Looks like spring is finally here – well at least where I live – and with it are all those thoughts of renewal and spring cleaning. Unfortunately, our outdated school calendars don’t allow for much of that thinking and for so many teachers March is a rough time and often represents the end of an incredibly long uninterrupted stretch of teaching days. It’s with that thought that I hope you are reading this post either on your way to or from spring break or with plans for a weekend that includes some activities designed to take care of YOU. Perhaps you shouldn’t even be reading this right now at all and just bookmark it for later. In any case, here are the blog posts that caught my attention this week:

• 5 ways to use infographics in language class

  Using authentic resources is certainly one of the ways that we can engage students with language, but many teachers don’t know where to find the right resources and what to do with them once they do find them, especially when it comes to Novice language learners. Spanish teacher and super blogger, Sara-Elizabeth Cottrell shares five specific strategies that cover a range of both input and output activities. Be sure to also check out the comments where I shared the link to a fantastic wikispace and Pinterest boards of graphic organizers curated by language and theme. Read Sara-Elizabeth’ post –>

• Encouraging Risk/Rewarding Growth with “Checks And A Smile”

  True learning happens in the heads of our students. It’s hard to get into the heads of our students and their reactions to whatever we have planned for them on any given day doesn’t always paint an accurate picture of the success of an activity. More importantly, completing an activity doesn’t necessarily mean that students have grown as a learner. Japanese teacher, Colleen Lee-Hayes, shares her latest attempt of making learning a bit more transparent and transferring the ownership of the classroom to her students. It’s really an easy trick, but one I bet will pay off down the road.  Read Colleen’s post –>

• CSCTFL 16 Takeaways

  A lot of world language bloggers from both within and outside the CSCTFL region attended this year’s conference and shared some interesting summaries about their learning, aha moments and plans for the future. I should have written one as well, as the content of so many session was pointing towards a new direction for our field which is pretty exciting. Since I didn’t, feel free to explore these great summaries from Carrie, Wendy, Laura, Talia, Mademoiselle.

After taking some days off for a mini-vacation, I’m back this week with another blog summary.  The extra time allowed me some extra time to filter through more posts and the blogosphere didn’t disappoint. Below are some my favorite reads from the past couple of weeks. Of course, the weekend might also be a good time to review some of the incredible resources shared during the four regional conferences this past month. Pull up a chair, open your favorite note taking app and learn from your couch: #scolt16, #nectfl16, #swcolt16, #csctfl16.

• Grading: it’s only a matter of time!

  Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you likely have been reading and inhaling every single post that Megan and Kara at the Creative Language Class have shared over the past couple of years. This week’s post really caught my attention because it addresses one my personal interests: Grading and the power it has over teachers. For most teachers it is all-consuming and Megan shares some interesting counterpoints to many of the myths of grading as well as outlines a powerful vision for how teacher could and should spend their time instead of grading.   Read Megan’s post –>

• Attack of the Translator: What is the debate REALLY about?

  As if providing some alternate solutions for grading wasn’t enough, Spanish teacher, Laura Sexton, tackled another one of those hot button issues for many teachers this week: online translators! I can’t imagine a language teacher who hasn’t encountered this issue at some point. It’s been around as long as the Internet and I remember having many of the same feelings of frustration, disappointment and perhaps even helplessness when students did it. But Laura moves beyond the natural anger you might feel, and walks us through some tough questions and even comes to a powerful conclusion. Perhaps the entire debate has nothing to do with online translators.  Read Laura’s post –>

• From the P2P Blog: Language Advocacy Starts With You

  After weeks of very admirable advocacy efforts in Florida, we got some good news on Friday evening. The coding instead of world language legislation had failed. While this was an impressive rallying of the profession to support our colleagues in the sunshine state, we should also view it as an important reminder that EVERY teacher is an advocate and Alyssa Villarreal’s outlined this notion in her post this week. Not every teacher feels compelled to write a letter to the editor, call a legislator, or testify in front of an education committee. And perhaps the best kind of advocacy actually starts in our classrooms where every teacher decides what future leaders opinions are of world language learning.  Read Alyssa’s post –>

