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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How comprehensible is comprehensible?

We know that we can’t communicate with someone if we don’t understand them, and we know that language acquisition cannot happen if comprehension does not occur… but just how well do we need to understand someone or something in order to communicate? How comprehensible does something have to be in order to be ‘comprehensible’? To…

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Find interactive readings in Spanish on Garbanzo

“We acquire language when we understand messages; when we understand what people tell us and when we understand what we read”. Dr. Stephen Krashen This foundational insight from Dr. Krashen is our Core Belief at Garbanzo. To that end, we are building an online, interactive library of diverse texts that are designed for language learners…

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Get news articles for Spanish learners in 2019-2020 school year!

For the last three years, Spanish students have been able to follow the top stories from the Spanish-speaking world in El mundo en tus manos. Each week, Maris Hawkins and I identify important and interesting current events and write up comprehensible summaries so that beginning language learners can understand. As we prepare for the 2019-2020…

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Write and Discuss demo for language classes

“Write and Discuss” is one of the core strategies in a comprehension-based teacher’s bag of tricks. It is easy-peasy and adaptable for many uses!  In this post, I’m sharing with you a demo of Write and Discuss along with step-by-step instructions so that you can feel confident making this power-packed strategy your own! An abbreviated version…

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Meet Garbanzo: The new story-based app for learning Spanish

The bird’s out of the cage, and it’s time to share my big secret with YOU, my readers!! At ACTFL, I announced the launch of GARBANZO, the new web application from The Comprehensible Classroom. The journey to create an app that would help teachers find reading material that is suitable for early language learners began…

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Reading activities for current events

Film, politics, sports, conservation, and activism–these are just a few of the topics that the stories from the new EL MUNDO EN TUS MANOS subscription have addressed. Maris and I are passionate about finding stories that your students will connect with and that will open their eyes to the things happening in the world, near…

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Current events & free fiction magazine in Spanish

Once I decided to teach for proficiency, I become hungry for stories–real stories, invented stories, silly stories, sad stories, unbelievable stories, scary stories…anything.  Language is best taught when it is being used to transmit messages, not when it is explicitly taught for conscious learning. ― Stephen D. Krashen, The Natural Approach: Language Acquisition in the Classroom If you…

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