees! It requires the students to explore a character from a story (novel, song, article, etc.) in-depth.…
Read MoreThis is a great activity to use in order to (1) get more reps and (2) give your students critical thinking practice. It works best as a whole-group/discussion activity as opposed to an assessment because the discussion is the most valuable component–that’s where students are honing their critical thinking skills. However, you could absolutely use…
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