Resources
July 30, 2016
A call to #AuthRes August
premium
Tried stepping outside the textbook to use the target-culture world instead? This stuff is hard, people. Or at least, incredibly time-consuming. Textbooks aren’t so expensive because they weren’t a lot of work. Shall we start the school year by sharing the load? Wherever you are and whatever you’re teaching, I invite you to join me in […]
premium
April 19, 2016
Have you seen the movie Canela? This semester I’ve been so grateful that Kara Jacobs and Elena López introduced me – FINALLY – to an authentic Mexican family film that’s appropriate for any classroom and any student anywhere (a rare find in Spanish-language cinema available in the U.S., as I’m sure you know). So grateful, in fact, […]
premium
April 1, 2016
Not for novices, anyway. It’s too hard for them. I’m giving up. They simply cannot navigate them in a meaningful way to provide the comprehensible input necessary for language acquisition, so why even try? I’m buying into what a teacher trainer told me this week: “Authentic language isn’t comprehensible for beginners.” Take this, for example. […]
premium
March 30, 2016
My friend Amy Lenord and I are tired of drawing out our primacy/recency map on paper to keep us focused on planning the right stuff at the right time. So, a couple of weeks ago Amy emailed me the template she had whipped up to print out and fill in. It was super simple and […]
premium
March 15, 2016
I’ve often said that infographics are a go-to authentic resource, particularly in novice classes. They are ready-made materials that help you provide input in the visual ways students are increasingly becoming used to. They often use bite-sized portions of language and lots of numbers that make them extra comprehensible. And because they are intended for […]
premium
March 12, 2016
A year passing between two versions of the same presentation changes things. That’s even more true when your teaching situation changes. Last year I presented at Central States a session about helping students face a world of incomprehensible input and turn it into the comprehensible input they need for acquisition by teaching circumlocution early and often. […]
premium
January 19, 2016
Where is the magic intersection of great children’s literature and stories particularly helpful for early language acquisition? I’ve spent a lot of time investigating my answers to this question and I hope my choices and the adaptations I offer here are helpful to you, whether you teach the young or the old who will tolerate […]
premium
December 31, 2015
My old rubric served me well for four years, but it was time for a change. A clean slate, a lot of websites, a lot of feedback, and a lot of collaborative brainstorming later, I finally had something I was willing to put out and test out. Check the post below – the links go […]
premium
December 17, 2015
December found us doing our first formal assessment of the semester. That is my reality this year, and I love it. We go at our own pace and make our own rules and I don’t see my students enough to warrant spending our precious class time on assessment instead of engaging ourselves with the language. […]
premium
December 13, 2015
After years of teaching students between Novice High and Intermediate Mid, I found myself teaching students with no measurable proficiency. They did not know what loco meant (and had never heard of Zorro!?!) (and hated all heartthrob boy bands?!?!). It was new territory for me. And it was time to take a look at my homework choice […]
premium
December 4, 2015
How about an elementary rubric?
premium
It’s possible a good rubric for communicating performance-towards-proficiency for early language learners exists, but if it does, I haven’t seen it. (If you have, please share in a comment!) See this post for my update from this past summer on my more complex rubric designed to be used with no younger than middle school students. […]
premium
November 16, 2015
Love the textbook or hate it? Convinced you can’t teach well unless you pitch that textbook in the trash? Convinced you can’t teach without it or you’ll lose your sanity? Wherever you fall, if a textbook is a tool in your classroom, this post is for you. Note that I believe a textbook is just […]
premium