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So welcome to my class – I know you may not have been here before – and I know already you have asked me about how hard I ‘mark’ and if there is a final and more. You’ve even asked “is this for marks?” about something I’ve asked you to prepare for class…You’ve been well-schooled by the ‘if it has a mark attached it is important’ idea from your classes. So let’s just stop a moment and review ‘marks’ in my class…here we go… Is this for marks? Will this count? Your class is a daily opportunity to learn and receive feedback on that learning. I know you may not get that yet. You’re expecting everything I ask you to do that has any ‘value’ to have a mark. So I’ll give you a mark for it. In fact everything you do, everything I ask you do prior to the summative is worth 0.5 marks. Yes. 0.5. Almost seems not worth it does it? I mean why not skip a class, why not choose not to do something for class? Why bother. It’s not worth much. But the sum of all those experiences, all those chances to learn, all the […] Share this:Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
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 […] Share this:Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
“Should old acquaintances be forgotten, And never brought to mind?” … it only takes this song and a couple of hours of reflection on the just-completed calendar year and our list of resolutions or goals for the new year is longer than the grocery list for Christmas dinner. Of course, it’s easy to set goals and in our profession getting that winter break is like starting the school year all over again. We get to reset what happened in the fall. We get a second chance. And this time we’re gonna get it right and here are all the goals that are going to help us make that happen. Slow down for just a second … What if the idea of setting goals is the last thing you should be focusing on this time of year? Forget About Setting Goals. Focus on This Instead. Take a moment to read this insightful post shared with me by a good friend: Forget About Setting Goals. Focus on This Instead. … Did you click on the link and read the post? No. It’s ok. Here are the main points James Clear is trying to make and that resonated with me from the world language educator perspective. 1. […] Share this:Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
Oh, the tension of end of the school year. Can you feel it already? Teacher nerves are shot. Students have checked out. Just about everyone including the janitors are counting the days until everyone is gone for the summer. But the year isn’t quite over yet and how you close a school year might be almost as important as you start one, so I’m thankful for those teachers who continue to push themselves and the learners in their classes. Even more thankful when they continue to share their reflections that cause me to think. Hope some of these posts from the past couple of weeks will do the same for you. “Why We Are Doing This?” – Intentions Set Expectations For the Interpersonal This just might be the most frequently asked question by learners in classrooms today and if you can’t answer that question for each and every one of your activities, you may want to rethink your plans for the day. Japanese teacher, Colleen Hayes, reminds us that it isn’t enough to share learning targets or agendas with students, but to help students see connection between the activities and the potential learning outcomes. Give our lesson a purpose and […] Share this:Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
Whew. I’m tired just thinking of all that went into this semester, and I’m not actually sure how it all got done. Beyond just thinking, I find that reflection, true, intentional, pointed reflection, is critical, and as tiring as anything else. Coming off of ACTFL weekend recently and looking into various PD endeavors for the spring, I can’t help but juxtapose our highlight reels and how we highlight real. Teachers attend sessions, read blogs, send tweets, listen to podcasts, and more, from the World Language Education all-stars we’ve come to know and love. Their strategies are proven, their classrooms warm, their student results impressive — but, how does that make us feel about ourselves? For me, not always awesome. I am not jumping to conclusions; psh, come on. I’m pogo sticking, high jumping, catapulting myself towards conclusions, and internalizing the verdict that 1.) they’re awesome, and 2.) I am not awesome. Truth time: they are awesome. But also, we all are in our own, different way(s). But being awesome and expecting to bring your A-game every single day isn’t sustainable, for them, for us, for students, period. Proficiency has made me a better teacher, and a better understander of my […] Share this:Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
One of my biggest challenges as a teacher is to relinquish the floor. I am not proud of it, but being aware of it has helped me find ways to cope with the allure of being the sage on stage. As I work with language learners who are increasingly proficient, I’ve realized they need more opportunities for authentic production, with opportunities for reflection and self-correction. In a very real way, this is a #humblebrag, since our students get so linguistically advanced because I am lucky to be part of an incredible team of linguists/teachers who get them going early. By the time they get to me, they are NOT in the mood to do a family tree, tell me about their daily routine, or discuss their childhood while illustrating correct usage of imperfect vs. preterite. What’s a simple profe to do? Turn them into the teachers! That’s what! I teach a class of intermediate high to advanced-mid language learners, who have been loved and supported through their monosyllabic stages all the way to their complex multi-clause sentences in the subjunctive mood -pluscuamperfecto. Often, one of the biggest challenges I have is to find a meaningful balance to develop all areas […] Share this:Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
Earlier this year, I like millions of others made a decision to work on myself this year. I didn’t call it a resolution because I wanted it to stick. Sparing you the details, I finally joined a gym. Not anything special, lots of people join gyms… but I joined a Crossfit gym, well it’s a called a box. A new and quickly cherished friend was a trainer opening his own box and while we never really talked about it, I was intrigued. I researched it, found a box and decided to being…It was somewhere in my first week that I had an epiphany. In the middle of doing burpees and being severely outperformed by well everyone, I realized that THIS is how some students must feel in our classrooms! This thought has crossed my mind repeatedly while I analyze my reactions to feedback, my performance as compared to my expectations, and that infamous unexpected feedback. Fast forward, its been seven months and I am still at it. Tonight however, was night two of new programming and day two of district in-service. Already exhausted, I drag myself to the box and cant get my back squats quite right. Our coach is […]
We all talk about building classroom community and building relationships with the students, but I have to share a story with you all. I recently lost my voice for two weeks, which really messed with my identity as a teacher, much less a language teacher. But even though we’d only been in school a few weeks, I’m very proud of how my students worked hard on their interpretive skills since I could only whisper. Each day, one class kept a tally of how many days I had been without my voice, and they even marked their papers with the hashtags #FindProfesVoice2k16 and other fun hashtags like #StillNoSignOfIt. They asked about my voice and were concerned because they knew they were missing out on the excitement to grow that we had built upon during the first couple of weeks of school. This year, I have tables instead of the traditional desks, so my students are able to facilitate more of a community and collaborate more on their work, and I think it’s really working so far because we have “Table Talk” (said in my best/worst imitation Brooklyn accent) before we have any whole group discussion. I think “Table Talk” really solidified the […]
Spring is upon us, and teachers everywhere lament how difficult it is to keep students engaged as they are getting ready for state assessments and AP exams. It is also difficult for us teachers to stay engaged with new lessons and innovative ways to keep students engaged because we have been burning the candle at both ends for so long, and we see how our students are being drilled in other classes. What do we do when we have just hit the wall? Yes, Spring Break is coming up, but what do we do between now and Spring Break? Or how do we structure our lessons for the last marking period between the return from Spring Break and the end of the school year? In my last post I wrote about focusing on the right things in the class. But, how can we determine what are the right things to focus on when our students seem to swing between climbing the walls and slumped over their desks? Some teachers might even be thinking about the next school year already, declaring this year a wash. How can you keep your spirits up for the rest of the year without writing it completely off? […] Share this:Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
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 next natural question is “how well will they communicate?”. It is NOT up to us to decide the details of how students will communicate, such as when or where or with whom. We do not know what the future holds for our students. Nor should we make assumptions that ultimately limit their opportunity by deciding their future. We cannot decide that they aren’t really going to travel abroad so they only need to learn xyz. Our job as teachers is to open the world to our students and prepare them to the best of our ability for what the future could present our students. It is also to provide hope and opportunity to students who may not have even realized or considered that it was possible. My academic career has been focused in a large urban district. Many of our students have not left their […] Share this:Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
Coming back to school after the winter break was a fulfilling time for me this year! We revisited the proficiency guidelines, and students reflected on their progress on the path to proficiency infographic. What more could they do now that they couldn’t in October or even in August? As I teach students in Spanish 3, 4 and AP, they already knew a lot, but what they kept telling me was they felt more equipped to put their knowledge into getting their message across. I had students talk about how they needed a task to help them reach Intermediate High, so they could talk about events that happened outside of their daily lives. “I feel like I can’t reach Intermediate High if I don’t have tasks that push me to that level.” To that end, we took a couple of days to brainstorm ideas on what they would want to study, and out of that, my students created their own task plan. They had three options for a graphic organizer they could use–a bubble map, a pyramid map, and a preparation plan–in order to process their task plan from the overarching objective to the specific task they want to do. Their focus was the […] Share this:Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
