Curriculum
September 2, 2013
What if the way we’ve been doing lesson plans for years and years makes no sense at all, given the research on memory and brain function? For the way I currently approach lesson planning I have to give a lot of credit to two very smart guys, Greg Duncan and John Medina. Greg Duncan is […]
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August 26, 2013
I recently joined the Ñandu listserv, a service of Ñandutí, the Center for Applied Linguistics‘s resource center for early (K-8) language learning. As a member of the listserv I get questions and recommendations from other elementary world language teachers. (I don’t currently teach elementary levels formally, but I do a workshop for 18 months to […]
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August 7, 2013
My authorized AP syllabus
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Last week I got the email I’d been waiting for from the College Board – my AP Spanish syllabus has been authorized for the 2013-2014 school year. It was especially encouraging that it went through on the first try; the last two times I’ve done this process, I had to re-submit, once for something I […]
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August 6, 2013
As you go back to school, it may help you to check out the posts under my label “first days.” These posts include: A fun spoof off “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire” that makes fun of homonyms in the Spanish alphabet. Advice from last year’s #langchat about the first days of school, including ideas […]
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July 27, 2013
Tips for the New AP
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The world of AP World Language teachers is all abuzz with the vast changes made to the exams this year. Six years ago the Spanish language exam changed to what was a more proficiency-based format. Last year other exams changed to move toward and past what the Spanish exam was, and for 2014 the Spanish […]
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July 22, 2013
I have taught AP Spanish for five of the last six years. At my school, AP Spanish is a fourth-year course. I do not require applications for the class or otherwise “cull” potential students. Anyone who wants to take it may do so. Also, we require all students who take an AP course to take […]
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July 6, 2013
Here’s a fun video that features an animal (gato), narration in present, and talking about wants and feelings. I don’t know the source of the song, but the video was made by a Spanish student who heard it in his class. Proficiency goals as you show this video: Narration in present Talking about feelings Talking […]
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June 30, 2013
This summer I’m reposting some of the gems from the early days, partly because I’ve gotten a lot of readership since then and really, who has time to go back mulling over old blogs, and partly because my traffic is significantly slower and I’m working on other projects in the summer. This topic is from […]
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May 27, 2013
When you’re not using a textbook, authentic sources are your main starting point for most class activities. This is a very good thing, since authentic sources are what we’re trying to train students to comprehend and explore on their own, but sometimes finding the right one can be a challenge. This is especially true for […]
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May 23, 2013
Every once in a while in my class we took a few days to explore a particular grammar point, because let’s face it – sometimes it’s useful to sit down and examine something quickly so we can move on to the real communicative stuff and maybe put it into practice faster than we would have […]
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May 19, 2013
By the time students get to advanced classes such as those intended to prepare them for national standardized exams, almost nothing should include only simple recall. We ask questions like why and how, ask for debates and opinions, ask for synthesis of authentic sources and troubleshooting common problems. How can we prepare students for this from novice levels? There’s one […]
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May 7, 2013
Once upon a time there was a teacher who knew that the textbook just wasn’t fostering proficiency in her students but she didn’t know what to do differently. One day, she attended a short workshop on storytelling that changed her life. Jeffrey the martian penguin and Garfield and Paco the cowboy who bought the horse […]
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