Best practices
May 16, 2013
This post is cross-posted on the new blog for the Teacher Effectiveness in Language Learning (TELL) project, an initiative of Advance Learning. For schools all across the country, the day is rapidly approaching for us to tell our students goodbye. It’s time to go on vacation, to run to the ice cream truck, lather up […]
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April 15, 2013
No, not the latest John Gresham to while away the class period. Whether it’s for field trips, ceremony practice, or just a widespread illness, sometimes I have a class where many of the students are gone. Inevitably this leads to the same request: a free day. For some reason, my students think that because their […]
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April 13, 2013
This post is a comment that will be published in an upcoming article on 21st century skills and assessment in The Language Educator, the bimonthly publication of the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages. Multiple choice was the death of critical thinking. Multiple choice questions train students to look at problems in one […]
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March 30, 2013
I’ve been faced with many dilemmas this year as I inherited a Spanish 3 class with low proficiency- I mean, at least a couple of Novice High students in Spanish 3. I don’t know how or why exactly they made it through to my class with these struggles. I feel like part of it must […]
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March 22, 2013
Last tips on avoiding burnout
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This is the last set of tips to avoid burning out in communicative teaching. Check out “Burning out or burning bright?,” “More tips on avoiding burnout,” “Still more tips on avoiding burnout,” and “Even more tips on avoiding burnout” for more help on how to stay sane and effective at the same time. Stop looking […]
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March 15, 2013
This is the fourth set of tips to avoid burning out in communicative teaching. Check out “Burning out or burning bright?,” “More tips on avoiding burnout,” and “Still more tips on avoiding burnout” for more help on how to stay sane and effective at the same time. Organize your bookmarks. A few weeks ago our […]
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March 8, 2013
This is the third set of tips to avoid burning out in communicative teaching. Check out “Burning out or burning bright?” and “More tips on avoiding burnout” for more help on how to stay sane and effective at the same time. Develop a strong personal learning community. I can’t handle too much social networking. I’ve […]
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March 1, 2013
More tips on avoiding burnout
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This is the second post in a series on tips to avoid burnout. See “Burning out or burning bright?” and continue to check back on Fridays for more tips on how to stay sane and effective at the same time. Abandon perfectionism. I’ve found that teachers tend to have a perfectionist personality (raising my hand […]
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February 22, 2013
This is what your students are hearing. Comprehensible input is the key! Make sure you’re giving your students lots of input, but it’s at least as important to make sure that they’re understanding what you’re saying.
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February 21, 2013
Burning out or burning bright?
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Some time ago a couple of tweets came from my PLN that caught my eye. Blair Richards (@ouiouicestlavie) commented, “4 years into teaching and I’m exhausted. Any wisdom on how to make this a sustainable career without killing myself?” Then Katie Hellerman (@klhellerman) wrote, “I love #TPRS and the results. But even after 3 years I find […]
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February 19, 2013
Feel like your class is disengaged and/or bored? This atmosphere could be rooted in all sorts of problems, but one of the main causes is that you have students focused on the same activity for too long. Based on research, your brain needs breaks from a particular learning-intensive activity in order to process and encode […]
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February 8, 2013
Tech tools gone wrong
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When I first became active on Twitter, I followed the general #edchat quite a bit and was stunned and fascinated by all the tech tools people were tweeting about. I read blog posts and reviews about the latest web 2.0 tool someone was using in X class and got excited. I tried many new tools […]
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