Whew, here comes 2018! Can you believe it? New year, new you? New students? New routines? For some, all of the above; for others perhaps none, or one. I teach on block schedule, so when we come back to school in January, I have all new students, a new prep, and a new schedule. I have a LOT of goals for second semester, and they’re all intertwined and interdependent. Best of all, I’m really excited about them. A lot of good things happened in the fall, but much still needs rethinking, reworking, and revamping. So, I don’t have New Year’s Resolutions; rather, I have New Year’s Revolutions. Over the holidays, I was able to get out of town to relax and recharge. Hmm, I’m sensing a pattern. REvolutions, REthinking, REworking, REvamping, RElax, REcharge – we get to REdo many things in life, and as teachers, coaches, and mentors, we know the power of REpetition. As World Language teachers who teach toward proficiency, we are confident in the influence that comes from “do it again,” performance, and performance over time (proficiency). These ring true in language acquisition, pedagogy, and life. My goals this semester can only happen if I reflect often […] Share this:Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
August happened, there’s no turning back… So I mustered up the courage and walked through the classroom door. Greeted suddenly by the off-gassing of new tables, I immediately threw the windows open. Then came the deer-in-the-headlights moment. What will I do with them? How will I arrange them? Should I figure that out first before digging into the “real work” of getting ready for that first day? I have to admit that I’ve always put the classroom arranging and beautifying tasks ahead of every other task in August; after all, I can’t really “think” until my stage is set. I had asked for the tables, but hadn’t anticipated what they’d mean to my space. I’ve always put a great deal of importance on my physical environment, be it my childhood bedroom, run-down student apartment, or my classroom. I can’t wait to hang up pictures, create color combinations that are soothing, make the atmosphere gemütlich; and that goes for my classroom as well. I’d always felt very confident about the learning environment I provide my students. They like my room, and they say so. The couch is a seriously comfy 70’s floral monstrosity, there are interesting ads, pictures, posters, infographics, and […] Share this:Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
The ACTFL Annual Convention & World Languages Expo is gearing up for an exciting weekend in San Diego, California! Many are already there to take part in pre-conference workshops, as well as to participate in the NCSSFL and NADSFL conferences. Since the ACTFL convention is so large, and there are so many great sessions happening at the same time, we have a couple of tools for you. Take a look at Thomas Sauer’s post on Creating Your Conference Path. Sign up for text alerts from the TELL Project on upcoming sessions and giveaways! Visit us at Booth 1330 for mini sessions, to talk with teacher leaders, and learn from world language experts. Follow us on Facebook and Twitter! Use #path2actfl on social media as you’re on your way throughout the weekend. We are so excited to join you this at ACTFL, as well as on the path to proficiency! Share this:Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window) Share this:Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
Getting started is often the hardest part in a unit, heck in anything new! We are often unsure how to take that first step and in our classrooms when introducing language chunks or vocabulary, how do we do that while staying in the target language and NOT translating. Language learning requires attention and practice, asking students to translate not only adds a step to the process but it lets the students know they can ignore us in the target language because we will tell them what we want them to know in the long run. Why work to pay attention and keep up if I can just wait for my teacher to tell me what it all means? One of the most common responses I get to this notion is “ok I get that, but what DO I do?”. Valid question because input often feels like a daunting task and while I wish there was a secret formula that I could give you to make all of your students proficient, there is not one. It is important to know strategies for approaching vocabulary development without relying on translation because every class is different and the needs of learners in your […] Share this:Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
I’m convinced that the band “Taking Back Sunday” was talking to a group of ragtag, tired teachers when coming up with their name. In the throes of DEVOLSON, it’s entirely plausible. Taking Back Sunday is the mindset I adopted exactly five years ago today (thanks, Facebook “On This Day” feature!): to reclaim Sunday, which, at the time, was THE most stressful day for me professionally, no question. Sundays were for grading, planning, and panicking, period. Around, hmmm, 11am or so (right, teachers?), I started to feel and think, “Ohhh no, there goes the day… Monday’s coming…” and the panic would set in. ELEVEN. ELEVEN IN THE MORNING. What? Alas. I would get on my computer and start working, for pretty much the entire day thus taking time away from my family, hobbies, and sanity. On a micro level, my Sundays really stunk. On a macro level, that means I was teaching all week, then attending football games or the like Friday evening, getting Saturday to rest and recharge, only to work all day Sunday, miserably, while others went to church, hiked at the park, brunched, hung out with friends, relaxed, the list of fun Sunday activities goes on (again, thanks, Facebook, […] Share this:Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
One of my favorite on-screen coaches is Doc Hudson from the Cars movies. Doc Hudson wasn’t always the town repair-car and judge. He was once the Fabulous Hudson Hornet, three time winner of the Piston Cup race! No one could out-race him until one horrible crash sidelined him and he didn’t race again. From that point forward, he didn’t want anything to do with racing until Lightning McQueen happened upon his sleepy town, and Doc finally saw something in Lightning that made him coach him and teach him and pass along all he had learned. We find the same process in Cars 3 [spoiler alert] as Lightning has a crucial choice to make in his comeback season after his own big crash similar to Doc’s. What Lightning finds out is that through the coaching he received from Doc, he finds himself coaching his new trainer–someone who always dreamed of being a Piston Cup race car! Lightning McQueen took his valuable experiences from racing and being coached by Doc Hudson and transformed that to ultimately be able to coach and train others. I actually shed a few tears at the end of the movie as I saw the connection from practicing teacher to […] Share this:Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
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 […] Share this:Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
In my education program, my professor would tell us a great analogy about grades and retakes. She said that as teachers we should allow students to retake assessments, so they can continue to practice and improve with the language. We want students to practice so well that they can attain a proficiency with the language. Then, she made this analogy: if we were going to jump out of a plane, we would want to have the person who got an A in parachute packing, packing our parachutes instead of someone who earned a C. Even if the person had to keep practicing until they earned an A, we would rather have the person who kept practicing until they earned an A instead of the person who got a C and then went to work. Therefore, we want to let our students practice as much as we can to make them as proficient as we can. We frequently discussed “how well is your parachute packed?” It made sense for me; however, it was difficult to implement. As my assessments after college mainly relied upon discrete grammar and vocabulary, it didn’t make sense to retake assessments. I wasn’t sure how to recycle […] Share this:Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
There you are in a professional development session on proficiency. The light bulb goes off! “Why have I not been doing this all along?” you think to yourself. You find yourself looking for more information to help you make the shift to a proficiency-based practice. You find yourself reading blogs, participating religiously in Langchat, surfing the web for more information. Excitedly you begin to share your thoughts with department members and well their response is mixed at best. Disappointed you find yourself rethinking your perspective completely however it felt so right… No doubt this is a tough situation, but know you are not alone! We are all at different points along our journey of growth so it should not be surprising that everyone in your department may not jump on board immediately with the zeal that you experienced. Before becoming completely crestfallen, carefully review the situation. Is everyone against making a change? If not, who can you partner with to move forward? Can you make alterations in one level? Or just your own class? While it may not be a complete buy in, lasting changes many times start with small steps! Focus on the small alterations you can make that […] Share this:Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
Last year I did an introductory vocab lesson about clothing that had high-energy, engaging, and competitive activities, and lots of Spanish. What it definitely lacked was ANYTHING related to culture, authentic resources, or real people doing real things. The lesson was fun, but as I try to improve what I do in the classroom, I am working to find more authentic ways for my students to engage with the language. This lesson is the upgrade from last year’s lesson. I was searching for videos of clothes shopping, but really, who makes a video of themselves wandering through a store?!? And then I found this on YouTube: “Ropa para ellos: Hombre ejecutivo.” I almost cried. I texted the link to some friends and basically yelled “You have to watch this RIGHT NOW!” It was real and clear, slow enough, with visuals and explanations, and WOW! I set out to make that the connecting piece of the lesson. This is my level 2 class, so they already know the basic clothing items, but it’s been awhile, and we’ve never gone deeper into fabrics, styles, or functionality of clothing. This video has possibilities of tasks well beyond what I did with it, but […] Share this:Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
