June 24, 2013
Today’s my birthday which means it’s been one year since musicuentos.com launched (moved off of musicuentos.blogspot.com). This site was my birthday present last year, and this year for my birthday my personal webmaster (a.k.a. my husband) added some more features I’d asked for, which means you get my birthday present too! First, Twitter recently made […]
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June 20, 2013
A meaningful approach to grammar
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Let’s just get it right out there that we’re grammar nerds. That’s why we majored in language and teach language, because we love language. We love how it fits together and changes and how systematic and yet unpredictable it is. And we love the little labels. Words like pluscuamperfecto send little shivers up our spines. Do […]
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June 16, 2013
The Tech & Learning Adviser Blog did a blog post a long time ago called Top 10 Sites for Creating Digital Magazines & Newspapers. It’s the only post of its kind I’ve seen and I’ve tweeted it out several times at people looking for tools to make online magazines with their world language class. We’ve tried […]
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June 14, 2013
A world with no magazines
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I recently read Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn. I don’t recommend it but I caught this great quote: Blame the economy, blame bad luck, blame my parents, blame your parents, blame the Internet, blame people who use the Internet. I used to be a writer. I was a writer who wrote about TV and movies […]
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June 12, 2013
Guest post: Coaching with choice
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This semester I was blessed and honored to teach an amazing group of kids who were coachable. Coming from an athletic background, this concept of being “coachable” is one of the most valuable traits that a coach can have in a player. The coachable player is one who may not have the best skills or natural […]
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June 8, 2013
Screencast: Photopeach
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My favorite way to wrap up AP Spanish, after the exam, is to do a project we call “21 important things.” Students do a slideshow on Photopeach using, at least: 21 photos with text, illustrating things important to the student No simple sentences At least half the photos from creative commons, properly sourced Music in […]
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June 4, 2013
I can write all I want about how much I dislike traditional worksheets and multiple-choice questions, but we have to admit they’ve got something going for them: they’re easy to grade. Do you ever feel like there’s a battle between wanting to do more communicative assessments and dreading how long it’s going to take you […]
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May 31, 2013
Somewhere within Spanish levels 2 or 3 everyone gets around to a unit on health. We do one in both levels, going more in depth in level 3, and then explore the concept as it relates to global issues in AP. So this infographic from the Ministerio de Salud de El Salvador makes a perfect […]
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May 27, 2013
When you’re not using a textbook, authentic sources are your main starting point for most class activities. This is a very good thing, since authentic sources are what we’re trying to train students to comprehend and explore on their own, but sometimes finding the right one can be a challenge. This is especially true for […]
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May 23, 2013
Every once in a while in my class we took a few days to explore a particular grammar point, because let’s face it – sometimes it’s useful to sit down and examine something quickly so we can move on to the real communicative stuff and maybe put it into practice faster than we would have […]
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May 19, 2013
By the time students get to advanced classes such as those intended to prepare them for national standardized exams, almost nothing should include only simple recall. We ask questions like why and how, ask for debates and opinions, ask for synthesis of authentic sources and troubleshooting common problems. How can we prepare students for this from novice levels? There’s one […]
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May 16, 2013
This post is cross-posted on the new blog for the Teacher Effectiveness in Language Learning (TELL) project, an initiative of Advance Learning. For schools all across the country, the day is rapidly approaching for us to tell our students goodbye. It’s time to go on vacation, to run to the ice cream truck, lather up […]
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