What do you do when you’re being forced into a textbook adoption that’s stifling the creative community in your school? Sometimes you turn to someone with a generally poor opinion of textbooks for advice. One of my favorite parts of doing what I do is the conversations I get to watch and sometimes even facilitate. […]
If you love to incorporate authentic resources into all levels, you know that there are two major problems with doing so. 1) It takes a lot of time to find the right resource. 2) Using many resources in novice classes can be problematic because of how much scaffolding you may have to do to make […]
It’s always exciting for me to announce a resource release! Today on the blog and on my Teachers Pay Teachers store I’m releasing a new FREE resource as I explore developing communicative games. My students enjoyed using a Battleship game format to practice accurate repetitions of forms of ser and estar, so I decided to […]
My first two suggestions for resolutions for 2015 were intended to push for a more positive note in world language teaching in 2015: for us to stop beating ourselves up when things don’t go exactly according to plan, and for us to act like we’re on the same team with the same goals, instead of […]
I’ve skipped the #6 post for now and you’ll find out later why. Two of the resources I released this year were verb charts, a free pack of the three most common tenses and a complete pack of 8 charts available for purchase. You can find both of them here. But before you use them, […]
Welcome to the 2014 “Best of Musicuentos” series. In the month of December I do not post much new material as I enjoy the season with my family, but rather I re-post the top ten posts of the year, in case you want to re-read, or in case you’ve joined us this year and didn’t […]
Happy Cyber Monday! One of my digital resource missions is to inspire teachers of intermediate, advanced, and heritage students to start using more engaging authentic materials in the classroom, and that starts with more engaging help in navigating those authentic resources. From today through Wednesday, enjoy a total of 20% off my digital resources on TeachersPayTeachers […]
Since I had my precious Cottrell-itos on my trip to the annual conference of the Indiana Foreign Language Teacher’s Association, I didn’t get to spend as much time involved in the conference as I would have liked to, but I did greatly enjoy the time I did have. I reconnected with “old” friends, made new […]
It’s finally here! To find out all the details about the brand new Musicuentos ebook, Cajas de cartón: a chapter-by-chapter guide to the memoir by Francisco Jiménez, check out the Cajas page. Or, to summarize, it’s 59 illustrated pages of proficiency-focused, vocabulary-boosting activities paired with comprehension and critical-thinking questions to accompany the 12 chapters of Francisco […]
It’s been a rough road this summer for Cajas de cartón: a reader’s guide to the memoir by Francisco Jiménez. I think I began the guide in April or May, but then June was slammed with workshops and travel. July I lost my father and traveled some more. August I finished traveling and went back to […]
I’ve been asked several times lately, particularly by teachers starting out their AP Spanish classes, exactly how I teach the novel La ciudad de las bestias as part of the course. Here’s the answer. If a class has higher proficiency, I set deadlines for chapters. We do read on one set day per week, but students […]
When I posted last year about my latest update on the Elige tu propia aventura homework choice activity, the post quickly became one of the top 10 of the year. Accordingly, I frequently receive requests for my list of options and how I divided them into a point system. The problem is that I was experimenting […]