Disclaimer: I’m going to share a very vulnerable confession, which as a teacher is extremely dangerous because it puts me in a perceived “weak” position. Although I confess that I struggle teaching Spanish 1, I choose to view it as a strength because it helps me evaluate what I’m doing, how I’m doing it, and what I can do to improve. For any other educator out there, I would encourage you to do the same. During my first few years of teaching, my mentor teacher created my schedule so that I taught only Spanish 2. Being that I was fresh out of college, I appreciated that she wanted to help me hone my teaching skills and classroom management. As I became more comfortable teaching Spanish 2 and the proficiency targets and descriptors, Spanish 1 was added to my plate. I was so excited. The growth in Spanish 1 is magical. They literally start with nothing and you get to see their growth. As an educator this is very empowering. It is also very empowering for the students to think about their metacognition. For the past few years, I have drawn some conclusions about Spanish 1. Somedays, I feel like I am […] Share this:Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
I think the act of teaching is a rather courageous process. It may not always be regarded as such, but it nonetheless is a courageous act. Through teaching we really put our best selves forward. I really believe (yes you’ve already heard this a hundred times but as a reminder…) that all teachers set out to be the best teachers they can be with the information and training they have accessed. With this in mind, let’s think about what happens in a lesson. One hopes this is not a “stand and deliver” moment but rather an opportunity to “peel back the layers” moment. To be willing to make us vulnerable in a lesson and check for understanding or more specifically to check for learning can be scary. It is a natural part of the instructional process but it can be unnerving. When we check for learning we are really evaluating our success through the student. If we are to be facilitators of learning we must look at the process of checking for learning as our data collection process by which we can evaluate our methods. Without that data we don’t know how successful we can be. So how can you […] Share this:Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
I’ve been struggling hardcore with my one of my classes recently. They’re an upper-level class, and I feel like we’re doing the same style of thing every day, or most days at least. Their interest in conversation and authentic resources and real-life issues is not really that high, and I’m at the point where I don’t want to try because the class has a weird vibe and it’s stressful. It’s a course where I have a ton of freedom, and the students and I have picked the topics and themes we were learning about based on our interests, and up until recently, that had gone pretty well. In the few weeks before Thanksgiving, it started floundering, and I was stressing myself out and making myself really sick. I spent Thanksgiving hanging out with my family from different places, and the more my cousins and I talked about what it was like when we were kids, the more this idea began to creep into the back of my brain. I was going to take that class I was struggling with and do a mini-unit about their childhoods and their family traditions. I was betting on the fact that they’d actually have […] Share this:Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
Three seconds. Research has shown that giving students at least three seconds of think time after asking a question increases results in a number of ways. Yet, with time constraints and our students’ waning attention spans, we are continually pressured to crank out questions and answers, call on a variety of students, make sure everyone feels good, bada bing, bada boom, ready to move on. How long do teachers, on average, wait? ≤ 1.5 seconds. I just asked my husband a series of six questions, easy and personalized ones about his life that he could answer quickly, and only waited 1.5 seconds between before cranking out the next one. He answered the first rapid fire, hesitated on the second, then stopped washing dishes and slow-turned to look at me like, “Really?” as I continued over his hesitation with the next four. Granted, they were back-to-back, but I highly recommend you try it – once he missed a beat, he got frustrated at my impatience, and students do, too. High-flying students see it as a motivating challenge (remember, like us, they aren’t normal) and the rest/majority see it as an impossibility, even if they can respond; they already see that they won’t be given time to have […] Share this:Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
After a long time, and an ‘aha’ moment, I’m introducing proficiency this year as a key part of my students’ learning. I’m using it fully with my Yr1&2’s this semester. There’s been much thinking and reworking of ideas with the help of colleagues, the resources on P2P and the ever-generous #langchat PLN. I know that when making changes sometimes the hardest part is sticking to the new direction..and here’s how I’m keeping my eye on this new path: Posting An “Easy to See” Path To Refer To – Nothing helps you talk about proficiency more than having it visible in the room. I mean really visible – you can reach out and touch visible. Many like to put their path around the room above whiteboards and bulletin boards. However, I chose to put it down low, on one bulletin board, specifically because this is new to me (and my students). I notice that the descriptors catch my eye when I am talking or giving feedback meaning that I refer to them more often. It allows me to take that opportunity to walk over and point to the levels as I refer to them and really point the kids to what […] Share this:Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
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 from around the country. As the school year is nearing and end, many of us are having lightbulb moments, regret moments and visionary moments for the future. Take a look at some of the posts that caught my attention over the past couple of weeks. I Don’t Do Standards-Based Grading, BUT… Like it or not, GRADING continues to be big deal for teachers. And while I don’t have the powers to get rid of grades for teachers, it was great to read Spanish teacher, Laura Sexton’s recent post on how to figure out a grading system that works for her and her students. Sure, you could probably argue with Laura about why she made some of these decision and my guess is she would welcome feedback on her post, but I liked it because of the important messages her system communicates to her learners. Read […] Share this:Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
I’m an artsy person. I love anything related to art, or music, so you’d think that I would be the first one having my kids read and write about every artist in the history of Spanish art. The reality is, however, I teach Novice-Intermediate learners how to use the Spanish language. Don’t get me wrong, I love that. I LOVE that I am the content area where we can color because I can make it an appropriately leveled interpretive reading task. Some days, though, I feel like I just teach colors and numbers to 17 year-olds (32 kids at a time). Since I do not teach AP Spanish Lit, and because I refuse to do a lesson in English to teach them about something cool and cultural, my opportunities to incorporate real culture and art were few and far between. Why I’m writing this though, is that this year I had a breakthrough in my brain about HOW to teach content through culture. I know we’re supposed to do that, but the HOW of it is often not explained as well as we would probably like, right? So, this is what I did, in one small area related to Art, […] Share this:Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
If there is one thing I would want a new(er) teacher to take away from my blog, and especially this post, it would be to create your Dream Team. Do you remember the 1992 Olympics with the Dream Team? This was such a big deal for the United States. The team was comprised of some of the best basketball players; Michael Jordan, Carl Malone, Magic Johnson, Larry Bird, Scottie Pippen, John Stockton, Patrick Ewing, Chris Mullin, David Robinson, and Charles Barkley. Sports Illustrated coined “Dream Team” and our lives were forever changed. As a teacher, you need to create your “Dream Team.” I was fortunate enough to have a wonderful mentor, a colleague across the hall, and that teacher’s student teacher. We began referring to ourselves as the “P.O.A.” or “Pocket of Awesome.” Our “P.O.A.” was a unique system of collaboration, encouragement and betterment. There were days when we would talk about things that didn’t seem relevant at the time, but later revealed themselves to be useful in everyday life or the classroom. Our group of collaboration over time, turned into more of a familial dynamic that fostered the growth needed to be a reflective practitioner. Since the induction of […] Share this:Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
Well, we’ve arrived. My husband and I are now thick in the stage of life where nearly each of our friends have one child and most have more than one. In the age of social media, we get to see these children grow up, which is pretty cool – I think of social media pictures and updates as a constant holiday card, always there when you’re ready for it. Technology can be an amazing thing! And, of course, in said pictures are activities: karate, music, soccer, basketball, math team, anime club, and much more. I can’t help but notice, more often than not, however, so many participation trophies, medals, and ribbons. Sigh. I hate even typing that. I am a millenial, and while my mind says, “We aren’t all special snowflakes, people!” my heart whispers, “But you are different, you can be anything…” That’s all well and great for character and confidence, and my parents made keeping our egos in check a main priority in a number of common-sense, now-comical ways. Society, however, didn’t. Society, and most of the input those of us under 35 received from the time of conception was that by golly we showed up and did our best and […] Share this:Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
As a teacher, it is so easy to focus on everything I’m doing wrong: Have I graded that batch of tests yet? Have I planned enough activities to fill the hour? Have I contacted all the parents I needed to? Do I have enough grades? Did I get in that announcement on time? A lot of times, the answer to these questions is “No,” but so many of those things mentioned are good things and need to get done. It can be difficult to manage an ever-growing to-do list, however, along with making time for my family and myself. The good thing, though, is that while all of these things are good to do, it is important to realize that we should focus on the right things. As teachers, we know that all of our activities in the lesson must match the objective, so when we plan our lessons, we should focus on the activities that will help our students along to the meet the objective, not just what we think would be fun to do. Likewise, the vocabulary or grammar we teach them should be within the context of meeting the objective, not just what we think they ought to know for sometime […] Share this:Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
