Resources
October 21, 2015
Does this sound familiar to you? Via Facebook, Twitter, Edmodo, Google search, or a two-hour plummet down the rabbit hole known as Pinterest, you found exactly the right authentic resource for your upcoming lesson on members of the family. You spent 72 minutes designing a scaffolding activity that would help make it comprehensible and focus your […]
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October 16, 2015
Here at TFLA, as I do at many workshops and sessions, I’ll be asking participants to share their ideas, creativity, and lessons learned with those who aren’t able to be here. Most frequently I invite them to do that via Google Drive. I have discovered, however, that not everyone is familiar with how to share […]
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October 13, 2015
Here begins a flurry of posts related to my presentations and workshops at the Texas Foreign Language Association’s conference this weekend. First, our workshop (by our I mean I’m doing this with Amy Lenord, John Cadena, Melissa Vargas) on Thursday night is called Twitter 101 and is about how and why to get involved with a professional […]
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October 12, 2015
In the last year and a half, I have read a research article, recorded a Black Box Podcast, presented a conference session selected as a Central States All-Star session, and blogged – all on the topic of why we should teach the skill of circumlocution early and often. Aside: Circumlocution is the skill of talking […]
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September 28, 2015
The Best Laid Plans (KWLA ’15)
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Given how long Thomas Sauer and I have been colleagues and friends, I can’t believe we haven’t presented together before. Well, we fixed that on Saturday and presented a 3-hour workshop on effective lesson planning. Two things: 1. Three hours was not enough. 2. I learned at least as much from Thomas as anyone there learned […]
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September 25, 2015
¿Cómo y por qué usamos comerciales en la clase de español? Porque ofrecen cultura, una fuente auténtica para practicar la comprensión auditiva, estructuras útiles para mejorar el dominio del idioma y no son muy largos para agotar a los estudiantes con mucho contenido incomprensible. Aquí les doy las diapositivas de mi presentación para KWLA 2015. […]
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September 7, 2015
If you’ve enjoyed using – or considered using – the taco talk to help novices and intermediates (and their parents) understand what it means to learn for proficiency, you’ll love this resource. Many thanks to Iya Nemastil, a Japanese teacher in Ohio, for taking this idea and putting it in a beautifully visualized form. I’m […]
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August 24, 2015
This might be my most important resource release this year. First, you can read here about all the things that frustrated me about that snazzy 2011 rubric that I used to use (and that got downloaded from this site a lot). Some of them probably frustrated those of you who used it, too. So I decided to […]
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August 19, 2015
Many teachers have enjoyed using the taco talk to help beginning students and their parents (and administrators!) understand what a novice-level, proficiency-based class is all about. This year I finally tweaked the document to be helpful to teachers of intermediate students. And then a French teacher contacted me for permission to change the “taco” portion […]
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What if a prominent teacher and researcher told you that you couldn’t possibly teach your students what they need to know in order to understand authentic target language and incorporate what they understand into their own language production? But don’t lose hope; Waring (and the presenter of this Black Box Videocast, Justin Slocum Bailey) helps […]
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August 13, 2015
What would homework choice look like for elementary students? I can’t believe it didn’t occur to me to ask this question earlier. I knew this year I was going to have a group of students ages 6 to 10 but I thought I’d just give them the same options sheet as my older group. Ha! […]
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August 11, 2015
As part of last year’s back-to-school posts I posted a document to get kids (and their parents) talking about tacos to explore what proficiency is and what a focus on proficiency will look like in your classroom. Since then I’ve gotten several requests to adapt that document for intermediate students. Ask and you shall receive (sometimes, […]
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