Whether you call them Stations or Centers, you probably love them—and so do your students. Stations give you a laissez-faire teaching day and provide lots of movement and small group interaction for students. Stations do not, however, come without challenges. Stations often take quite a bit of prep work. For the proficiency oriented, comprehension based…
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“I don’t understand how to ask a story.”
You’ve got a new comprehension-based curriculum, and you’d be 100% sold if it weren’t for that storyasking part. You’ve got a script, but what the heck do you do with it? Many teachers have asked the same question before. Storyasking is an invented word meant to differentiate creating a story from telling a story. If you’ve…
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Is there a magic pill for language learning?
If you’re looking for the magic resource that will make your students learn Spanish, have fun, and love your class–it doesn’t exist. But you know what does exist? YOU! YOU are the magic that will help your students learn Spanish. YOU are the magic that will allow your students to enjoy the journey. YOU can…
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Weekend Chat: 10 ways to talk with students about the weekend
When I first ditched the textbook, Weekend Chats was one of the very first routines that I learned about and started using in class. I was introduced to it by Michele Whaley, and I remember reading about it on Ben Slavic’s blog soon thereafter. I used Ben’s idea of having students illustrate posters of places…
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How to write comprehensible texts
Once I moved away from using the textbook as the center of my curriculum, I was free to bring in all kinds of new texts. Popular songs, novels written for language learners, picture books, short non-fiction readings prepared by me, infographics, edited stories written by my students or co-created by the class, and more. By…
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Dip your toes in CI: Shared Reading
The CI waters are up to your ankles as you stand on the first step descending into the lake of CI. You tried asking a question, and whether it went well or it didn’t, your ankles have adjusted at least a little bit to the temperature. It’s time to take another step: The next mission…
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Dip your toes in CI: Ask a question
It’s a new school year and you, dear language teacher, are ready for a new YOU! You have heard about comprehensible input centered instruction, you perhaps attended a workshop or six over the summer…maybe you have even given CI instruction a go in the past! Whatever your background looks like, you have decided that 2017…
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Organization schmorganization
When I first started teaching, all of my files were paper and I organized them in hanging file folders. Eventually, I graduated to beautiful binders filled with page-protected worksheets separated with colorful dividers for each unit. As I began to gather more and more materials from the Internet (blog posts, videos, lesson plans, images, etc.),…
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Watch me ask a TPRS® story
For the last several years, I have participated in an annual event at a local college. I have used more or less the same TPRS style lesson plan each year, and you can read through it in detail and download the materials that I use for it here. This year, I had taught two 55 minute…
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TPRS® 101, Step Six: Give it a try!
This is the sixth post in the series “TPRS® 101: Teaching Proficiency is Really Simple“. The first week back from winter break is like a re-start for many teachers. You set goals back in August, and you’ve accomplished some but fell short of others. You spent a semester learning and growing as a professional, and…
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