What a busy week in the blogging world. There were so many great posts from educators that it made it really tough to pick the ones that really made me think, smile, or wonder. Hope you’ll find them helpful in your own journey. Using Proficiency Levels With Students? I NOW Get Why! (Or “You Don’t Play Video Games Just to Play Do You?”) Inspired by the work of teachers in both Jefferson County (KY) and Shelby County (TN), I’ve been talking about the importance of getting learners involved in understanding proficiency. Japanese teacher, Colleen Lee-Hayes make a pretty powerful argument for inviting her students onto the Path to Proficiency instead of just “asking them to play the video game over and over but I have failed to validate this but giving them a ‘new level’ to achieve.” Read Colleen’s post –> Student-Teacher Relationships Are Everything We have all taken the class. We have all sat through the professional development and yet it’s easy to forget. Educator, James Ford, provides a very blunt reminder that the “relational part of teaching may very well be its most underrated aspect. It simply does not get the respect it deserves.” And I really really want […] Share this:Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
Most of you will agree that the Planning piece of any lesson is absolutely key to the lesson’s success and, therefore, to helping students increase their proficiency. Most will agree, as well, that it is probably the most difficult piece for any number of reasons. I was recently asked to observe a dual language immersion team as they planned together for the coming grading period. The meeting began, and I breathed a sigh of relief. These folks really had it together. The team leader brought copies of relevant parts of the curriculum, and a quick skim read told me that it was solidly couched in state and national standards. A glance at the lesson plan form showed there was a place to write the performance targets for each activity. A more careful look showed me that it was beautifully set up for backward design planning. Out to the side was space to write how one language could reinforce the work that was being done in the other. It was ideal for the needs of a dual language immersion program. What a great team! I was going to sit back and listen and hopefully learn a little more about collaboration in […] Share this:Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
I think it would be fair to warn you, I am somewhat obsessed with my classroom. I love the empty, bare walls at the beginning of the year, and the possibility of the language learning that is going to happen. Crazy, right? I love that I get to be creative and prepare the best environment that I can for the 90+ kids I’m going to teach each semester. Even when it’s done, I’m not done. I am constantly updating and thinking of new ways to make it more inviting, student-friendly, and language-driven (I’ll show you my new and improved art posters another day). I have beginning teachers visit all the time, and they walk in and are immediately overwhelmed by the amount of Spanish language and culture that covers pretty much every inch of my room. Once they get over the initial shock, they realize that my students are not overwhelmed, but rather engaged in language learning because of the setup of my room. My kids are trained to look to different places for different things that they need, and they are able to stay in the target language and even to produce more language because of the classroom environment. My room […]
The countdown has begun! Ok who am I kidding, the count down has been ongoing since mid February but nonetheless the end is in sight! I don’t know about you but the closer to the end the faster is all seems to fly! SO here’s three things I think you HAVE to do before you blink and your time is gone! Get feedback You have just spent a year together. No one is better suited to give you feedback than the people you have been with day in and day out. The vast majority of your students will give you meaningful feedback. What worked best? What could I do better? What advice would you give to future students of mine? If you could tell me anything what would it be? No names, no identifying content just feedback. Teachers get told all kinds of things and many messages are mixed. Administrators, parents, colleagues all provide us feedback based on a variety of motivations. The most critical feedback we can get is that from our students. They see us at our best and unfortunately some days, less than our best. We are human and they get that. So if you are serious […] Share this:Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
Feedback is critical to any learning endeavor but I would pose that more important than feedback is to feed forward. It is one thing to tell learners what they did right and what they did wrong. We do that rather naturally because that is what any graded paper tells students. All too often though those papers or rubrics end up on the floor or in the trash as soon as students see a score. When this happens, there is an obviously disconnect between the feedback we have provided and what the students find helpful or useful. We need to ask ourselves how then can we provide feedback that feeds forward improving student performance? First, focus on clear expectations for performance. Next, use evidence to provide feedback on the performance. Finally, devise a plan for continued growth based on the focus and evidence. Focus Annual performance targets are very important but looping those performances through every unit and every assessment is just as important. Embedding these expectations in every nuance of our classrooms is critical to success. Once you have focused on a target you now have something to compare the student performance with. Using the ACTFL Proficiency guidelines, you can […] Share this:Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
Elena Giudice considers herself fortunate to have lived and worked in international schools in France, Puerto Rico, USA, The Bahamas, and Malta. Her studies in Intercultural Communications influenced her personal and professional growth in such positive ways that she strives to reach her students not only in their language growth but in the development of their social-emotional and cultural intelligence skills. Elena is currently Chair of the World Languages and Cultures Department at Saint Andrew’s School. I always look to lower school for inspiration. I firmly believe that many lower school learning experiences model best teaching practices that can be adapted easily to the WL classroom at any level. Sometimes, we don’t even realize we are modeling lower school experiences. For example, the lower school circle time is the moment in upper school when we begin class as a group, warm up, hook the students, share current events, and then move on to more differentiated or pair work, or small group activities. We may not be sitting on a carpet in a circle but we are starting class as a community – together. I have always loved the concept of student roles in the lower school. I was always amazed […] Share this:Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
For many years I’ve wrestled with how to handle my absences from school– but generally, I have two options for my elementary and middle school students: 1) cancel classes or 2) have an adult who is not normally with the students/not a Spanish teacher supervise class time. My struggle with this stemmed, essentially, from the fact that I was focusing on discrete grammar and vocabulary, which provided little flexibility in what a substitute could do with the students–the children were very reliant on me for their learning. This week, I had to call in sick for the first time this year, and quickly found how shifting to teaching for proficiency has changed how my absent days look. My upper elementary students met with my teaching assistant who facilitated independent activities: FV (free and voluntary reading), choice work(fast finishers) and playing Verba. This fall, I started with FVR in class– the students love it and are in the routine of independently choosing books and articles that are a ‘good fit’ for them. I was inspired by Martina Bex and her laminated fast finishers that focus on language in context that can be completed with a dry erase marker and self-checked, when applicable. […] Share this:Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
Here are some of the blog posts that I “loved” this week. A year of Growth This practical post by Spanish elementary school teacher, Jennifer Kennedy, may be one of my favorites of the new year so far. Reflecting on her own growth as a teacher, Jennifer gives three recommendations that any teacher can follow to help them become a better teacher. What a great model of reflective practice! “We are happy when we are growing.” Read Jennifer’s post –> The Global Goals French and Spanish teacher, Lynn Johnston, shares a great resource that has inspired her in this original post and a follow-up post to think how she can move from just a standard topical approach to language learning to larger thematic and a truly real life focus. Move from vocabulary to service learning. And do all of that with her novice-level language learners in mind. The authentic resource link she shares is gold! Read Lynn’s post –> Blogs to watch 2017 If you can’t get enough of world language teacher blogs like me, you’ll like Spanish educator, Sara-Elizabeth Cottrell’s annual list of blogs. I always like finding new ones and who knows, whose post will end up in […] Share this:Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
Planning for a lesson in a world language classroom must include more than vocabulary. So often I have heard teachers talk only about the vocabulary that their students need to know for a certain unit, but these very teachers have been dismayed by how stilted their students sound while speaking in the target language. On the other hand, there have been teachers whose students felt comfortable speaking in the target language, but did not have a broad vocabulary. Add to the mix proficiency targets that more and more districts are including for their students, and there seems to be a swath of teachers who are planning for their lessons, though they may not be planning strategically for how their students will utilize the structures they need to in order to advance in their proficiency levels. When my kitchen faucet started leaking a few months ago, I tried to just tighten the handle at the sink, but that didn’t fix the leak. Then the handle came right off with water bubbling up from where the stem connected to the sink. Trying to put the handle back on didn’t fix anything either. After searching the hardware store for a couple of different […]
