assessment
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 […]
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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 […]
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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, […]
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March 24, 2015
Do you sometimes feel like we’re working in an all-or-nothing profession? I’m not sure if it’s an artifact of social media, of tweets and blog posts designed to be punchy and petite at the same time. I’m not sure if it’s a desire to be the next big thing, the acronym everyone’s talking about. I […]
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February 20, 2015
I’m looking forward to participating in a special interview with Paulino Brener on his EPC Show in about a week. Join us online to talk about motivational aspects of our curricula. Cross-posted from Paulino Brener at epcshow.com and you’ll find out more about where to find the video here: Join me on Saturday February 28 […]
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January 30, 2015
For the original myths post, click here. You can also view all of the myths posts. This, my eleventh post on myths I believe make us ineffective in the world language classroom, is about saying we’re assessing something without actually asking students to do it. 11. A multiple-choice question counts as a valid assessment of […]
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December 2, 2014
Welcome to the 2014 “Best of Musicuentos” series. In the month of December I do not post much new material as I enjoy the season with my family, but rather I re-post the top ten posts of the year, in case you want to re-read, or in case you’ve joined us this year and didn’t […]
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November 8, 2014
Since I had my precious Cottrell-itos on my trip to the annual conference of the Indiana Foreign Language Teacher’s Association, I didn’t get to spend as much time involved in the conference as I would have liked to, but I did greatly enjoy the time I did have. I reconnected with “old” friends, made new […]
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October 30, 2014
After I get a question repeated to me a certain number of times via Twitter, comments, or emails, I know it’s time for a blog post. The Great Dilemma If you have never had to consider how students in your TCI (teaching with comprehensible input) class will fit in a program that forces grammar-heavy common […]
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October 9, 2014
It’s a wrap! I was back at my “home conference” in September for the 2014 Kentucky World Language Association annual conference and it felt like I hadn’t missed a beat- in a very good way. I got to hang out with old friends and make fantastic new ones, help and be helped, take a few […]
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June 30, 2014
Well, last Friday came and went and the first official Camp Musicuentos is a wrap! I had the great privilege of working with 20 outstanding teachers from across my own region and even beyond – I was joined by teachers from Kentucky, Ohio, Tennessee, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Missouri, and Virginia! Our learning, for […]
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June 18, 2014
How do you mark student writing? What kind of corrections do you make? What kind of corrections work, that is, help students do better next time? The authors of a recent article in the journal System address these questions. They compare two models of corrective feedback: explicitly telling a student there’s a problem, and implicitly coaching a […]
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