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 […]
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March 22, 2016
I think I’ve come to the end of the acquisition vs. learning distinction for the purposes of language learning in a classroom. Rewind. When I first started investigating second language acquisition research, I was blown away by what I learned about how people really learn languages. It revolutionized my classroom. It brought me to incorporate […]
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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 […]
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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. […]
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March 11, 2016
In case you couldn’t tell, I love storytelling! And at Central States today I had the opportunity to talk about it with a lot of fun teachers and in particular my co-presenter Wendy Farabaugh. It’s not particularly useful for me to offer our slides as we had all of 4 of them; it was not […]
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March 11, 2016
The Best Laid Plans (CSCTFL ’16)
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Isn’t lesson planning the easiest part of our job? I have to be honest: I find lesson creation and planning fun. But I don’t always find that what I produce is effective. What’s the difference between effective planning and randomly hoping it all comes together and accomplishing something? That’s the topic Thomas Sauer, Amy Lenord, […]
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February 26, 2016
CAMP MUSICUENTOS IS A WRAP FOR 2016! Thanks everyone for all the learning! Seven days. Three locations. It’s a new year and an all-new format for the collaborative, intense curriculum planning workshop that is Camp Musicuentos. I can’t wait! What’s this about? Camp Musicuentos is a workshop I hold with a limited number of teachers […]
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February 24, 2016
In eleven years of lesson planning, I’ve learned to have a healthy fear of one particular word in that process: and. Picture this: Recently I’m working on a lesson plan, and because I’m “behind” and trying to catch up on the syllabus (which I wrote, and can really change anytime I want), here’s what I end […]
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February 10, 2016
Who doesn’t want to talk about cute kids in awesome clothes? I’m sure you’re aware yesterday was Carnaval. Thanks to Allison Wienhold’s post on great Carnaval resources, I was able to give my students an Edmodo assignment that exposed them to some culture (cute culture at that!) and asked them to practice our current ongoing targets, description […]
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January 29, 2016
What’s the technology that gets used the most in my classroom? Broadly, I suppose it’s YouTube. Outside the classroom, Edmodo and Google Docs for sure. But as far as a little tool, certainly the one I use the most is a timer. If you’ve been teaching any length of time you know that setting a […]
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January 26, 2016
I love networking with great people. Not only is it how I figure out answers to what I’m doing wrong, it’s also where I get the best tips on new tech tools that will simplify my life without further stressing me out. This tool is a great example. I was talking to Thomas Sauer at […]
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January 22, 2016
I may seem pretty techy to some, but let me tell you, technology overwhelms me quickly. It changes every half second, right? And with all the blogs I follow, some days it seems like I get several blog posts delivered at almost the same time referring to approximately 72 different technology options I must use […]
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