Authentic Sources
September 15, 2023
It’s a new season for Musicuentos. You know this. You probably also know it’s going to include regular breaking news, like the return of the Musicuentos Monthly newsletter, or the new Facebook group Musicuentos Tips, Tools, & Talk for Spanish Teachers. JOIN US ON FACEBOOK! My next announcement involves travel itineraries– eventually, for every Spanish-speaking […]
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November 14, 2019
Who would have thought Sra. Musicuentos would have taken a hiatus from music? I blame it on early novice teenagers. A few years ago, I transitioned from teaching intermediate learners into teaching total beginners who were mostly in the tween/teen years. In my experience, that’s not the best environment for using music to really teach (for […]
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August 27, 2019
Can novice Spanish learners understand authentic poems? That was the question asked, quite appropriately, through the Ñandutí listserv, an email list from the Center for Applied Linguistics that serves primarily educators working with elementary learners. The answers were so helpful that I wanted to share them here. First, check out the very rich list of poems […]
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March 8, 2019
Love is amazing, but man, it can hurt. At least, that’s what pop music says! Indeed, the metaphors involving love and sickness, pain, and medicine abound in pop music. That means a health unit rivals any other theme in the contest for most applicable music options! My high school students are currently wrapping up such […]
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August 27, 2018
Social entrepreneurship… in Spanish 1?! A few years ago, a company called VIF International asked me to think and work with them on this question: What would a project-based learning curriculum look like in a novice Spanish class? It’s not an easy question. Project-based language learning presents the same problem Genius Hour does: how can you […]
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August 15, 2018
Dear readers, Esperanza renace is coming. After four long years, the wait for the third Musicuentos ebook guide to an authentic novel is nearly over. Within weeks – perhaps days – you’ll see the resource release *I* have been waiting and working and longing to make for four years. As we both wait a few more […]
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April 23, 2018
Since I developed a student handout with the highest-frequency Spanish words organized by type and including translation and rank, and recently posted about how we put our most helpful high-frequency words and phrases on our shower-curtain word walls, it stands to reason that I’m a big fan of high-frequency words. Well, I am and I’m […]
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November 18, 2017
I’m having a great time at the annual convention of the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages! My co-presenter and I thought we uploaded our handouts in enough time to have them available on the app, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. So, for our attendees and you there on your […]
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September 1, 2017
Can you give me a hand up on this soapbox for a minute? I’ll be here just a moment, and then we’ll move on, I promise. It’s all well and good to march for women’s rights and hold signs about men telling me what to do, but when it’s a sexy Latin man with a crazy […]
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August 22, 2017
Got a travel unit planned this year? (Who doesn’t?) I love travel, and I love travel units. I don’t care what statistics say about how many of our students will travel. It’s a globalized world, and they should. Getting some language skills before traveling has so many benefits. It shows the world we’re traveling in that we care […]
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August 5, 2017
Sound off: authentic resources or learner materials? Uau, that’s a can of worms. Most teachers I know would say that the answer is a resounding yes. That is, we use both, and we talk about it, a lot. In fact, in the same week (long ago) that I started drafting this post, Carrie Toth blogged a […]
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December 28, 2016
Merry day-after-Christmas! We’re almost to the end! The second most popular post of 2016 was also about music – this time, the top 20 songs that have stood the test of time in my class (some more time than others). My students love them! Will yours? Top 20 Songs for Spanish Class I just posted […]
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