Sometimes I feel like a broken record but I will keep saying clear targets that guide instruction are key to success. The World Readiness Standards for Learning Languages outline what we should teach. And the first standard is communication. If you agree that the reason to teach students a language is so they can communicate, then the […]
It’s been a busy couple of weeks of learning with teachers around the country, including the yet again amazing TELL Collab in Nashville last weekend (see the Google Drive notes). While I haven’t had a chance to share my weekly blog summary, all the travel hasn’t kept me from keeping up with language teacher blogs […]
Marie Kondo’s book The Life-changing Magic of Tidying Up is all the rage on social media and #1 on the New York Times best seller list. It is certainly a novel approach to keeping a neat, functional house that begins with a radical clean-out or “decluttering,” as the book calls it. She maintains that storage […]
While many teachers appear to be on spring break around the country, many of them are also taking the opportunity to reflect on their practices. Let’s face it, a teacher’s job is never done and it is hard for us to turn off our brains thinking about improving that lesson, finding that resource, and developing […]
“Effective language learning experiences are facilitated by the use of strategically selected resources designed to support course, unit and lesson performance objectives” the Teacher Effectiveness for Language Learning (TELL) Framework tells us. I was sitting in a meeting the other day listening to one of the publishers of new textbooks for the state of Texas, when […]
Many teachers I meet who are interested in making the shift to a performance driven instructional repertoire have this idea of a false dichotomy. The all or nothing approach – either we teach grammar or we teach toward performance and proficiency. I can say there are few things in life are that clear-cut. Teaching toward […]
So, here’s the thing that was happening in my classroom, and it has been making me crazy. I am fighting every day to be the most engaging and interesting thing in the room so that my students will pay attention to me and learn Spanish. I am speaking in the target language 90+% of the […]
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 Unfortunately, our outdated school calendars don’t allow for much of that thinking and for so many teachers March is a rough time and often represents the end of an […]
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 […]
I read a scholarly article (that I have since misplaced in my digital hoard) that highlighted that native Spanish speakers employ the use of circumlocution because of the linguistic variety and different dialects. As I thought about this, I realized that I also utilize circumlocution frequently (in both languages that I speak). I decided to implement this process […]
