resources
January 21, 2014
A few months ago I was at a Starbucks and picked up one of those cards to get a free app download. The app seemed to be some sort of child’s drawing tool, and since my daughter already loves DoodleBuddy, I thought, hey, it’s free, why not. Sure enough, my 4-year-old (excuse me, she’s “four […]
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December 2, 2013
When I first set out to teach the novel La ciudad de las bestias by Isabel Allende five years ago, I wrote chapter guides for each chapter as I taught it through a year. I never dreamed that teachers far and wide would use the document I made publicly available a few years ago. […]
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November 9, 2013
Listen to some Grammy music
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The Latin Grammy awards are coming up in two short weeks, and this year the website has made it easier than ever for you to catch some Grammy-nominated tunes. Check out the Latin Grammy Playlist Hub, powered by spotify, to listen to Latin Grammy-nominated music by category. Lately, whenever I’m at my computer working […]
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September 24, 2013
At a conference a few years ago -I can’t even remember which, I think it was Central States in Indianapolis- I attended a workshop by an AP teacher who gave out a worksheet she used to help students through reading authentic materials. I liked the basis of what she’d done so I took it and […]
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September 20, 2013
Using audio-lingua
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I’m betting you’ve probably already discovered this resource, but if you haven’t, you are going to love this. I don’t know who started Audio Lingua or why, but it’s basically a repository of people, well, talking. About, well, stuff. All kinds of stuff. It seems people record themselves talking about something and upload it. But […]
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August 7, 2013
My authorized AP syllabus
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Last week I got the email I’d been waiting for from the College Board – my AP Spanish syllabus has been authorized for the 2013-2014 school year. It was especially encouraging that it went through on the first try; the last two times I’ve done this process, I had to re-submit, once for something I […]
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July 17, 2013
There’s one moment in a teaching class I took in college more than ten years ago that forever remains in my memory. Our professor, one of my favorites of all my education years, told a story of how he watched one of his students die of cancer. He ended the lecture that day with a […]
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July 6, 2013
Here’s a fun video that features an animal (gato), narration in present, and talking about wants and feelings. I don’t know the source of the song, but the video was made by a Spanish student who heard it in his class. Proficiency goals as you show this video: Narration in present Talking about feelings Talking […]
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May 31, 2013
Somewhere within Spanish levels 2 or 3 everyone gets around to a unit on health. We do one in both levels, going more in depth in level 3, and then explore the concept as it relates to global issues in AP. So this infographic from the Ministerio de Salud de El Salvador makes a perfect […]
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May 23, 2013
Every once in a while in my class we took a few days to explore a particular grammar point, because let’s face it – sometimes it’s useful to sit down and examine something quickly so we can move on to the real communicative stuff and maybe put it into practice faster than we would have […]
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May 10, 2013
E-magazines with learner appeal
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In my quest to find and review online publishing tools (i.e. sites that will organize your students’ content like a magazine or newspaper) I’ve come across quite a few online magazines designed for our primary audience – middle and high school students. You can find anything I’ve found by looking at my Delicious tags under […]
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May 4, 2013
Every once in a while there comes along an authentic resource that’s the golden trifecta, the perfect mix of pop culture, TL culture, and usability for any level of language learning. The Pin Pon clip in Shrek is one of those. It’s so good that I feel inclined to repost it to give it to […]
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