Become a more confident language teacher.
Have you ever made a time capsule? I never made one intentionally, but there was this small space between my classroom cabinets and the wall that I was not aware of until student projects started disappearing from on top of the cabinets…I tried everything to pull them back out of that 8′ deep hole, but…
Read More“Odd one out” is a fun game commonly played by language teachers, whether first or second+. You may have played it under a different name, or without naming it at all! The basic concept is that students are given a list of three to four items, and they must identify the “odd one out”–the item that…
Read MoreDid you know that children in Bolivia can live in jail with their imprisoned parents? How’s THAT for a hook?? I am slowly but surely working on filling in the blank places on my Spanish 1 curriculum map. To create my Spanish 1 curriculum, I pulled vocabulary from the novels I wanted to read at…
Read MoreI think that authentic resources are overrated. This is coming from the lady that just presented at ACTFL on the importance of authentic resources, or ‘ #authres ‘, and how to use them in novice language classes… kind of a contradiction? How important are authentic resources in a language curriculum? #authres are important, but they…
Read MoreMy weekend project is tidying up a document in which I list, categorize, and link all of the story activities that I’ve done/do. This means that I need to make sure that I have a specific post for each of them! You may have read about this in my lesson plan overviews for Houdini or…
Read MoreAfter reading Esperanza with my classes last year, I’ve been meaning to work up some more resources on Central American ‘Chicken Buses’. My kids enjoyed learning about them so much! It took awhile for me to find good video resources on them (there are a lot of low-quality ‘home videos’), but I got there! This song is…
Read MoreWe just finished an introductory unit on migration and undocumented immigration in Spanish A. We focused on high-frequency, regular -ar verbs that connect with travel, and we started building their familiarity with the verbs using the story script for El viajero. Afterward, we spent a few days using by-design and authentic resources to learn more…
Read MoreThe Immigrant Archive Project is a really neat website that I found through the Esperanza Teacher’s Guide. It contains pages upon pages of videos of immigrants to the United States telling their stories. The possibilities for classroom use of this site are endless! The activity that is published in Chapter 9 of the Esperanza’s Teacher’s…
Read MoreHave you ever taken a moment to think about just how complex ‘reading comprehension’ is? There are an infinite number of skills that a good reader must possess in order to truly comprehend a text, and very few happen consciously. This week, I have realized that my students are often unable to separate ‘this’ from…
Read MoreWord 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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