homework
August 19, 2019
Supercharge a “News” unit
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And now, for the nightly news. For students approaching or solidly sitting in Intermediate Land, a unit focused on news reporting can add some real power to world language class. Consider what pops up in the news: high-interest stories (engagement!) narration interviews (multiple voices!) culture (practices + perspectives!) the perfect tenses (“17 people have gotten sick […]
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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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August 5, 2016
Have you thought about adding student choice to spice up your concept of homework and increase student motivation? Have you already been using student choice in homework for years but could use a few new options or a change in assessment system? Here is my kind of prerequisite annual post on options for homework choice. […]
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June 13, 2016
Here’s a question for your summer: Can you dare to go YONG? At the end of the 2013-2014 school year, I was finishing a seven-year stint at a particular school. In a nutshell, the school had a new administrator that year and had swung from what some might call a little too much chaotic familiarity […]
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December 13, 2015
After years of teaching students between Novice High and Intermediate Mid, I found myself teaching students with no measurable proficiency. They did not know what loco meant (and had never heard of Zorro!?!) (and hated all heartthrob boy bands?!?!). It was new territory for me. And it was time to take a look at my homework choice […]
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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! […]
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August 7, 2015
Easily one of the top five topics if you look at my most popular blog posts: Choice in homework. I won’t go to deeply into what I mean by homework choice because you can see a pretty good summary here in one of the most popular posts of 2014. After you look at that, you […]
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December 18, 2014
Again, I skipped #6 and we’ll get to it later, and you’ve already seen #4 because it was part one of the post also including #8. So here we have the third most-popular post of 2014, the one offering up a more user-friendly version of my choice-in-homework project, along with several adaptations from amazing colleagues. […]
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August 26, 2014
When I posted last year about my latest update on the Elige tu propia aventura homework choice activity, the post quickly became one of the top 10 of the year. Accordingly, I frequently receive requests for my list of options and how I divided them into a point system. The problem is that I was experimenting […]
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December 24, 2013
2013’s third most read post is about an update to my most popular project, homework choice. Stay tuned in 2014 for how these updates are going in my class – including one student’s feedback call to Nescafe. The homework choice approach is probably my most popular idea ever (it’s a toss-up between that and the […]
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August 18, 2013
Choice in homework, updated
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The homework choice approach is probably my most popular idea ever (it’s a toss-up between that and the YouTube commercials quizzes). Read about the original idea and browse lots of updates using the choice tag. I just updated my list and its format (and stole a name for it from Bethanie Drew @lovemysummer). I used […]
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June 12, 2013
Guest post: Coaching with choice
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This semester I was blessed and honored to teach an amazing group of kids who were coachable. Coming from an athletic background, this concept of being “coachable” is one of the most valuable traits that a coach can have in a player. The coachable player is one who may not have the best skills or natural […]
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