Best practices
August 30, 2018
This podcast on productivity was the last straw for me. Near the beginning, the host reminded me of the research on how much better the brain works when you not only see something written down, but you wrote it there. Sacrificing a good idea on the altar of a new idea I don’t remember when and […]
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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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March 23, 2018
What do you do when you’re entering a new classroom, but this time, you have to leave it the way you found it, every single week? Well, you ask #langchat, of course. Two and a half years ago I took to Twitter to get ideas from my amazing #langchat PLN could come up. I was re-entering the […]
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November 22, 2017
A hand is raised. Or not raised. Maybe something’s just blurted out. And your heart is in conflict. Do I let her speak? Do I ask him to wait? Because I know, if I let this go on, we’re going to spend the next ten minutes talking about stuff – trivial or not – in […]
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October 11, 2017
We have big goals for our students. Tell me about yourself. Help us know how to get to your house. Describe a favorite park a Spanish-speaking tourist might visit. Narrate a story. That last one is my goal for my students this year. Well, it’s not even that complicated. For my middle grades learners, who are […]
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April 11, 2017
A Musicuentos storytelling video
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Over the last few years I’ve been asked several times if I have a video of storytelling in class. I never got around to making one, until now, when my good friend Wendy Farabaugh went solo and obliged the Ohio Foreign Language Association with a reprise of our 2016 session on storytelling. This year the […]
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December 30, 2016
Revealing that some themes consistently speak to what we need to hear and want to use, the top Musicuentos post of 2016 was a simple repost of the previous year’s homework choice systems update. The post explains how I incorporate a homework choice system and offers links to see what other teachers do as well. […]
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October 19, 2016
Caution: There is danger in listening to only one voice. Whether in politics or teaching philosophy, we tend to surround ourselves with people who think pretty much like we do. It takes a lot of mental energy to be challenged on closely-held beliefs and defend them, and we’re already spending a lot of mental energy just […]
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July 20, 2016
When I graduated from my master’s program in Linguistics with an emphasis on Second Language Acquisition, I suffered from a fundamental misunderstanding. I thought that there was a consensus on the general principles guiding how language acquisition works, what that means the second time around, and what that understanding ought to mean for the classroom […]
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July 11, 2016
Quiz for you: What percentage of target language use does the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages recommend teachers and students use in the classroom? Almost every teacher I know and work with can answer this question. How could we not when it becomes such a torment for so many? Answer: 90% or higher. […]
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June 13, 2016
Here’s a question for your summer: Can you dare to go YONG? At the end of the 2013-2014 school year, I was finishing a seven-year stint at a particular school. In a nutshell, the school had a new administrator that year and had swung from what some might call a little too much chaotic familiarity […]
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May 25, 2016
The internet and the calendar (and Allison, Maris, Wendy, Melanie, Valerie, and Megan) say it’s time to confess and reflect. Inspired by a summary of an old #langchat, and then having that inspiration reinforced by these reflective teachers sharing their journey, here is a post more for me than for you. What will – or […]
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