I hope you had a restful summer! I love back-to-school time because we’re all excited, mostly rested up, maybe feeling a little unprepared but ready to tackle what this school year has to offer.
Watch what August has to offer
Throughout August I’ll be posting resources and information I hope will help you get a great start to the year. Just in the first several days of the month: You’ll see my next episode of the Musicuentos Black Box videocast on what’s known as the “interface debate” (hint: is everything learnable, and can students expect to use what they “learn” in your classroom in spontaneous conversation?). You’ll see my new rubric that I hope will change the way we approach the whole issue of rubrics. I’ve gotten a ton of constructive feedback from a lot of smart people and I’m so excited to release this collaborative product. I’ve been asked for the intermediate version of the “taco talk” and finally got around to putting that together. You’ll see an outline of what I’m teaching this year, in my interesting new homeschool co-op setting.
And, my other stuff is on sale!
Intermediate students need authentic novels
If you teach intermediate, pre-advanced, AP or heritage Spanish and you’ve ever thought about using a truly authentic novel in the classroom, you know it’s a daunting prospect and the resources to help you are few and far between. I encourage you to try out two of my favorites, Allende’s La ciudad de las bestias and Jiménez’s Cajas de cartón (the whole memoir). I’ve developed high-quality, intensive, in-depth reader’s guides for those novels and for the entire month of August, those resources (as well as the short-story guide for “Cajas de cartón” and the verb charts) are 25% off. That means you can get the Cajas guide PDF download for $29.95 and the Ciudad guide PDF download for $37.50. The “Cajas” chapter guide is $5.25 and the complete verb pack is $4.50. The embedded listening activities (some new ones released for back-to-school as well!) are only available at my Teachers Pay Teachers store and will be on sale there too (August 3-6 and 20-23 only).
Welcome back, and have a great year!