• From the P2P Blog: Finding the Right Word

  We all know the value of circumlocution, but it’s also one of those skills that’s not that easy to teach. Yet, when mastered opens the doors for our learners to use language and engage in conversations so much more freely. Spanish high school teacher, Jaime Basham, shared (step-by-step) how she tackles this issue even with her first year students.  Read Jaime’s post –>

• Availability of Foreign Language materials in OER repositories

  Guiding students down the path to proficiency requires many resources. Finding just the right one takes a lot of planning  and sometimes keeps teachers from the path to proficiency, because let’s be honest: who has the time to find all those resources? The Center for Open Educational Resources and Language Learning did a nice round-up of multiple websites that offer FREE materials for language teachers. I know, I frequent many of these sites on a weekly basis. Read COERLL’s post –>

My blog reading seems to be frozen just like this winter weather. I’m so ready for some spring weather. Spring: a time for renewal and for new ideas. And while the weather isn’t quite catching up with my physical desires for warmth, a season of regional spring conferences around the country allows us me connect and dream of warmer weather (or even better learning experiences for our students). I’ve enjoyed catching up with friends at SCOLT and NECTFL over the past two weeks, make some new connections and leaving each conference feeling warmth in my heart (and head). I’ll leave with you a couple of posts that caught my eye this week.

• Assessing Proficiency and Providing Feedback

  I very much enjoy following a teacher’s growth through their blog posts and it seems that Spanish teacher Albert Fernandez has been doing a lot of processing in advance of his well-received SCOLT presentation as well as attending what was an outstanding conference this year. In his latest post, he takes us through his thinking/reflecting/reacting to information he gleaned about the role of proficiency in assessment and even more important what this critical information means for his teaching practice. “That’s why if we give them [students] the strategies and phrases to begin to talk to others on their own, we can foster more student-student interactions and get them to move beyond the novice level.”  Read Albert’s post –>

• Reflections on my first Interpersonal Bootcamp

  “What do you mean I have to do interpersonal assessments with 187 students? I don’t have the time for that much assessment.” If I had a penny for every time I heard this from a teacher, I could work a little less. The logistics of implementing authentic performance assessments focused on the modes of communication can admittedly be very challenging, so I was excited to find Spanish teacher Maris Hawkins post on her attempt at an Interpersonal Bootcamp. Her reflections are so helpful and it makes me want to set up one of these bootcamps immediately.  Read Maris’ post –>

• Pacman and Language Proficiency

  It’s no secret that I put considerable value in the understanding of proficiency as a key to making some key shifts in language teaching. Understanding proficiency as teachers though is not enough. Getting learners to understand it is just as important and will allow your students to have a very different kind of ownership in what is happening in class. Seeing teachers around the country embrace this type of communication is truly exciting and we are beginning to see more and more examples of bulletin boards that share this vision for language learning. Spanish teacher Jessica Pederson (aka Señora Upton) shared her unique  take on the “Path to Proficiency” in this great post on combining her two favorite passions: proficiency and the 80’s.  Read Jessica’s post –>

• 12 Principles of Second Language Teaching

  With a title like that and having enjoyed many previous reflections from British educator, Steve Smith, I had to click on this blog post. And it starts off with a bang from Steve’s new book: “We could not possibly recommend a single overall method for second language teaching, but the growing body of research we now have points to certain provisional broad principles which might guide teachers.” It’s encouraging to see more and more leading voices in our field going down the path of principles over methods. ACTFL and  STARTALK just to name a couple. I’m not sure yet how I feel about all of the principles identified and of course the problem with principles (and titles that identify a finite number) often implies an equal level of importance among them, but certainly this is a good start and I can see how it could be used even as an organizing framework for additional work. I wonder what principles each of us would identify to justify our practices or better yet to inform our instructional choices.  Read Steve’s post –>

I’ve been a little busy these past few days so unfortunately I haven’t had much time reading blogs.  While normally at least glance over hundreds of posts each week, I had to do some initial curating just by headlines alone. Here are several posts I thought would be interesting to share. There are a few more that I didn’t have a chance to read yet, so they might make it into next week’s summary.

