Thank you, and what you read this year

Happy new year, friends.  2018 is a wrap!

I’ll end this year as a tie for the lowest number of posts in my 10 years of blogging, but that’s understandable.  The first part of the year was a major step back as I rested from several professional areas between November 2017 and September 2018.  I’m looking forward to some exciting opportunities and perhaps new direction for 2019, and we’ll see what the year holds for the blog.

Meanwhile, let me take a moment to reflect again on the power of thank you.  Thank you, Greta, for great conversations with dignity and maturity in the shadow of the beautiful mountains.  Thank you, Kelly, for an invitation to a dialogue that was so much fun.  Thank you, Laura, for a rollicking good time figuring out trivia night. Christi, M, Colleen, thank you for your empathy in a tough moment.  Thank you, Thomas, Jacque, Paul, and Stacey, for believing I still had something useful to say.

And now, in case you missed anything, here are the top posts from 2018. This year, Musicuentos readers wanted to read about, primarily, vocabulary, with a bit of Can Do thrown in.

5: The Vocab Brainstorm Station

The fifth most-read post of 2018 on Musicuentos was about setting up a permanent vocabulary brainstorming station.  I wish mine could be permanent!  Whether you’re beginning a new unit or just priming for better comprehension on the day’s TL resource, this could be an effective way to get kids involved in choosing and discovering vocabulary on their own.

4. Two Cures for our Obsession with High-Frequency Words

A love for high-frequency vocabulary is natural, but in this post, I propose that there’s very little we can do with only the highest-frequency words.  In order to make sure students have enough exposure to the lower-frequency words they’ll need for real communication, check out the two tips here.

3. A Look at my Shower-Curtain Word Wall

Even though I have to take down my class at the end of every one of our once-weekly session, I wanted a way to have a word wall.  A creative colleague on Twitter suggested trying shower curtains a couple of years ago, and it turned out to be the perfect idea.  My post including pictures on how this “word wall” turned out was the third most popular of the year.

2. Mind-mapping vocabulary

With all the research on how much visualization assists memory, how did it take me so long to ask my students to create mind maps of their vocabulary?  The results were beautiful – and memorable.  I blogged about them in the second most-read post of 2018.

1. The new NCSSFL-ACTFL Can Do Statements

I didn’t even really have to check – I knew my guide to the new Can Do statements would be the top-read post of the year.  As it turned out, it was the only post I wrote in 2018 that broke my top ten most read posts of the year; the rest were from previous years.

But the top post of all…

The most-read post on Musicuentos in 2018, though, was not written in 2018.  My 2016 post on the Top 20 Songs for Spanish Class was accessed this year more than three times as much as my top new-for-2018 post.  Here’s that link in case you’re interested.
If Musicuentos has significantly helped you in your language teaching journey, consider becoming part of the “thanks” crew on Patreon. “La lotería” patrons receive every resource I produce, whether it’s a $2 activity or a $50 ebook guide, as thanks for their sponsorship.