It’s teacher appreciation week! It’s time to celebrate YOU! While I personally believe we should be celebrating you every day, I’ll take advantage to thank each and every teacher, official and unofficial, that dedicate their lives to this calling. Please understand that this emanates from a place of deep gratitude for the teachers who have engaged with my son but also with every other student in Shelby County Schools (SCS) and beyond. I feel deeply connected to our students and want nothing less for these children, and all children, that I want for my own son. Not every person who serves as a teacher feels called but those of you who relate know the passion and dedication for which I am most grateful. I am grateful for your hard work. I am grateful that you spend countless hours creating awesome lessons and conveying content in a manageable way to our precious students. There are however a number of things for which I am grateful that often go unnoticed. Thank you for the model you provide. Yes I am grateful for the content and the instructional modeling you provide, of course! More explicitly however I am grateful for the model you provide […] Share this:Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
Yes. I’ll admit it. I’m a nerd. A big one. I’ll own it. Grammar really gets me going. Word origin, homophones, rhetorical devices and literary analysis excite me. Old AP fill-ins were a challenging game I played against myself. The Académie Française has nothing on me! (You French teachers know what I mean!) I won’t ask for a show of hands (no need to embarrass anyone) but I would hazard a guess that many of you are like me. We love words and how they sound and all their subtle definition and connotation. We can spot a grammar error a mile away. So it’s no wonder that sometimes the path to proficiency causes me to break out into a sweat when I realize the language functions needed for this unit don’t incorporate all the rules of say, the imperfect subjunctive. In my enthusiasm, I want to teach (torture?) my students with all of the tiny grammar rules of every single one. Because they’ll love it as much as I do—right? Wrong! Anyone who’s been teaching any amount of time knows that the majority of kids out there could care less about the past participle agreement with preceding direct objects or the […] Share this:Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
Anybody else out there have a long commute? Mine really gets to me some days. Fortunately, podcasts keep my brain fed and me from being on the news when somebody ignores the rules of the road. I recommend the latest batch of podcasts I stumbled across called The Masters of Scale. Reed Hoffman, one of the creators of LinkedIn, interviews successful entrepreneurs about how they got started. Smart people. Successful people. Ever heard of Air BnB, Facebook, or Apple? Each of the founders of these companies started with a small idea and wanted it to grow. Each founder had to learn how to take their little sprout of an idea and scale it bigger for the masses. Sound familiar? Teachers often have ideas that they want to bring to their students. We stumble onto a nugget of an idea online or attend an event that sparks our passion and fires us up. We get an idea that shows us a glimpse of the positive impact we can make on our students. Have you ever had a seed of an idea sprout in you, but you’re not sure what to do with it? How many of us stop watering our ideas […] Share this:Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
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 […] Share this:Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
Teaching AP Spanish, for me, is as much a reflection on teaching Spanish 1 as anything could be. A couple of years ago, I was teaching several sections of Spanish 1 in addition to levels 3 and AP. Before that year, I knew what I was supposed to teach in level 1 because I was striving to provide them with the best basis possible for moving up the pipeline and to be ready for college level Spanish. But bridging from level 1 to college seemed so nebulous for my students. In Spanish 1, many of them were freshmen, so thinking about college seemed like an experience too far away to even think about that kind of investment. But what does it look like when students are taking Spanish 3 or 4 and are going to be in AP next year? How could I build into my students this year so that they’re ready for the next year? What should my levels 3 and 4 students know before coming to AP? Well, I asked them. Overwhelmingly, they said that students need to be able to talk to someone else. Not translate. Not script. Not conjugate. Talk. This was satisfying to hear, as their teacher, because […] Share this:Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
Did I really just spend June and early July working on a series of performance rubrics (about 20 hours worth of my life) only to throw them all out in late July with a smile on my face? Well, sort of… I’ve been creating rubrics for world languages for a long time. Back in the early 90s I taught at an Essential school where we were creating content-enriched units with backward design and performance-based assessment as part of our daily work. I even co-taught a lesson on chemical and mechanical digestion in French with a science teacher, but that’s a blog entry for another time. We got a lot of things wrong in those days: For example, my rubrics were basically checklists of task items. While we missed the mark on some things, we did get a lot of things right (We were focused on the message; we taught grammar in context, we embedded instruction in intrinsically interesting, cognitively engaging contexts). While I would never use one of my “rubrics” from 1993 today (and I cringe when I look at some of them in file drawers at home), getting things “wrong” was an important part of the journey and continues to […] Share this:Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
My personal journey on the Path2Proficiency began when I was a teenager. I had the opportunity to learn languages in several very different settings. I started learning French in junior high school using the Audiolingual Method (yes, I know, it was a long time ago). We never saw a word written in French for at least six weeks, but I longed for visual cues, so I tried to take notes on a single sheet of notebook paper (Como talley voo?). The next year (age 12) I signed up for an “Aural-Oral” course at the University of Washington Language Learning Center to learn Modern Greek. I spent several months on Tuesday evenings with a reel-to-reel tape recorder learning to pronounce Greek, understand some words and phrases, and (fortunately) how to write the alphabet and decode words in Greek. I guess I wasn’t close to proficient in either language, and I knew it. When I was 16, I headed to Europe with a group of dancers and musicians to travel to the Balkans and become immersed in the language and culture. And immersed I was. My French came in very handy a few times (though more people spoke German), and my Greek […] Share this:Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
I have been told at times how much people love our curriculum in Shelby County Schools (SCS). It is really flattering to see that your hard work has received some praise or acceptance outside of your context. At the same time I have also been asked, if it’s good why do we keep revising it? Each and every year we survey our teachers. My curriculum team pours over responses so we can see where we can grow. Where can we push our students beyond what we initially thought possible? I can honestly say that while I love a good product what makes it all worth it is the development process. It is through the development process that we refine our beliefs about language learning, clarify our goals, and devise a plan worthy of our students. I think that it is much easier to verbalize our beliefs about language learning than it is to align our practice to those beliefs. If we were to survey language teachers around the world I think we would be hard pressed to find a majority that believed our ultimate rationale for language learning is something other than becoming effective communicators. The process by which that occurs […] Share this:Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
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 that next assessment. This week provided us with a treasure trove of blog posts and here are just some that caught my attention. Teaching for Proficiency … A Career Long Journey Ever feel overwhelmed and don’t think that you can really make this switch to a proficiency-based classroom? Before you go back to your language teaching past, read this post by elementary and middle school Spanish teacher Valerie Shull. In the middle of her own journey she shares some important insights to what she wish she knew when she got started: 1) You are not alone, 2) Be generous and forgiving with yourself and others, and 3) You’re never done. What an important message for anyone to hear every now and then. Read Valerie’s post –> 90% TL: just do it! You can’t go to a world language conference these days without hearing a discussion about the […] Share this:Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
Often when I’m just up to my eyeballs in to-do lists, I’m reminded of the catchy phrase in the Scrubs theme song that simply goes “I’m no Superman.” When I first started chatting weekly on #langchat back in 2014, I was elated to find a community of like-minded teachers who taught the same way I did, who used the same types of teaching methods I did, who used the target language the same ways I did, and who were a wealth of information. I thought so often simultaneously “I could never be like that person!” and “How can I be more like that person?” After every #langchat or local professional development session I went to, I felt like I just needed to uproot everything I’d ever done before and start from scratch. I’ve often said that being a teacher isn’t a 9-5 job; it’s more of a 5-9. And as much as I’ve worked hard for my students to have a learning process that was relevant to them, I always felt like I was never as good enough as others in my department who had just one more prompt, one more extension activity, one more manipulative or one more trick […] Share this:Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
Here is the continuing saga of the travel unit…as promised. Would you like to jump into my classroom experience for a moment? “Sra. Rhodes, I’ve never even been to an airport…how am I supposed to know what happens there?” So….The students have to learn all the different places in the airport, the people they need to talk to, and also the process of going through security, finding their gate, and eventually going through customs and immigration on the other side of their pretend international journy…but they’ve never been to an airport. Ever. This one took some thought the first time because I can show them all the target language videos in the world taking place parts of an airport, or one of those comedies where a family runs hysterically through the airport, but short of some lovely Spanish-speaking person wearing a Go-Pro narrating their experience through an airport for me, we’re not really getting the essence of the airport experience. (Please email me if you find the Spanish Go-Pro airport video…that is some #authres I seriously need in my life.) My solution? My crazy life. I tell them a story about my trip last summer to Canada using the slides […] Share this:Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