• Template for Novice High Interpretive Listening

  One of the biggest reasons I enjoy reading teacher blogs (aside from the many honest reflections that many bloggers often share), is the willingness of teachers  to share materials from their classes. In this post, Spanish teacher Marisa Hawkins, walks us through an interpretive listening activity which is a great example of allowing students to process language (input).  Read Marisa’s post –>

• iPad Diaries Volume 13: More Thoughts on iPad Stations

  This short post from French middle school teacher, Samantha Decker, gave me some ideas for how to expand on the idea of stations and personalized learning. I wanted to include it here because her blog is a new one to me, and I can’t wait to dig through the other iPad Diaries and the rest of her blog.  Read Samantha’s post –>

• Let students create the input!

  How often have we heard the phrase “Work smarter, not harder” from a workshop presenter? Easier said than done and unfortunately, often the workshop presenter that utters the phrase doesn’t actually give any examples of how to accomplish it (in a world language classroom.) French teacher, Wendy Farabaugh, finally gives us an example as she describes how she is using student work from one week as the input for the next week. Read Wendy’s post –>

• From the Path 2 Proficiency Blog

  Ownership of learning seem to be a big theme at SCOLT in Charlotte this weekend, and coincidentally it was also the theme of two brutally honest posts by Paul Jennemann and Alyssa Villarreal. While Paul discussed discovering his own voice as a teacher, Alyssa asked and tried to answer some really tough questions that every teacher should answer in order to Ensure Student Voice. Both are worth a read.

I’m on my way back from home from the return of the NECTFL conference in NYC and my head is spinning with ideas for writing my own blog posts. While that’s going to have to wait a little while, here is my summary of posts that caught my attention this week.

• The Big List of Discussion Strategies

  While not intended for a world language audience, this Cult of Pedagogy posts shares some ideas on how to get kids to discuss (talk in the target language). Each strategy includes an overview and link to an example video and I can see just about all of them in a language classroom. Try them and let me know which ones you liked.  Read Jennifer’s post –>

• Let Authres Take the Lead ~ Step 3

  Megan from the Creative Language Class, finishes their series on using authentic resources as the foundation for lessons. Reading through it just reminds me think how much fun it must have been to be a student in her class. I’m engaged wanting to learn Spanish just following along her planning process. Enough said: Go read Megan’s post for yourself–>

• Improving Teacher Language Proficiency

  Until my daughter was born, I’ll admit that my German proficiency had fallen drastically and teacher language proficiency is a real problem. I simply wasn’t using enough German on a daily basis and was starting to sound like a Level 1 German speaker. Spanish teacher, Carrie Toth, writes a very honest reminder that all teachers should read. And while you may not be able to implement the same solution as she does, you may want to think about developing a plan to improves or maintains your language proficiency. Read Carrie’s post –>

• On Student Voice : Seating and Other Classroom Comforts

  So often we think we don’t have any control over the set-up of our room and yes, many classrooms have probably way too many desks or chairs in them. French teacher, Cristy Vogel, shares her attempt in letting students decide where, how and with whom the learners sit in her room and shows you the results of an interesting survey about the learning environment in her classroom. Read Cristy’s post –>

• “The Power Feedback” Summary: Part One

  Yet another non-world language educator post that has implications for our field. English teacher, Robin Neal, is starting a series of posts in which he will share his thinking on the role of feedback. In the post he reminds us that feedback should help students answer these three questions: Where am I going? How am I going? Where to next? With all the pressures of grading put upon teachers, this is a much appreciated perspective. Read Robin’s post –>

Happy Reading and don’t forget to share your favorite blog posts with me in the comments!