Uncategorized
September 22, 2011
Here’s my Prezi for my Friday a.m. session, Media from Reel to Real. Media from Reel to Real on Prezi
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September 21, 2011
Accuracy refers to grammatical forms that match the standard form of the language. So, a student produces ‘yo pensé’ instead of ‘yo piense’ (something my 3’s have been doing recently). Proficiency includes an aspect of accuracy, but primarily refers to how well the speaker (or writer) is able to communicate and comprehend meaning. The contrast […]
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September 19, 2011
Fun activity #6: A escribir
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Fun activity #6 is ¡A escribir!, an activity obviously designed to get students spontaneously writing. At first, when our activity chooser landed on “A escribir,” students were not thrilled. Writing? Don’t we do that all the time? And from my perspective, how do you keep a random, effective writing prompt on hand all the time? […]
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September 12, 2011
App review: Tour Wrist
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A couple of weeks ago on #Langchat, the Thursday night (8 ET) chat by and for language teachers on Twitter, we discussed iPad (and other iOS) apps that may be useful in the world language classroom. That night I downloaded something like 25 free apps and since then I’ve been on a mission to see […]
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September 1, 2011
Myth #6: Memorizing vocabulary
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For my original post about the myths, look here. Myth #6 is this: Students learn vocabulary in long lists of isolated words (or, we just went over bosque, why can’t they remember it and remember it’s masculine?). What a mistake I used to make, and textbooks make. To think that we can give students a […]
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August 23, 2011
I keep the Mexico trending topics as a column on my Tweetdeck, because you never know what will come up there. One great thing about Twitter is that you can only get so complicated in 140 characters, and when a topic like #4palabrasqueduelen gets trending by thousands and thousands of people, the text gets even […]
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August 21, 2011
Got the rubric!
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**Update August 2015** After four years of scoring assessments using this rubric, I overhauled it to attempt to highlight the areas I loved most and fix the ones that really bothered me (and others). Please see the new post for the new rubric I am using, updating, and working to improve. I’d love your feedback […]
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August 18, 2011
At last I’ve turned to working on my own classes (after looking at Spanish 1 all summer for our new teacher) and I’m (once again) re-doing my Spanish 3 units. This year I’m trying to make them more realistic. I’ve been heavily influenced on this by a particular #langchat last year on making assessments authentic. […]
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August 16, 2011
Jumping on the Animoto bandwagon
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I’ve heard a lot about Animoto but it’s always been filed away in that “I’m sure it’s great, but I’m on technology overload here” part of my brain. This week I decided to finally jump in and make one. If you stick with the basic account, it’s more than mildly annoying that you can’t do […]
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August 13, 2011
Rethinking “late” work
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After a busy but fun month of traveling here and there on vacation, it’s back to school and back to the blog! We teachers have been at school this past week, and the kids come back Monday. Where did that summer go? One goal I accomplished this summer was reading The Homework Myth by Alfie […]
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July 6, 2011
A song made for early Spanish 1
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Last week Luis Fonsi‘s new album Tierra Firme came out – and it’s good. It’s worth the whole download, I promise. The Deluxe version came with the video for Gritar, as well as acoustic and ranchero versions of that fabulous song. As I was listening, this song called “Me gustas tú” came on. The more […]
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June 28, 2011
Proficiency & tacos
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So, about informing our students on proficiency. One of the great ideas that came from that PD I went to was this ‘taco’ activity. It’s designed to be done in the first days of school, preferable on the first day unless your first day is taken up with ‘administrivia.’ Divide students into four groups, or […]
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