March 28, 2017
Subtitle: The sheer, incomparable power of making meaning. Other subtitle: Anecdotes from my Russian journey. When I tell people that I’m learning Russian, I get two reactions, one right after the other. First, Wow, that’s neat! Then, Why? I don’t really know how to answer this. Before I started learning it (this time), I didn’t […]
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March 14, 2017
You want to include more authentic videos in your class. The question becomes, what do you do with a TL video? Now, there have been several great posts offering options of activities to use with authentic video, like this one from Spanish Playground or this one from Bryan Kandel. My post, in particular, along with my […]
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March 3, 2017
Let’s do this together.
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Edit: The Camp Musicuentos curriculum planning workshop and The Brave Little Tailor comprehensible input strategies workshops are in transition to an online webinar format for 2018. For more information, see my Workshops page. Where will I see you this year? I hope to meet you at one of the conferences I’ll be attending this […]
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February 25, 2017
It’s almost March and Mania musical de marzo is in full swing. And have I got a find for you. Refresh my music memory. It’s hard to tell who started it or if three people had the same idea over a period of a few years – maybe Jeff Klampka on Ben Slavic’s blog, then Spanish […]
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February 11, 2017
Are you a bilingual person living in the culture of your first language? (Example: An American who speaks English as a first language, speaks French as a second, and lives in the U.S. or England.) Would you help me on a future blog post by answering this one question? Check only three: what tasks do you […]
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February 10, 2017
Blogs to Watch 2017
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It’s a great time to be building a professional learning network if you’re a world language teacher. The past few years, I’ve greatly enjoyed sharing recommendations for blogs that have come on my radar and helped me in my journey to improve this craft of ours. I started in 2014 by asking you to take […]
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January 30, 2017
Do you remember Napster? Did you use it to download music without anyone contributing to the work the artist and the artist’s team put into it? I did not. But I’ve got no high horses around here- fifteen years ago, I used a similar “service” (I’m not trying to be coy; I cannot even remember the […]
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January 24, 2017
Shall we talk politics? Everyone else is, so, why not. But wait a minute. There’s quite a bit of politics in this post that’s not about politics. So, I should start here: what is it about? A call to meatloaf – I mean, empathy As 2016 turned into 2017 and the most divisive spirit most of us have […]
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January 11, 2017
Are you a bad teacher or a good teacher? Will anything about your teaching change in 2017? I’m pretty sure at every Camp Musicuentos, I’ve had a crier. At least one person has broken down in tears. At least one person has talked about applying to work at Starbucks. Teachers are feeling crushed under the […]
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December 30, 2016
Revealing that some themes consistently speak to what we need to hear and want to use, the top Musicuentos post of 2016 was a simple repost of the previous year’s homework choice systems update. The post explains how I incorporate a homework choice system and offers links to see what other teachers do as well. […]
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December 28, 2016
Merry day-after-Christmas! We’re almost to the end! The second most popular post of 2016 was also about music – this time, the top 20 songs that have stood the test of time in my class (some more time than others). My students love them! Will yours? Top 20 Songs for Spanish Class I just posted […]
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December 26, 2016
The title of Who Owns the Learning came up as a possibility for this past summer’s #langchat, and the title immediately caught my eye. It’s been a huge dilemma in my quest to figure out why students don’t continue in their language journey – if they don’t own the learning past my classroom, have we all wasted […]
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