December 31, 2015
My old rubric served me well for four years, but it was time for a change. A clean slate, a lot of websites, a lot of feedback, and a lot of collaborative brainstorming later, I finally had something I was willing to put out and test out. Check the post below – the links go […]
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December 29, 2015
Book Club 2015: Make It Stick
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I appreciate anecdotes, but I’ve been passionate for a long time about finding out what science says about how people learn in general, and how people learn language, and why people choose to learn anything. It’s what makes Brain Rules and Drive my top two books from the last decade to recommend to any teacher. […]
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December 26, 2015
In the twelfth year of designing syllabi, you may not have “the syllabus to end them all” – of course not! We’re always changing based on successes and challenges, right? But by this time I knew the five ingredients I had to have in a syllabus, and you wanted to hear about them. This August […]
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December 22, 2015
How I love to read. Reading is a way I both escape the world and try to figure it out, to learn new words and meet new ways of thinking. If you like, you can check out my posts tagged book club. Last year I put out a series of them that crowded the blog […]
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December 19, 2015
The third and fourth most popular posts of 2015 were very close, but with the benefit of a few extra months the post on task completion on rubrics barely edged out the #4 post to take the bronze medal. I’m so glad I wondered about task completion and its importance in life and in rubrics […]
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December 17, 2015
December found us doing our first formal assessment of the semester. That is my reality this year, and I love it. We go at our own pace and make our own rules and I don’t see my students enough to warrant spending our precious class time on assessment instead of engaging ourselves with the language. […]
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December 15, 2015
Voice and choice! Right? Well, if the sheer volume of content under my “choice” tag is any indication, I believe so. I’m convinced by research on autonomy and purpose that if we can give students options that speak to their inner motivation, then and only then will we end up with significant percentages of proficient speakers out […]
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December 13, 2015
After years of teaching students between Novice High and Intermediate Mid, I found myself teaching students with no measurable proficiency. They did not know what loco meant (and had never heard of Zorro!?!) (and hated all heartthrob boy bands?!?!). It was new territory for me. And it was time to take a look at my homework choice […]
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December 11, 2015
In March I discovered the catchy, learner-friendly song “El perdón” and blogged about ways to use it in both novice and intermediate classes. That post was the 5th-most popular post of 2015. New song: El perdón for two levels Ever feel behind the times? I just caught the current #1 song on Latin Billboard and […]
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December 10, 2015
I just looked at the calendar and realized it’s December. How did that happen? And how did I forget the best-of-year posts and the book club and my December BLOGCATION? Ah. Anyway. The great best-of posts by Laura and Allison have finally sunk in to remind me what I do in December and here it begins. […]
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December 4, 2015
How about an elementary rubric?
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It’s possible a good rubric for communicating performance-towards-proficiency for early language learners exists, but if it does, I haven’t seen it. (If you have, please share in a comment!) See this post for my update from this past summer on my more complex rubric designed to be used with no younger than middle school students. […]
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November 27, 2015
Your turkey is digested and your shopping is all done. Now, are you ready for a shocking confession? Last week at the 2015 ACTFL Convention & Expo in San Diego, California, I was not able to attend a single session other than the ones I collaborated on. Shocking, I know. Part of the reason was […]
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