Maybe, just maybe, Vanilla Ice was channeling his inner teacher when he wrote the lyrics to Ice Ice Baby. And, maybe, just maybe, the Universe was trying to tell me something on my way home from work yesterday when it came on the radio. Regardless, it did, and it was immediately after one of the […]
Through my posts on this blog, I’m tracking my experiences, as both a novice teacher (in regards to proficiency) and as a more veteran teacher, with ten years of public high school teaching in my past. This first two months of being back in the classroom, after five years outside of public schools, have been […]
At this point of the year, I am able to let students take even more control in level 2. They are starting to become more confident in their abilities, and they know what I expect of them when we complete activities. Now, it is time for them to take the reins! Some of my favorite […]
When I started to teach towards proficiency, I knew what the end product was, but I was not always clear how to get there. What would I do each day in class? However, once I started asking students more and more proficiency questions on my assessments, I would start to notice the gaps in their […]
… as in, a self-assessment, on proficiency. Ask yourself: “What exactly do I know about the levels and what they look like? Can I explain it to students, and/or parents? Can I hear, read, and observe examples and then rate them?” For me, a lot of work went into the paradigm shift that is proficiency-based teaching, […]
“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 […]
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 […]
My district is working its way to 1:1 technology integration district wide. We call it TEConnect. Instead of rolling it out all at once, they determined it would be best to have a few cohorts work this model into their classroom and year by year they’ll add more 1:1 classrooms. As a TEConnect educator this […]
