Are you a Spanish teacher?Are you worried that you will catch the flu this school year?Do you want to be prepared with a ready-to-go sub plan? I’m your gal 🙂 If you answered “no” to any of those three questions, this post may still be of some use to you. It’s 9:30 on Saturday night, and…
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Wants, has, says
I got to teach Spanish today! It was super fun and super exhausting–and I only taught two-20 minute classes. Phew! How did I used to do this every day!? Mat-Su Community College has an annual “Kids 2 College” day where local fifth graders spend a day at the college and take classes. None of the kids had…
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Ready-to-go sub plans
I recently learned that this time of the year is when folks in Alaska are the sickest because people don’t pick up their dog poop from the yard all winter. Now that temperatures are finally above freezing, the poo is mushy and ready for kids that are excited to play outside to track it into…
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Five ways to have rockin’ sub days
We all love getting a day off now and then, but we all hate making sub plans. Most of the time, I would suffer through whatever illness was ailing me so that I wouldn’t have to go through the hassle of creating plans! Here are a few things that helped to make my sub planning…
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Multi-Level Classes
Some of you may know that I have the mother of all multi-level classes this year: 6th-12th grade, 1st-7th year Spanish. I asked parents and students for grace during the first few weeks as I figured out how to meet everyone’s needs, and they did. We are now finishing up week four, and I have a…
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My Cup Runneth Over
Using stories as a core component of my instruction has given me an endless supply of student-generated content that I can use to create future lesson plans. Here are some ways that my students generate content: The class co-creates a TPRS story Students write quick stories for bellwork using a set of vocabulary Students do…
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Intro to QAR
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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BINGO with Free Write
I posted this activity some time last year, and I dug it out of my tool belt last week to use as a writing assessment. I updated the rubric in it so that it matches the proficiency targets for each level (a different rubric for each level). Boy, do I love it! As I was…
Read MoreLogic Puzzles for language classes
I.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…
Read MoreSpanish 1 Sub Plan Storyboard
I had my first sub for the year on Friday and again tomorrow so that I could attend the 2012 AFLA conference in Fairbanks. (It was awesome, by the way–Dr. Stephen Krashen, Dr. Christine Sims, and Dr. Diane Larsen-Freeman were our keynote speakers, and local stars like Betsy Paskvan, Victoria Gellert, and Michele Whaley presented…
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