proficiency
August 19, 2015
Many teachers have enjoyed using the taco talk to help beginning students and their parents (and administrators!) understand what a novice-level, proficiency-based class is all about. This year I finally tweaked the document to be helpful to teachers of intermediate students. And then a French teacher contacted me for permission to change the “taco” portion […]
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August 11, 2015
As part of last year’s back-to-school posts I posted a document to get kids (and their parents) talking about tacos to explore what proficiency is and what a focus on proficiency will look like in your classroom. Since then I’ve gotten several requests to adapt that document for intermediate students. Ask and you shall receive (sometimes, […]
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July 7, 2015
No dog with my iced tea, please
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Cultural awareness is an idea, a concept. So how do you perform it? What is cultural awareness? In my total overhaul of my old performance assessment rubric, I’ve inserted an entire box with a mesh of the exact wording of ACTFL’s cultural awareness performance descriptors. One of the several colleagues who are helpfully picking it apart […]
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May 27, 2015
Embedded listening
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Are you subscribed to the CASLS weekly newsletter? If not, go here and sign up now, then come back. Every Monday you’ll get quick resources and bite-size, research-packed learning delivered to your inbox. One such week a listening activity caught my eye. The activity was adapted from an activity on Lanternworld (ESL) and with it, CASLS […]
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May 14, 2015
Forgive me while I brainstorm in public a moment. Almost four years ago I created this rubric, based on the ACTFL guidelines and the Jefferson County (KY) Public Schools’ world language rubric. I loved it. It’s one of my most requested resources. I used it for years. But as I wrap up my first year […]
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April 17, 2015
Recently on #langchat we were discussing interpretive and interpersonal tasks and someone asked whether interpersonal also functioned as interpretive, since the listener is interpreting auditory information. I thought it was Lisa Shepard, a lesson to me to note my sources right away, but I can’t find the conversation. So while I can’t credit my interlocutor, […]
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March 2, 2015
Anatomy of a novice question
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If you’ve been through ACTFL’s Oral Proficiency Interview (OPI) or Modified Oral Proficiency Interview (MOPI) training (I have not), perhaps you can help me clarify an issue when assessing novices. When talking to teachers about what a novice can and can’t do, I’ve heard teachers make this comment: But that’s a question, right? And novices […]
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January 30, 2015
For the original myths post, click here. You can also view all of the myths posts. This, my eleventh post on myths I believe make us ineffective in the world language classroom, is about saying we’re assessing something without actually asking students to do it. 11. A multiple-choice question counts as a valid assessment of […]
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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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December 2, 2014
Welcome to the 2014 “Best of Musicuentos” series. In the month of December I do not post much new material as I enjoy the season with my family, but rather I re-post the top ten posts of the year, in case you want to re-read, or in case you’ve joined us this year and didn’t […]
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October 17, 2014
A new resource has become available to the Spanish teacher community and I really wanted you to know about it. Last night’s #langchat was about how we can push our students from Novice Mid to Novice High in all three modes (for a summary, keep an eye on the Calico Spanish blog). Several participants expressed […]
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August 12, 2014
It’s a new school year and for many of us that means talking to new students and new parents about something they’re very unfamiliar with: language proficiency. You may have caught this document on the wikispace for the workshop I did with the Webb School of Knoxville this summer; it’s something I put together to […]
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