classroom management
August 7, 2023
This is the journey of teachers – another set of graduates moved on, another crop of kindergarteners coming in, another summer gone, another year just around the bend. Perhaps you’ve moved schools, or grades, or classrooms. Perhaps you’re making a really big change like when I was first asked to teach preschoolers when all of […]
premium
March 23, 2018
What do you do when you’re entering a new classroom, but this time, you have to leave it the way you found it, every single week? Well, you ask #langchat, of course. Two and a half years ago I took to Twitter to get ideas from my amazing #langchat PLN could come up. I was re-entering the […]
premium
November 22, 2017
A hand is raised. Or not raised. Maybe something’s just blurted out. And your heart is in conflict. Do I let her speak? Do I ask him to wait? Because I know, if I let this go on, we’re going to spend the next ten minutes talking about stuff – trivial or not – in […]
premium
September 7, 2015
If you’ve enjoyed using – or considered using – the taco talk to help novices and intermediates (and their parents) understand what it means to learn for proficiency, you’ll love this resource. Many thanks to Iya Nemastil, a Japanese teacher in Ohio, for taking this idea and putting it in a beautifully visualized form. I’m […]
premium
August 31, 2015
What items are really perking up the start of your school year? After a year’s hiatus from being in a classroom with students I can’t tell you how excited I’ve been to explore how to make this new situation (small classes of homeschooled students -ages 6 to 14- meeting with me once a week) work […]
premium
April 21, 2015
Three before me
premium
What could you get out of #langchat? You never know! No matter how many years you’ve been teaching, everyone’s bound to come away with some treasurable, profitable nuggets from #langchat. I’m not even sure which recent #langchat this came from. It could have been when we were discussing grit, how we could help learners persevere […]
premium
February 12, 2015
What does your seating arrangement say about your classroom style? In my last post I made a side comment about how I handle seating assignments and discovered that the only time I’ve written about it on the blog was in the last bullet point in a post on increasing student TL use. How unfortunate, since […]
premium
February 9, 2015
Preservice world language teachers are asking experienced teachers questions they’d like to hear about from the trenches. To find out more about what #Teach2Teach is, see here for an explanation of how it came about, and what the questions are, or how to submit your own question if you’re a teacher in training or a […]
premium
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 […]
premium
February 21, 2013
Burning out or burning bright?
premium
Some time ago a couple of tweets came from my PLN that caught my eye. Blair Richards (@ouiouicestlavie) commented, “4 years into teaching and I’m exhausted. Any wisdom on how to make this a sustainable career without killing myself?” Then Katie Hellerman (@klhellerman) wrote, “I love #TPRS and the results. But even after 3 years I find […]
premium
July 26, 2012
Advice for teachers in training
premium
I’ve gotten two emails lately from teachers in training asking for advice. If there are any significant number of preservice teachers like them, asking such good questions and determined to pursue excellence, we’re headed for great things in language learning. One just asked me for general advice for a preservice teacher. Here are a couple […]
premium
March 26, 2012
Another change: Survey says…
premium
The “I CAN” goals in elementary are going well, so it’s time to keep up the lessons learned from Central States and change something else. One session I went to (a best-of-some-state) was about designing an entire year’s curriculum around a theme. This teacher planned her whole year around the idea that her class was […]
premium