And now, for the nightly news. For students approaching or solidly sitting in Intermediate Land, a unit focused on news reporting can add some real power to world language class. Consider what pops up in the news: high-interest stories (engagement!) narration interviews (multiple voices!) culture (practices + perspectives!) the perfect tenses (“17 people have gotten sick […]
In the post-vocabulary list era, we know that vocabulary presented repeatedly in context is the higher road. In that light, what are some practices teachers have found to help learners acquire rich vocabulary without developing, assigning, and drilling long lists of words? I’ll present here one of mine. But first… Let me give a bit […]
Since I developed a student handout with the highest-frequency Spanish words organized by type and including translation and rank, and recently posted about how we put our most helpful high-frequency words and phrases on our shower-curtain word walls, it stands to reason that I’m a big fan of high-frequency words. Well, I am and I’m […]
What do you do when you’re entering a new classroom, but this time, you have to leave it the way you found it, every single week? Well, you ask #langchat, of course. Two and a half years ago I took to Twitter to get ideas from my amazing #langchat PLN could come up. I was re-entering the […]
When it comes to memory, vision trumps all other senses. Did you catch that? If you associate an item with a picture, memory success jumps from 10% to 65%. It’s why I don’t tell stories and I don’t ask stories, I draw stories. And in my class we have approximately 3 key school supplies: something to draw with, something […]
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 […]
Do you sometimes feel like we’re working in an all-or-nothing profession? I’m not sure if it’s an artifact of social media, of tweets and blog posts designed to be punchy and petite at the same time. I’m not sure if it’s a desire to be the next big thing, the acronym everyone’s talking about. I […]
Good morning from a sunny, beautiful spring day in Minneapolis, the location of the 2015 Central States Conference on the Teaching of Foreign Languages. My presentation here is called “Arming Students for a World of Incomprehensible Input.” It’s based on an episode of the Black Box Podcast from last year (listen here, read the script here), […]
I recently observed a teacher practicing prepositional phrases with students and it got me thinking about communicative ways to practice prepositions. A couple of notes: First, most textbook suggested vocabulary lists include way too many prepositions. Take a deep breathe, remember that you can’t control vocabulary, resist the pressure to cover too much content, and determine […]
I haven’t been blogging much lately and am dropping off the radar for about a month and I feel the need to explain why. If you’ve ever used the “Recent Popular Posts” section on the right side of the blog, you’ve probably noticed that one very not recent post stays up there. I really ought […]
Hello this time from Merillville, Indiana, where I’m learning with a group of teachers from that school and other schools across the region. What fun! This workshop’s focus is proficiency-based lesson planning. We can say that we’re proficiency-based teachers but where the evidence of that can really be found is in our lesson plans. Do […]
2013’s fifth most popular post is about giving up on the idea that you can control what vocabulary students acquire, while engaging students in activities that really deepen their vocabulary. A few months ago, as part of the student choice homework activity, one of my best AP students chose to label ten items in her […]