Become a more confident language teacher.
For the first time since learning about TPRS® and Comprehensible Input, I am not teaching through CI, but learning through CI. I’ve of course participated as a student in demonstrations and coaching sessions in languages that I don’t know, but I’ve never “studied” a language for an extended period of time. (I say “studied” with quotation marks because I…
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Thanks to Samantha Uebel, who sent me French translations for my QAR materials, all of you French teachers out there can rest easy knowing that you can pop into class tomorrow and try out QAR without having to do the grunt work of translating everything for yourselves!! Yippee! Click here to download the materials in French,…
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If you attended my workshop on QAR Strategies for Differentiating Questions at iFLT this past summer or its condensed counterpart at AFLA just a few weekends ago, you will be happy to see this post! If you didn’t, I hope that you will be happy to have found it once you’ve read through it. QAR (Question-Answer Relationships)…
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We had a great Alaskans for Language Acquisition (AFLA) conference last weekend in Seward! The only bummer was that Cynthia Hitz didn’t join us this year 🙁 Michele (the Alaska Language Teacher of the Year!) has already blogged about it, and you can read her post here. I have found it nearly impossible to carve…
Read MoreI received an email from a new-to-TPRS®/TCI reader this morning, and it is one that I’ve read many times in different forms: “I have been trying your curriculum maps for Spanish I & II for 3 days. Spanish I has been going okay. Spanish II has NOT. I tried the fue activity, and to my horror,…
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One common question that I was asked in my sessions at iFLT ’14 was, “I thought that our goal is to provide students with comprehensible input…so why do so many of these activities contain output?” Great question! Is output bad? No comprehension based teacher thinks that output is bad. Output is a good thing and one of the end…
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About two months ago, I wrote a post explaining how second language teachers can use the Common Core Anchor Standards for Reading to give depth to their reading assessments and challenge students to think critically in the target language. Read it here. Understandably, some readers were left wondering what an assessment composed of CCSS Aligned questions…
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It is important for all teachers to informally assess students’ comprehension throughout any lesson in any content area. When we ask a comprehension question, we use students’ response to determine whether it’s time to move on to the next topic, or if we must spend more time on whatever we are studying at the moment.…
Read MoreOver the last year, I have received many email requests from teachers, administrators, and conference planners that need to know how TPRS® and other Comprehensible Input strategies meet Common Core standards. Teachers must explain the connections so that they are permitted to use these best practice strategies in their classrooms, administrators seek to know whether…
Read MoreSpecial Person Interviews build community. When done well, students find connections with all of their classmates. Teachers learn more about each one of their students, and everyone’s voice and presence is valued. And oh yeah–all the while, students are acquiring language. What’s not to love? HISTORY OF SPECIAL PERSON INTERVIEWS As far as I am…
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