We have been working on realizing our goal of having performance-driven world language instruction in our district for many years. When shifts to our evaluation process came for world language teachers in 2011, it became urgent that we really own performance-driven teaching, learning, and assessment because jobs were on the line. Teachers could be dismissed after two consecutive years of low evaluation scores. In Shelby County language programs of six or more teachers, each language teacher is required to compile a portfolio that documents student performance growth across the modes as well as in their reflection over their learning process. This accountability enabled us to make enormous strides and offered me, as the district content advisor for world languages, the opportunity to create new resources and tools to support my teachers (one of my favorite things to do and even healthier than baking cupcakes!). In reflecting over the ACTFL Proficiency guidelines, I began thinking of ways I could represent the growth mindset that would be required of teachers and students in making this shift from memorization to proficiency. Out of this process came the Path to Proficiency infographic. I am deeply grateful for the inspiration for this idea, and I […]
I did not come to teaching via a direct path. I knew I wanted to help kids, but I started as a psychology major. After working for several years at a residential facility while pursuing my degree, I realized that perhaps there was a better way to help kids before they got “locked up.” Meanwhile, my mom and aunt, both educators, would probably love nothing more than to regale you with stories of when Alyssa did something or said another and how they knew I would eventually land in education, but the time I spent at this facility provided me insight and opportunities I will always cherish. One day while I was on break, the school on campus was shorthanded and they asked me to help 12 girls–all at a different grade level and basically independent study for every subject. Their blatant disgust for school struck me, and when I asked why, they gave me lots of reasons why they believed they couldn’t do it. Little by little we began to make progress as a group. As I highlighted what they did well or even correctly, I found they were more willing to work on areas in which they needed […] Share this:Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
There is not a doubt in my mind that attending professional conferences early in my career has strongly influenced my beliefs and practices as an educator. I can still recall the intellectual cloud nine I would be floating on after returning from a conference. There is a giant pile of free bags stuffed with handouts and materials that I picked up at each conference. Did I use any of it in my own teaching? Not likely. And yet it made a difference. Of course it’s 2015 and going to a conference doesn’t quite have the same appeal anymore as it did 10-20 years ago. In 2015 I can find handouts, materials and resources any day of the week just by opening up my #langchat tab on the computer or browsing the many amazing world language teacher blogs. Why do I still go and how can you get even more value out of a conference? Well there is just something to be said about having a face-to-face conversation. To ensure you have a bunch of those conversations, allow me to share my conference plan with you. Step 1: Set some professional goals for yourself. Even if you did this at the […] Share this:Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
… 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, and the next step was educating myself on the ‘when’ and ‘how’. I knew that before I could teach it I had to know it backward and forward. Teaching it, in turn, reinforced it, and I continue to learn and see it more holistically every day. Then, at TELL Collab 2015 (left), I made it my E.P.I.C. teacher goal to “make proficiency levels and performance routine, accessible, and empowering for my students.” My 2016 goal (right) was then to not just do it but then do it more frequently. But first, I had to figure out what the heck to do and where to start. Back in 2015, I explored and studied these resources from Shelby County Schools in Memphis. There are proficiency explanations in parent- and student-friendly language as well as curriculum examples and much more. Click around, there’s a LOT and it’s refreshing that they share graciously […] Share this:Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
I ended last school year with a new practice I’ve come to love–cleaning my classroom while reflecting on the year and creating a goals board for the next one. I left the last two summers feeling ready to leave, disconnect and return to work refreshed with goals and ideas in place. This fall, the goals board again came through and helped me to get my footing right away, and I got really excited about what I wanted to improve on this school year. But this week, something threw a wrench in those plans: the children. It was exciting to see them again after summer and I was elated by how much Spanish they spoke and understood. While some were ready to jump right in again, I have one group that just isn’t jibing with what I had in mind. They think my awesome Shakira song is dumb. They don’t care who Gerard Piqué is. They’re speaking in English the whole time, over each other and me. And I found myself a little knocked back on my heels. I’ll pause here to inject something about working in an elementary and middle school. I’m in a K-8 program, which means, these children […] Share this:Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
It’s that time of year, where news and social media will be flooded with articles both for and against setting goals for the new year. If you are like most people you may have set a couple of resolutions yourself for the new year. What was it? Loosing some weight? Becoming more active? Reading more? Spending more time with family? In a few weeks, we have likely all forgotten what we set out to do and returned to our comfort zone. Teaching is very much the same and each school year we start with the best intentions that this will be the year for proficiency, but then by the end of the September your class roster has changed more times than you can count, there is a new assistant principal, you took on that extra club advisory responsibility, and the resources you ordered at the end of last year never made it in. We get a couple of shots of professionalism in the arm in the fall through professional development, attending a conference (it was great to meet so many teachers at ACTFL this year), or participating in the ever popular #langchat. But making changes on a Tuesday in November is hard. […]
As a father of young kids, I’ve talked with other dads about when to share one of the most sacred of topics with my kids: Star Wars. We’ve gone ’round and ’round with what age, what order, and whether or not to start at Episode 1 or Episode 4, but the thing that remained clear was that this was a rite of passage from us to our children. We were discussing this in community in such a way that we might share our love of Star Wars with the younger generation so they, too, may know the joy we knew growing up about the mythology of the Force and the excitement of having light saber duels in the backyard and reciting “Luke, I am your father” in your best Darth Vader impersonation. (Maybe that last part was just me.) Many of us can recall our first time watching these movies and being mystified by the phrase “Use the Force.” And as I was introducing my sons to the movies over the winter break, thanks to the generous gift from some relatives, I made the connection that no one was working alone. Everyone was working in teams–red leader and the X wings, […] Share this:Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
Are you considering transitioning your world language program from a traditional one to an oral-proficiency based one? In this blog post, I will share the basic steps that we, the University School of Milwaukee in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, have taken to make such a shift in the last few years in our PK-12 World Language department. Shifting to an Oral Proficiency-based program First, since we knew the shift to an oral-proficiency program would not be an easy one, we hired a consultant to guide us through the process. If you can prioritize this in your budget, I highly recommend it. Department members may have more confidence in the process when an expert and outside consultant leads rather than a department chair who may have no particular expertise in developing an oral-proficiency based program. With the help of our consultant, we became familiar with the basic terminology of the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) proficiency guidelines. For example, we began to learn what defines Novice, Intermediate, and Advanced level speakers. Even though we were familiar with this terminology, it wasn’t until we were all deferring to an expert that we began to understand more fully what they meant […] Share this:Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
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 means that I have an iPad for each of my students (a set of 28). I wouldn’t consider myself “tech proficient,” but rather “tech curious.” As in, “Hmmmm, what does this button do? Oops, where’s the “un-do button?!” As a result, my students know the following phrase and take ease in hearing it, “Tranquilo, no pasa nada. No. Pasa. Nada.” I feel as though I owe it to my students to use technology in the classroom as an enhancement tool to better prepare them for their future. These are some things that I have discovered over the past few years of technology integration: The beginning is rough. As in, I need a triple latte and three brownies to cope with the chaos. I underestimated all the little things, like having students sign in and REMEMBER their password. (Sometimes I think my classroom is like that […] Share this:Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
Time and time again teachers say to me “Just show me what a lesson looks like… a good one”. At times I wish there were a magic formula to give teachers insights to the entire process of planning, and most of the time I am glad there is not a magic formula because that is where the genius happens. Every student is different, thus every classroom is different, including the instructional needs. I believe strongly that there are some commonalities across great classes. The first is that planning is the most important instructional behavior in which teachers engage. (Mention briefly what the second thing is here, but leave the detail about checking for understanding for later) Ben Franklin said it best: “If you fail to plan you are planning to fail.” So aside from actually planning, there are two key components that I notice that impact instruction in the classes I visit and the teachers with whom I work. The first key is to have a learning target. A clear, concise measurable DAILY learning target is key to planning a stellar lesson. Learning targets focus not only on the teacher and their planning, but engage the students as partners in […] Share this:Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
