motivation
May 16, 2013
This post is cross-posted on the new blog for the Teacher Effectiveness in Language Learning (TELL) project, an initiative of Advance Learning. For schools all across the country, the day is rapidly approaching for us to tell our students goodbye. It’s time to go on vacation, to run to the ice cream truck, lather up […]
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April 5, 2013
One of my top two most widely-used ideas ever is abandoning homework in favor of a weekly “fluency” activity involving a whole lot of student choice. [Incidentally, the other is the YouTube commercial cloze quizzes – in 2.5 years about 60 teachers have joined this project.] Basically, the concept is that instead of you assigning students […]
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August 26, 2012
Last spring, we surveyed our 8th, 10th, and 11th grade students about 1) their outlook or motivation for continuing or not continuing to learn Spanish and 2) what they thought they could do in Spanish. After the motivation questions, students were given a list of “I Can” statements related to communicative functions in Spanish. Options […]
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July 30, 2012
A study in motivation
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I’ve been doing a lot of reflecting on the continuity of our Spanish program at my school. We have a new 2nd grade – 8th grade teacher coming in this year, and I consider that a good opportunity to take a fresh look at how the three of us Spanish teachers are working together to […]
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March 29, 2011
Activity 1: Cuento poco a poco
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Telling a story by categories photo by flamingoo This idea came from a session at CSC on theater that was generally so awful that I left halfway through. Really, it was so bad it was painful. But, I came away with this activity that I thought I could make work in my classroom. In “Cuento […]
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March 23, 2011
(Trying to) Make learning fun
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What happens when all the fun goes out of learning language? The students disengage. Learning doesn’t have to be entertainment for entertainment’s sake, but I’m learning that if students aren’t engaged in learning, they see it as hard and not just boring–the opposite of fun. Hi, my name is Sra. Cottrell and I am not […]
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February 11, 2011
There are a lot of problems with current world language teaching in the U.S. I think the biggest problem is that we’re trying to teach it the way we teach everything else, when language used for communication is not learned or stored the way other subjects are, and the answer is to look back at […]
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August 29, 2009
I am in technology heaven
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Kids motivated by technology? Want to get them creating AND listening to their own Spanish? This could be the most revolutionary tool I have seen for my classroom in a long time. I made this video in about twenty minutes. http://www.xtranormal.com/players/jwplayer.swfhttp://www.xtranormal.com/players/embedded-xnl-stats.swf
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February 3, 2009
A project based on motivation
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Here in Kentucky we’re still digging out from last week’s ice storm. Yesterday I was able to get online for the first time in a week, so today, it’s back to blogging! If you’ve taught from a textbook for very long, you’ve found that they’re just not motivating to students who aren’t already self-motivated, and […]
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