Search Results for "novice"
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 […]
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! […]
August 3, 2015
Stressed about creating your class syllabi this year? There are a lot of really great syllabi flying around the internet. There are even competitions to see who can do the (best? most creative?) one. I have to tell you, it’s stressful. I don’t at all think it’s intended this way, but I think it feels […]
July 21, 2015
Last spring we had a #langchat on some topics that kept coming up on the suggestion form and either never garnered quite enough votes to be a chat topic or were judged by the moderators to not have enough substance for an hour-long chat. So we polled for a “quick-snapper” chat. We offered eight of […]
July 7, 2015
Cultural awareness is an idea, a concept. So how do you perform it? What is cultural awareness? In my total overhaul of my old performance assessment rubric, I’ve inserted an entire box with a mesh of the exact wording of ACTFL’s cultural awareness performance descriptors. One of the several colleagues who are helpfully picking it apart […]
June 22, 2015
After a year “off,” this fall I’ll be back to teaching, in a unique opportunity (homeschool co-op) that I’m really excited about. And apprehensive about. Things that worry me: Mostly, time. I’ll be seeing my students only once a week (60 minutes for elementary, 90 minutes for upper grades). I’ll be finding something for them […]
June 8, 2015
What is the point of teaching culture, anyway? Is it to get kids to realize that people are different? (They already do.) Is it to get them to try a new food? (Lengua, eww, gross. Does that have peanuts in it?) No, cultural awareness is more about perspective-taking. According to the research, children who show […]
May 14, 2015
Forgive me while I brainstorm in public a moment. Almost four years ago I created this rubric, based on the ACTFL guidelines and the Jefferson County (KY) Public Schools’ world language rubric. I loved it. It’s one of my most requested resources. I used it for years. But as I wrap up my first year […]
May 5, 2015
If you know me you know I love a good research book, particularly one that tells us in lay language what it’s going to take to help kids succeed in a world we can’t even imagine, one that’s vastly different from the one we grew up in. The other day, Zoe asked me, Mami, what’s […]
April 17, 2015
Recently on #langchat we were discussing interpretive and interpersonal tasks and someone asked whether interpersonal also functioned as interpretive, since the listener is interpreting auditory information. I thought it was Lisa Shepard, a lesson to me to note my sources right away, but I can’t find the conversation. So while I can’t credit my interlocutor, […]
April 15, 2015
A few weeks ago the topic for #langchat was about timing and transitioning activities in a class. Then, shortly after, I was teaching a novice-high class of sixth-graders as part of an interview to perhaps go back to teaching next year (MAYBE). (Lesson plan coming soon.) Anyway, it made me think more about this issue […]
April 6, 2015
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. […]