No matter what group of teachers. No matter what the original topic of the conference session, workshop, or professional learning training. Without fail, at some point someone is going to ask the dreaded question: “But how do I grade this?” While I try to be as helpful as possible and provide some solutions for the grading issue, my initial answer usually is “proficiency and grading don’t mix well.” I also know that’s not the answer that people want to hear as it ignores a teacher reality of having to give grades in the current system. Is there a way to combine the need to assign grades to please the system with the real purpose of assessment in a world language classroom: performance & feedback? A recent Musicentos post got me once again thinking about this question. Sara-Elizabeth’s post makes reference to the JCPS Performance rubric, so I will try to explain our thought processes in developing the rubric as well as one of the biggest challenges of rubric. ORIGINAL JCPS RUBRIC WAS A COMPROMISE “So what is it I don’t like? I always wondered why task completion was listed as a minor focus, almost in such a way that it […]
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 the most engaging and tiring of my career. I finally have a spare minute to write this post. I’ve been looking at student work through the lens of communication, and this new perspective has significantly improved my classroom. I’m seeing student work with fresh eyes – and I’m uplifted and inspired by what students can do. At the beginning of the year, I spent the first class establishing French as a the language of communication. I also began the process of engaging students through comprehensible input and an authentic resource. For example, in level 2, I used an excellent video from 1jour1actu about rock music. Leading with input was incredibly fun, and the video provided ideal subject matter for reviewing functions from level 1, including expressing preferences, describing family, and asking and responding to questions. As an added benefit, the content was interesting to students, […] Share this:Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
I think the biggest benefit of blogging for teachers is that it increases their ability to be reflective and articulate about their practice. Stray thoughts and half-awarenesses get fleshed out into full-fledged epiphanies as teachers figure out how to talk with their colleagues about what they do in the classroom. Back in April, I ended a blog post with four target areas for growth in my practice, one of them being Interpersonal Mode at the Intermediate level: “My Level 1 classes have a lively and robust environment that makes room for well-supported and scaffolded conversational interactions. But in each subsequent level, I prioritize the interpersonal mode less and less, even as students are working towards pushing their proficiency ever further. I need to take a hard look at my unit themes and objectives, and consider how I can make more space for interpersonal communication — the heart of why most people want to learn another language.” Interpersonal communication comes naturally to a first-year language course. The early Novice curriculum is teeming with questions: first memorized ones (“What’s your name? How old are you? Where are you from?”), then open-ended ones (“What do you like to do in your free time? […] Share this:Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
This post is not shiny or flashy with great pictures of my kids engaged and working on creative, fun, or culturally relevant tasks. This is a reflection on a week that ended with crying and an unhealthy amount of chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream. This was my week of EPIC failure, and I feel that you should know when it falls apart for me as much as when things are clicking along on this proficiency path. Sometimes, for any number of reasons, we don’t do what we know we should do, and our kids fail. This is what happened in my class this week. Someone once said, “no student has ever died from bad world language instruction”, which I’m sure is true although I haven’t fact-checked that statement, so I would like you to come with me and reflect on the results of my recent experience with my own “bad world language instruction.” Let me set the scene for you…I am giving a Benchmark exam: the summative assessment of the whole unit. The listening passage plays, the speaker is speaking, and my children are staring at their tests with expressions ranging from slight confusion to horrified awareness that they […] Share this:Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
I keep getting the same question: how do you make time to read all these blogs? Well, here is the secret I don’t read all of them all the time. Thanks to great apps like Feedbin however, I can check in on these blogs when I have a free moment: in the TSA line at the airport, the car-pick up line at my daughter’s school, the sixty minutes of peace and quiet when everyone else sleeping in on Sunday morning. Once again, I found a couple of interesting posts that I thought were worth sharing: Proficiency Descriptors Not Numbers – Students React To The Change For the past couple of week’s I’ve shared Japanese teacher’s Colleen Hayes posts on formative assessment. While it’s great to follow along with her and read and I couldn’t have been more excited when she brought her students’ voices out this week. As educators we like sometimes forget that every action we take makes the learners in our classes feel something. Reading these student responses to giving up numeric grades is just priceless and should remind all of us of the real purpose of assessment in a world language classroom: performance & feedback. Read Colleen’s post –> […] Share this:Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
“They know it for the quiz and then 15 minutes later they can’t use it properly.” How could they score so well on a scheduled quiz and then not use it correctly in a spontaneous classroom interaction? How could I make a more accurate appraisal of where they really are in acquiring a concept? How could I offer formative assessment on what they truly understand/know? And so this year I began the “Pop Check-In”. When I first announced one in my Year 3 class there were looks of horror. “A pop quiz? You hadn’t warned us! A quiz? For marks?” So I explained what the ‘pop check in’ is and isn’t: It is a chance to see what you have in your head ‘right now’ It is not ‘for marks’ but it is ‘for learning’ It’s a chance for me to see if I have further teaching to do regarding this concept Typically I “mark” the check-in that evening by putting a coloured dot next to response that needs another look and the next day ask my students to look at/correct the problem. They receive a ‘complete’ mark when this is done. This works well but one day I returned […] Share this:Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
March is staring me down, dear colleagues. That long, long month with not a single day off. My classroom routines are long-established, I know my middle school students inside and out…but the end of the year is not in sight. Not at all. This period, between winter and spring breaks, represents our last long, sustained chunk of serious learning before state testing, warm weather, field trips, and general exhaustion overtake us. I find that I need glimmers of hope in March. Proof that we have accomplished something this year. Too often I am distracted by my students’ seemingly endless absences, missing work, or speaking of English (really? still?!). I ask myself, are we getting anywhere on this path to proficiency? Sometimes I’m so deep in the weeds that I can’t seem to zoom out and see the big picture. Students need a bit of a boost, too. And what better boost than seeing evidence that they are really learning and making true progress? When students are getting back assignment after assignment marked Intermediate Low, they may not realize how far they’ve come. Each sublevel takes time to master, and that incremental growth can be too hidden for impatient, young minds […] Share this:Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
As we kick off another school year, a lot of topics are swirling about in department meetings, district PD, online forums, Twitter, workshops, and more. This organization system or that one, new seating charts or going deskless, standards-based grading or category percentages, and much more. But, as Rihanna tells us, don’t get it twisted. There are some subtle nuances that define our teaching in big ways that we may not realize, and at the beginning of the school year, they merit some reflection. “I taught it” doesn’t mean that they ‘caught’ it How many times have we said that to colleagues, “But I taught that!” Usually out of frustration because students aren’t showing mastery, this is a deceptive statement. If there are students in the class who are showing that they grasp certain language and can use it, then it was, indeed, taught. But, don’t get it twisted; are these students the exception or the rule? Do they represent other students in the class? Or, would everyone stand to benefit from some re-teaching and differentiation? The high flyers can go even higher, and the rest can finally take flight, without the pressure of knowing other students are ahead of them. We […] Share this:Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
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 […] Share this:Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
What can the biblical creation story teach us about unit and lesson planning? A lot! The Book of Genesis explains that God began with “tohu va’vohu” (sometimes translated from the Hebrew as “unformed and void”) and then differentiated the world into heaven and earth. From there, the Divine went on to separate light from darkness, water from dry land, and so on. Three years ago, when I began to transition from a textbook-based curriculum to thematic units designed for proficiency in my French 8 course, I quickly found myself mired in what’s known in modern French as le tohu-bohu, or disorder and confusion. Anyone who knows me will tell you that this is NOT my happy place! I spent weeks and weeks over summer vacation hashing out the bare bones of my units, and every night of the school year trying to figure out how to break down those unit plans into daily lessons. As a mere mortal, I did not know how to separate light from darkness, nor water from dry land. I would get lost trying to figure out, for example, what exactly Day 23 of a 35-day unit should look like. Or Day 13. Or Day 33. […] Share this:Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
