Become a more confident language teacher.
Thank you so much to Virginia Browne for translating the slideshow that I shared yesterday into French. I am still a wee baby French speaker, so please let me know if I made any errors while re-typing the file! Click here to download it and click here to learn why I created it. Also, in light…
Read More
Can you believe that it is already time to think about going back to school this fall? Part of the back to school stress is due to having SO. MUCH. TO. THINK. ABOUT. Whether you spent your summer at conferences or took the entire summer off to just rest and enjoy your family, reality is…
Read More
MovieTalk has quickly become a favorite strategy for providing comprehensible input to language learners since Michele Whaley brought it to the TCI world in 2012. Developed by Dr. Ashley Hastings as the listening module for the Focal Skills ESL program, MovieTalk is an incredibly effective activity because it provides loads of comprehensible input to students. I just…
Read More
You’ve probably been thinking about the start of the 2015 school year since somewhere around October of 2014: you know, about when you started to think, “Man! If only I had done [x], we would be doing amazing right now! Can’t wait to start off the school year right next year…” So you may already have…
Read More
For the second year in a row, I participated in a local “Kids 2 College” program. It’s a day when local 5th graders visit the community college and take college classes so that they can see what college is like. The funny thing is that I teach the Spanish classes, and I am not the Spanish professor…
Read More
Laura Masci, who teaches Spanish at the elementary level, emailed me to share a few of the ways that she has adapted the ‘Dice’ unit, and specifically the teaching of the song “Los pollitos dicen” for her young students. Laura just began her TCI journey, and she wrote, “These elementary students are more engaged in the…
Read More
Even though the first day of school is now a distant memory, I hope that this post will not go to waste! Perhaps you are about to receive a new group of students in the coming quarter, or perhaps you are already stockpiling ideas for how to do things differently next fall. Either way, I’ve a treat…
Read More
“There is” or “There are” is one of the highest frequency word(s) in any language. In Spanish, the word “hay” is nearly unavoidable as we share stories with our students. Because it is difficult for students to form a mental picture for the word, however, the lack of visualization presents a challenge for getting the…
Read More
What tools and resources do you have that you would be devastated to not have in your language classroom? A reader asked me this question a few days ago, and I figured I’d share my answer with all of you. If you read all the way to the end, you’ll find out how you can win some of…
Read More
