resources
October 10, 2016
Rabbit trails aren’t always a bad thing. Sometimes they turn out to be the yellow brick road with the Emerald City at the end. Here’s the one I hit today: I subscribe to Richard Byrne’s Practical Ed Tech blog’s Practical Ed Tech Tip of the Week. Weekly, I get Richard’s great tip of the week […]
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April 19, 2016
Have you seen the movie Canela? This semester I’ve been so grateful that Kara Jacobs and Elena López introduced me – FINALLY – to an authentic Mexican family film that’s appropriate for any classroom and any student anywhere (a rare find in Spanish-language cinema available in the U.S., as I’m sure you know). So grateful, in fact, […]
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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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March 15, 2016
I’ve often said that infographics are a go-to authentic resource, particularly in novice classes. They are ready-made materials that help you provide input in the visual ways students are increasingly becoming used to. They often use bite-sized portions of language and lots of numbers that make them extra comprehensible. And because they are intended for […]
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December 31, 2015
My old rubric served me well for four years, but it was time for a change. A clean slate, a lot of websites, a lot of feedback, and a lot of collaborative brainstorming later, I finally had something I was willing to put out and test out. Check the post below – the links go […]
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December 17, 2015
December found us doing our first formal assessment of the semester. That is my reality this year, and I love it. We go at our own pace and make our own rules and I don’t see my students enough to warrant spending our precious class time on assessment instead of engaging ourselves with the language. […]
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October 27, 2015
You know that glassed-over look that your students get about halfway (a quarter of the way?) through your lesson? The same one you get about 15 minutes into the faculty meeting? Here’s how to fight it. First, realize it’s not your students’ fault. Their brains are designed to filter and process information and the brain […]
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October 21, 2015
Does this sound familiar to you? Via Facebook, Twitter, Edmodo, Google search, or a two-hour plummet down the rabbit hole known as Pinterest, you found exactly the right authentic resource for your upcoming lesson on members of the family. You spent 72 minutes designing a scaffolding activity that would help make it comprehensible and focus your […]
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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 25, 2015
¿Cómo y por qué usamos comerciales en la clase de español? Porque ofrecen cultura, una fuente auténtica para practicar la comprensión auditiva, estructuras útiles para mejorar el dominio del idioma y no son muy largos para agotar a los estudiantes con mucho contenido incomprensible. Aquí les doy las diapositivas de mi presentación para KWLA 2015. […]
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September 7, 2015
If you’ve enjoyed using – or considered using – the taco talk to help novices and intermediates (and their parents) understand what it means to learn for proficiency, you’ll love this resource. Many thanks to Iya Nemastil, a Japanese teacher in Ohio, for taking this idea and putting it in a beautifully visualized form. I’m […]
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August 24, 2015
This might be my most important resource release this year. First, you can read here about all the things that frustrated me about that snazzy 2011 rubric that I used to use (and that got downloaded from this site a lot). Some of them probably frustrated those of you who used it, too. So I decided to […]
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