Y’all are going back to school, and I’m having a baby. The end result is the same, though, right? Less sleep, more stress, and a house that’s never clean? The difference is in the preparation. I’ve got my hospital bag packed (wishful thinking since I still have a month to go…), but how is your back-to-school checklist looking?…
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Going back to school is a CRIME!
I found a pin on Pinterest last night that immediately reminded me of Dave Burgess and his Pirate-like ways! It is a blog post about using crime scenes in language classes from BusyTeacher.org, and I think that it would make the PERFECT first-day-of-classes activity for returning language students. (Click here for other first-week-of school activities for first year…
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Time Capsule Predictions
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…
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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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Lesson plans for ‘Dice’ unit
Los pollitos dicen
I start every school year with this song. It’s not the best way to acquire language, so I understand spending all of your time at the beginning of the year doing PQA and Circling with Balls and Three Ring Circuses and what-not. In my experience, though, it is such FUN to start off with a…
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‘Says’ slides
My hubster surprised me with an early birthday date today. He recruited my sister to watch the boys and whisked me off on what was supposed to be the only sunny day this week (key word: supposed) on a drive south. As we wound along the 16 mile dead-end road back from Hope, Matt helped…
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Syllabus Homework
When I spend time explaining my syllabus on the first day of school or at open house, I often get that deer in the headlights look: Acquisition, Storyasking, Standards Based Grading…it’s a lot to take in at once! And because there is never enough time on either of those occasions to accomplish everything that I…
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Introductions Reading
Since I will only be teaching M-TH this year, I am responsible for leaving plans for a classroom aide–who may or may not speak Spanish–to do with the kids on Fridays. It’s like sub plans every week–yikes! For the first week of school, I created a two-page worksheet with six mini readings that will be…
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First Day of School Checklist
Pull out laminated character cards to assign seats at the door. (Currently in French and Spanish–send me translations for other languages and I will add them into the file!) Photocopy name card template onto cardstock; enough for each student to have one. Have markers available for name card writing–only dark colors that can be easily…
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