Sara-Elizabeth Cottrell
January 6, 2012
Free Ebook for WL educators
premium
Our generous friends over at Calico Spanish have put together a free resource for you! Sign up today to receive Web Tools for 21st Century World Language Classrooms. This free e-book is an organized, user-friendly collaboration based on past Twitter #Langchats related to using web tools to enhance and develop all sorts of language acquisition […]
premium
November 17, 2011
Twice for #langchat we’ve polled the following question: What activities prepare students for AP from the very beginning? I confess, I probably wrote this question, maybe with some help from something similar being suggested as a topic. Certainly I’ve voted for it twice. But for whatever reason–perhaps teachers of lower levels don’t think much about […]
premium
October 26, 2011
Learning from #langchat
premium
If there’s one big principle I’ve learned over the past 10 years, 8 teaching and 2 in grad school, it’s that good teaching isn’t magic. Sometimes it looks like magic, but it’s not. Sure, some people just don’t have the personality or gift of explanation to be a teacher. But some very gifted people have […]
premium
October 24, 2011
Not your average health unit
premium
A unit on health is common in Spanish class. We have a unit in Spanish 2 on describing ailments and visiting the doctor. Then in AP I have a unit called “Cuidándome a mí” (taking care of myself). It’s useful -last year’s AP essay was health-related- but for AP I wanted to go beyond the […]
premium
October 10, 2011
Whoops! I completely forgot to post my Prezi from my second KWLA presentation! Here it is, Target Language: Expect More, Say Less. Target [Language]: Expect More, Say Less on Prezi
premium
September 27, 2011
Spanish 3 assessment documents
premium
Sometimes I feel like I’m reinventing myself every year. Do you ever look back on something you did and think, “Why on earth did I do it that way? What a bad idea! Here we go again.” I feel like I do that every year! So even though I completely redesigned my Spanish 3 class […]
premium
September 22, 2011
Here’s my Prezi for my Friday a.m. session, Media from Reel to Real. Media from Reel to Real on Prezi
premium
September 21, 2011
Accuracy refers to grammatical forms that match the standard form of the language. So, a student produces ‘yo pensé’ instead of ‘yo piense’ (something my 3’s have been doing recently). Proficiency includes an aspect of accuracy, but primarily refers to how well the speaker (or writer) is able to communicate and comprehend meaning. The contrast […]
premium
September 19, 2011
Fun activity #6: A escribir
premium
Fun activity #6 is ¡A escribir!, an activity obviously designed to get students spontaneously writing. At first, when our activity chooser landed on “A escribir,” students were not thrilled. Writing? Don’t we do that all the time? And from my perspective, how do you keep a random, effective writing prompt on hand all the time? […]
premium
September 12, 2011
App review: Tour Wrist
premium
A couple of weeks ago on #Langchat, the Thursday night (8 ET) chat by and for language teachers on Twitter, we discussed iPad (and other iOS) apps that may be useful in the world language classroom. That night I downloaded something like 25 free apps and since then I’ve been on a mission to see […]
premium
September 1, 2011
Myth #6: Memorizing vocabulary
premium
For my original post about the myths, look here. Myth #6 is this: Students learn vocabulary in long lists of isolated words (or, we just went over bosque, why can’t they remember it and remember it’s masculine?). What a mistake I used to make, and textbooks make. To think that we can give students a […]
premium
August 23, 2011
I keep the Mexico trending topics as a column on my Tweetdeck, because you never know what will come up there. One great thing about Twitter is that you can only get so complicated in 140 characters, and when a topic like #4palabrasqueduelen gets trending by thousands and thousands of people, the text gets even […]
premium