novice
August 27, 2019
Can novice Spanish learners understand authentic poems? That was the question asked, quite appropriately, through the Ñandutí listserv, an email list from the Center for Applied Linguistics that serves primarily educators working with elementary learners. The answers were so helpful that I wanted to share them here. First, check out the very rich list of poems […]
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September 4, 2018
Whether your Spanish class (Novice Mid to Intermediate Low) is exploring a novel, a particular country, or a travel theme, country-specific authentic resources can be a gold mine. But given that comprehensible input is what it takes, what can our learners understand? For one thing, highly visual resources like infographics and online travel brochures can be very comprehensible. Another hack […]
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August 27, 2018
Social entrepreneurship… in Spanish 1?! A few years ago, a company called VIF International asked me to think and work with them on this question: What would a project-based learning curriculum look like in a novice Spanish class? It’s not an easy question. Project-based language learning presents the same problem Genius Hour does: how can you […]
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March 13, 2018
Do you remember Mad Libs? As I was planning my semester around our novel Robo en la noche and our unit’s Driving Question: What can we create and share to show an interesting itinerary for a five-day trip in Costa Rica? it occurred to me that Mad Libs would be a fun way to explore a […]
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August 29, 2017
I’m at the library a lot, and I’m a bibliophile. I especially love library books. In Spanish. For small children. Okay, so I do teach very young children at a homeschool co-op, and even more importantly, my own little ones are on a bilingual journey, but whether you teach littles, have littles, or are just […]
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April 26, 2016
They couldn’t hear the word “no”
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The school year is almost over for my students and me- really, this Friday is our last day. You may know by now that we’ve been working through the movie Canela as the entire foundation of our curriculum this semester, and it’s been fabulous. It’s been a gold mine of authentic language and culture for my Novice […]
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April 1, 2016
Not for novices, anyway. It’s too hard for them. I’m giving up. They simply cannot navigate them in a meaningful way to provide the comprehensible input necessary for language acquisition, so why even try? I’m buying into what a teacher trainer told me this week: “Authentic language isn’t comprehensible for beginners.” Take this, for example. […]
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February 10, 2016
Who doesn’t want to talk about cute kids in awesome clothes? I’m sure you’re aware yesterday was Carnaval. Thanks to Allison Wienhold’s post on great Carnaval resources, I was able to give my students an Edmodo assignment that exposed them to some culture (cute culture at that!) and asked them to practice our current ongoing targets, description […]
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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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October 12, 2015
In the last year and a half, I have read a research article, recorded a Black Box Podcast, presented a conference session selected as a Central States All-Star session, and blogged – all on the topic of why we should teach the skill of circumlocution early and often. Aside: Circumlocution is the skill of talking […]
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September 23, 2015
Who are the most beautiful of the beautiful? Let’s take a basic novice skill that we all have in all our curricula: I can describe someone using common adjectives. We’ve all seen and done a million activities to get students practicing description. Today, let me offer another alternative, one that offers a deep, critical-thinking aspect […]
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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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