research
April 1, 2014
No April Fools’ joke here! Every project I work on matters to me, but some are just really close to my heart and I don’t know how else to explain it. One is the proficiency-based, comprehensible input-filled curriculum for homeschooled elementary students I’ve been working on with Calico Spanish. Another is the Musicuentos Black Box […]
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February 18, 2014
A friend of mine told me he frequently gets asked if I’m a TPRS teacher. My answer: TPRS is an am vs. use question for me. Yes, I use. No, I am not “a TPRS teacher.” There are so many strategies from TPRS that have made me a much better teacher and that I use in almost every class […]
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February 13, 2014
What I love about TPRS
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Let me give you a run-down of my teaching career. After I graduated from high school, I spent four years at a liberal arts college learning a lot about what it means to be a good teacher and almost nothing about how to be a good language teacher. After graduating from college, I spent three […]
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January 5, 2014
After you’ve decided which research-based book to read and how to collaborate with another teacher, how about resolving to survey your students? My third suggestion for a 2014 resolution is: 3. Survey your students. We all know the power of honest feedback. Have you ever invited your students to give you constructive feedback? I’ve surveyed […]
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December 12, 2013
2103’s seventh most popular post is about one of my soapboxes, my “hills to die on.” I’m convinced that the way most of us approach vocabulary in the world language classroom is almost completely contradictory to brain research. Read on for four classroom habits that enrich student vocabulary where it counts – in their long-term […]
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February 19, 2013
Feel like your class is disengaged and/or bored? This atmosphere could be rooted in all sorts of problems, but one of the main causes is that you have students focused on the same activity for too long. Based on research, your brain needs breaks from a particular learning-intensive activity in order to process and encode […]
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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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