Sara-Elizabeth Cottrell
February 5, 2013
More than two years ago, I wrote a popular post about one of the activities my students do instead of homework, free-topic blogging. In the past month I’ve received a flurry of requests for information on how I grade student blogs, specifically what rubric I use to grade them. Clearly, the idea continues to gain […]
premium
February 1, 2013
If someone asked me what motivated my students the most -to continue learning on their own, to more vocabulary, to greater accuracy- my answer would certainly be music. Just this week one of my Spanish 3 students who is struggling the most with any level of verb accuracy identified forms of conseguir and what they […]
premium
January 30, 2013
Spot-checking conversations
premium
In order to learn how to converse with someone, students need to hear conversations, plan conversations, and participate in conversations. So, if we’re giving students a lot of opportunities for interpersonal communication in class, which we should, how do we grade these conversations? Don’t grade. My first bit of advice is to resist the temptation […]
premium
January 27, 2013
This is part 2 in a series of songs and activities chosen to improve student accuracy and proficiency in talking about the present. Hace tiempo – Fonseca This song has wide student appeal. Regardless of taste, it’s one of my students’ all-time favorites. The video is great fun also. Proficiency goals: talk about ongoing and […]
premium
January 25, 2013
A while ago this comment was left on the old Musicuentos site, on the post “Do something drastic – kick the vocab quiz“: “Can you give us some examples of what activities you do to ensure mastery of the vocabulary? And do you have any advice on how to promote this kind of teaching/learning in […]
premium
January 21, 2013
Paragraph form
premium
The rubric I use to score all performance assessments (which I almost completely stole from colleagues) has an entire section called “function/structure” that I use to identify how proficiently students communicate in “paragraph length.” Indeed, the AP rubric (from 2007, which will be changing for 2014) talks about “paragraphing,” and for speaking uses words like […]
premium
January 16, 2013
For the original myths post, click here. You can also view all of the myths posts. Because myths 8 and 9 are related, I want to address them together. The connection between them is that they both make us give up on giving novices authentic materials. When I wrote about myth 7, I compared Taco […]
premium
January 14, 2013
Assigning homework
premium
Are you still sold on the idea that homework is a necessary evil? Consider a few “worst” practices before you give students another assignment to be completed at home: “But doesn’t practice help?” Yes, practice helps. But only if you’re practicing the right things and doing it consistently. My problems with this argument: What happens […]
premium
January 10, 2013
Looking for a few songs to make talking about the present a little more engaging? Take a look at this post about stem-changing verbs. Or try the songs I’ve picked for this series, starting with this one. Note: I believe that students’ primary challenge is in speaking and so you’ll notice that these are primarily […]
premium
January 8, 2013
More choice every day
premium
One of my most popular posts ever – and most popular conference topics – is about giving students choice in their homework assignments. After a while I thought, well, if giving students more choice in homework is so motivating, why not in other assessments? Why not in their final exam? And so I moved my […]
premium
January 4, 2013
It’s no secret that I advocate using almost all authentic materials from the beginning. Using authentic materials with novices is both possible and critical. Here’s an example of an activity you could do with novice learners in a unit on entertainment or technology, with communicative goals like expressing likes or dislikes or talking about your […]
premium
December 28, 2012
You could probably guess what the most popular New Year’s resolutions are; you’ve probably made them yourself. Get in shape, eat better, save money, quit smoking, volunteer. You could probably also guess many of the popular resolutions for teachers: be more organized, have a positive attitude, involve students more, set goals. What about you? Are […]
premium