Sara-Elizabeth Cottrell
August 26, 2012
Last spring, we surveyed our 8th, 10th, and 11th grade students about 1) their outlook or motivation for continuing or not continuing to learn Spanish and 2) what they thought they could do in Spanish. After the motivation questions, students were given a list of “I Can” statements related to communicative functions in Spanish. Options […]
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August 22, 2012
Four years ago September 1, I began to blog my journey to be a more proficiency-based, communicative, effective teacher in the Spanish classroom. What a profitable experience blogging has been! Your comments and comradery have benefited me more than I think I even know. In honor of my blogiversary, I’m feeling the spirit of giving, and you […]
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August 20, 2012
Menus
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Whether you’re beginning to dabble outside the textbook or you kicked it out a long time ago, one of your greatest resources will certainly be the wealth of authentic material on the internet. From shopping malls to gaming, your students can interact with a seemingly infinite variety of engaging materials. If you do a food […]
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August 17, 2012
2019 update: Full ebooks available As of October 2014, I made the in-depth, professionally designed ebook guide for Cajas de cartón available for sale. In the spring of 2019, the Esperanza renace guide was released. You can purchase either guide or get the guide to La ciudad de las bestias for free on my ebooks page. The ebooks improve on the […]
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August 13, 2012
I posted a long time ago (like, three years ago) about this video from tu.tv, El Abecedario, spoofing Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. Well, it turned out the site was blocked at my school, and then with the move to the new site all my embedded YouTube videos broke, and while going through those […]
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August 10, 2012
I say this often: textbooks are unmotivating, often based on bad pedagogy, and out-of-date as soon as they’re printed. If you want to see your students motivated to work with language that interests them, you have to create your own material – or “steal” the great stuff that fantastic teachers like @SraSpanglish and @ZJonesSpanish and […]
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August 8, 2012
Maintaining personal proficiency
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This question has been suggested a couple of times on #langchat: How do you maintain your personal proficiency? Someone asked me this same question at a PD session I was at last year, adding that she only teaches novice learners and so she feels like she’s only speaking novice language for practice. Then I […]
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August 2, 2012
AP redesign: Units & EQ’s
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The College Board has changed the AP French and German exams this year and aims to make similar (the same?) changes to AP Spanish next year. In light of the coming changes, I decided to get a jump start on redesigning my AP curriculum. I had 9 units + a month exam review + […]
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July 30, 2012
A study in motivation
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I’ve been doing a lot of reflecting on the continuity of our Spanish program at my school. We have a new 2nd grade – 8th grade teacher coming in this year, and I consider that a good opportunity to take a fresh look at how the three of us Spanish teachers are working together to […]
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July 26, 2012
Advice for teachers in training
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I’ve gotten two emails lately from teachers in training asking for advice. If there are any significant number of preservice teachers like them, asking such good questions and determined to pursue excellence, we’re headed for great things in language learning. One just asked me for general advice for a preservice teacher. Here are a couple […]
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July 20, 2012
More uses for Amor de mi tierra
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I wrote about the Carlos Vives song “Amor de mi tierra” in this post about songs with repetitions of voy + a. Here are a few more things you can do with the song: There’s only one unique occurrence of this subjunctive for influence, but it’s a nice line and it’s repeated: Quiero que lleves en ti la […]
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July 17, 2012
Book review: The Talent Code
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The newest addition is eating a lot and sleeping, well, not so long as Baby Whisperer says she should be, so suffice to say I’m getting a lot of reading done these days [okay, mostly nights], particularly since my library started eBook lending. So far this summer I’ve read, for example, Brain Rules for Baby and The […]
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