stories
January 19, 2016
Where is the magic intersection of great children’s literature and stories particularly helpful for early language acquisition? I’ve spent a lot of time investigating my answers to this question and I hope my choices and the adaptations I offer here are helpful to you, whether you teach the young or the old who will tolerate […]
premium
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 […]
premium
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 […]
premium
October 20, 2014
If you use children’s stories in the classroom, are those stories skilled enough to do double – or triple – duty? Piggybacking on what Helena Curtain advised, to use literature that’s deep enough to come at life and language in multiple ways, I’d like to add a couple of suggestions for books to add to […]
premium
August 17, 2014
In trying to tell a French teacher what I do the first day of school, I realized that my explanation of the first 12 days of Musicuentos Spanish 1 was, well, all in Spanish. So, here’s some English for you. There are so many, so very many great language learning principles, right? So much second […]
premium
November 12, 2013
I’ve been blogging for a long time, longer than most of you have been reading here, and it occurs to me someone might benefit from a repost once in a while. Here’s one from early 2009. I’ve come up with a story that in both Spanish 1 and 2 has worked really well with teaching […]
premium
September 17, 2013
Seven keys to a great story
premium
It’s no secret – I believe the single best way to keep students’ attention, deliver comprehensible input, frame new content, and interact with vocabulary is storytelling. You may not think you are a natural storyteller, but you are. Everyone is. Telling stories is a part of life. You tell your spouse the crazy things your child […]
premium
March 21, 2013
Cortometraje for narration
premium
One of our major goals for Spanish 3 is to refine narration. We believe this is a critical function of language. Teenagers do it all the time. They talk about what they did over the weekend, over the summer, yesterday in math class. They tell stories about the amazing shot at the basketball game or […]
premium
February 3, 2012
A storytelling success story
premium
In honor of last night’s #langchat topic, I want to share something that happened in one of my kindergarten classes this week. At my school, we have mandatory Spanish from age 3 in preschool through 10th grade. Until 2nd grade, however, students only receive between 15 and 20 minutes of instruction per week. I’ve been […]
premium
March 29, 2011
Activity 1: Cuento poco a poco
premium
Telling a story by categories photo by flamingoo This idea came from a session at CSC on theater that was generally so awful that I left halfway through. Really, it was so bad it was painful. But, I came away with this activity that I thought I could make work in my classroom. In “Cuento […]
premium
October 29, 2010
And the winner is…
premium
This year I picked up some early childhood Spanish to free up some time for our K-8 teacher to increase his instruction in our grades 6-8. So I teach 3-year-olds through 1st grade. I get 10 minutes per week with 3-year-olds, 15 minutes with 4-year-olds, and 20 minutes with kindergarten and 1st grade. The first […]
premium
September 23, 2010
Books recommended as ‘easy’
premium
I found a helpful post on Amazon.com where someone recommends easy novels to read while learning Spanish. I hope to order them and see whether they might be good for Spanish 2, since I’m all about feeding kids authentic rather than learner Spanish from the beginning. One is La Tierra del Fuego, and the other […]
premium