authres
October 21, 2015
Does this sound familiar to you? Via Facebook, Twitter, Edmodo, Google search, or a two-hour plummet down the rabbit hole known as Pinterest, you found exactly the right authentic resource for your upcoming lesson on members of the family. You spent 72 minutes designing a scaffolding activity that would help make it comprehensible and focus your […]
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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 […]
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May 11, 2015
Every once in a while I come across an authentic resource so amazing I have to give it its own blog post to tell you USE THIS RESOURCE. And then there’s this one, which makes me shout #addthis and #bookmarkthis and THEN it leads me straight into an example of something I was just asking […]
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March 28, 2015
Ever feel behind the times? I just caught the current #1 song on Latin Billboard and it struck me as having two golden ingredients for a good class song: high student appeal and a couple of high frequency structures repeated. (Though I wanted to say, Dude – she moved on, she’s happy, get over it! […]
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January 27, 2015
If you love to incorporate authentic resources into all levels, you know that there are two major problems with doing so. 1) It takes a lot of time to find the right resource. 2) Using many resources in novice classes can be problematic because of how much scaffolding you may have to do to make […]
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March 25, 2014
One of my most popular posts last year was how to use Marc Anthony’s Latin Grammy-winning song Vivir mi vida to stage Spanish Class Idol in a novice class. A few people have asked me directly, and the topic has been brought up enough on Edmodo, about more clear directions of how to teach the song. […]
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March 7, 2014
Recently when fabulous NC teacher Bethanie Carlson Drew (who has guest-posted on Musicuentos before) tweeted requesting recommendations for a good resource for authentic restaurant reviews, I was happy to share with her my favorite, loogares.com. Don’t be fooled by the footer credit on this activity – that’s all I did. She took my recommendation and […]
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February 27, 2014
I love reviews as an authentic resource, especially for novices, because they hit so many proficiency targets – expressing opinions, description, talking about activities, talking about community. And they’re usually short and written with high-frequency vocabulary. So, where’s the best place to find authentic reviews? So far my favorite is a site called Loogares.com. For […]
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February 8, 2014
This post from last year was a popular activity for Spanish class. Enjoy! ——— A while back, a hashtag hit the trending topics on Twitter in Mexico: #quierounnovioque. I used the program Archivist to save the tweets and export them to an Excel file. I often do this if the teaching value of a particular trending […]
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