I’m packing. No. Not guns. Strategies, activities, techniques, differentiation. All the materials I need to tackle the path to proficiency. I love the title-Path to proficiency. The word is so apt. A path is long & winding, with mountains and valleys, obstacles, and rewards. When we set off, we’re full of optimism and excitement, but we can quickly tire and feel that the end is nowhere in sight as the unforeseen challenges of the path rise up to thwart us and to steal the energy and joy we had at the outset. So, we must be sure to think carefully about the things we will need to travel the path, especially when it’s a new one, like the path to proficiency is for me. Luckily, along the way we meet other travelers, who share the trail with us, and even offer some of the goodies they’ve packed or picked up on the way. Training for the path I walk. A lot. In fact, I’m training with a friend to hike part of the Camino in Spain. And the one thing I’ve learned is that being well-prepared and packing the right things makes all the difference. We’ve done other races and hikes […] Share this:Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
As teachers, we are constantly adjusting. It seems like we adjust frequently with different trends that emerge- PBLs, no homework, IPAs, differentiation- you name it. However, the best of each idea seems to stick as we work on the next idea emerging from education. Also, as foreign language teachers, we are all adjusting our beliefs and policies since we are reading this blog! As I have started to teach towards proficiency, I have found that I am able to adjust my instruction even more after I have reflected. This is even more important because I am adjusting based on what my students are doing. They are driving my adjustments instead of trends in the education world. Feedback Adjustments I love using Google Forms to collect feedback! One of my easiest adjustments comes from weekly feedback from my students. Wendy Farabough first taught me about Feedback Friday, and it is so easy to implement. You can have students complete this during the last few minutes of class. It not only lets me know what activities I should repeat, but it also gives me an insight into what they are thinking that week. I can easily add an optional question like “is […] Share this:Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
After spending a wonderful weekend at TELL Collab Seattle last week (thanks to Japanese teacher, Colleen Lee-Hayes for her reflections of the learning on day 1 and day 2 last), I’m back to reviewing some of the posts that caught my attention over the last two weeks. And with just about everyone back to school, so are the bloggers who have been sharing insights and reflections from their classrooms. Take a look at these posts that made me stop and think and consider joining me in NYC in March for another TELL Collab. Spinning Plates: 30 preguntas for planning Planning a lesson is likely one of the most difficult aspects of being a teacher, and it’s no secret that most teachers don’t have enough time for it. Spanish teacher, Laura Sexton, shares a series of categorized questions that help her stay focused. Everything from how she can make herself comprehensible to the learners, to infusing culture, and differentiating, to keeping the focus on getting her learners to “a real, concrete communicative situation”. Of course, I’m already contemplating how to turn these questions into a lesson planning template. Read Laura’s post –> New Year’s Resolution: Type my Lesson Plans Speaking of lesson planning. In my […] Share this:Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
Hello, and Happy Spring! I just got back from the SCOLT conference for the 2nd time ever, and this time I got to present! So this post, fair warning, is going to be partly about my process of submitting and doing a presentation, and the other part about the actual stations presentation as it happened. If you hang with me, I promise there will be something here you can use. Also, I HIGHLY SUGGEST that you submit a presentation to your local state organization, or if that freaks you out, offer to present something at a department meeting or something like that. We don’t have enough PD in the world that’s practical and done by teachers about what’s really working (or not working) in our classrooms. Every one of you out there reading this has some type of success in your classroom that should be showcased, and some insight to share…please share it with us! I mean, seriously…this is me at the presentation, basically hanging out with a bunch of teachers and talking about what I do in my classroom. What’s more fun than that? Ok, so the first step is the conference proposal part (which I always do on […] Share this:Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
So lots of people have asked me about this post I made on Twitter about speaking circles, and I can explain it better here than in Tweets. Best day! Whole-class speaking circle but w/ teams, new topic every 8 min, TL earns pts for team, Eng loses pts, top team & Indiv get prizes — Rosalyn Rhodes (@spanish_rhodes) September 30, 2016 I need to start by admitting that this activity was completely on the fly, unplanned, and a change from what I was going to do in this particular class. This is my rundown of what I did and how it went, and I welcome any feedback of how it could be improved. To set the scene, this was Friday of a 3-day weekend, the day of the Homecoming game AND the last period before the Pep Rally…let’s go TEACHING & LEARNING! My class is Spanish IV, not honors-AP track, full of exclusively juniors and seniors. Most of them are athletes or band people, so they were going to be in the pep rally in 40 minutes and they were hyped up! They rolled into my class loud, excited, covered in blue and white everything (t-shirts, pom poms, beads, etc) and […] Share this:Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
I tweeted earlier this week about getting my brain food ready in preparation for the TELL Collab in Austin, Texas, this weekend, and it really got me thinking about the kinds of ways we teachers feed our brains even on summer break. I don’t know about you, but whenever I’m engaged in some serious thinking–from taking exams to preparing them to collaborating with colleagues–I get seriously hungry because I almost feel the same kind of tired as if I’ve just worked out! In the same way I’m ravenous after a good session in the gym, I’m tired, hungry, and a little sore after a good collaboration and planning session with colleagues. But it’s the middle of June, and summer break is in full swing. Why think about the next school year and working with colleagues now that the school is already over? I don’t have to go back until the fall; we’ll have a more collaborative year next year. The thing about being a teacher is that we’re always thinking and planning and talking and researching, and often as soon as the year is over, we’re reflecting on how to make the next year even better. There was a post on […] Share this:Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
It’s December, folks. In case you haven’t heard the announcements about upcoming concerts, special assemblies, fire drills, and semester exams, the close of the first semester is upon us. In the midst of all of these deadlines and Secret Santa lists, it’s easy to lose track of the path to proficiency. I know it’d be easy to just talk about holiday celebrations in the target language countries for now and just pick up with real lessons in January at the start of the second semester, but we all know that proficiency takes time to build. So, how can we take time to enjoy the holiday season, prepare students for exams, and still enjoy ourselves? It’s so difficult because we teachers are often overachievers. In fact, that may be why we became teachers in the first place–we were those students who loved every minute of school, and we want to the share that with the next generation. Here are some tips on how to beat the December Doldrums: 1. Celebrate with your students. Celebrate all they’ve accomplished over the course of the semester in terms of proficiency. Take some time to reflect on what they could do at the start of […]
As the calendar turns to a new year, we are of course looking back at 2016 and looking forward to 2017. We added several new authors this year and more are coming on board next year. Since it’s an unspoken rule to share your top posts of the year, we thought we do the same in hopes that you find some new posts that you may have missed throughout the year. Here are the most visited posts for each of the Path 2 Proficiency bloggers in 2016. Jaime Basham: Finding the Right Word 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 … continue reading Sharon Deering: The Life-changing Magic of Tidying the Learning Environment 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 […] Share this:Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
I like having new ideas and providing solutions. I like trying new things. I like changing. And I don’t like hearing excuses. This doesn’t mean I’ve not had my fair share of adversity; rather adversity, in part, has helped me forge ahead and maneuver through the situation to find a solution. In my senior year of college, I only applied to two graduate schools, so when one rejected me and the other accepted me, I was on my way to Spain to study. Yet, halfway through my year-long stint abroad, I became extremely ill and had to withdraw from my program and move in with my parents because I had Guillain-Barré Syndrome and, subsequently, couldn’t walk for about a year and a half. I was in a wheelchair during that time and had to relearn to walk while using forearm crutches. (Can you imagine having to learn to walk at age 23?) Not one to sit by and let life happen, I re-enrolled in my undergraduate university–the one I had just left six months prior–and worked on an additional degree during the next three semesters, then returned to my graduate program during the summers. I couldn’t just stay where I was–in my wheelchair […] Share this:Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
Boy did I need Alyssa Villarreal’s recent post last fall–I was great about setting goals, but they were too many and too big! I spent the school year spinning, working non-stop and on the verge of burnout. What followed was a summer spent recovering from my near burnout crash–with no work, no PD (I’m happy to report that I am a refreshed and ready to go teacher this fall!). Last summer I spent a few days with Laura Terrill focused on writing curriculum–she made it clear that writing curriculum for the number of levels I teach is a multi-year process. Multi-year. Process. Although this was clear to her, everyone else in the room, colleagues from other programs…I was swirling in excitement about creating a proficiency focused, tailor made program after teaching in a curriculum void. This was the culmination of years of processing Helena Curtain’s work, following the cutting edge teachers on #langchat, and finally working with Laura. But my capacity did not match my enthusiasm. Once I had written a few units, I became an addict–I thought, “Well, if I write enough units for 4th-6th, why can’t I just get some new ones ready for 7th and 8th, too? […] Share this:Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
Thanks to a couple of Foreign Language Assistance Program (FLAP) grants I was very fortunate to be able to build K-12 language continuums. Working in the 21st largest district in the country, providing a meaningful language experience for all students in all 125 elementary schools was out of reach. I was however, able to build a LCTL and a Spanish K-12 language feeder pattern in each region of the district. This work was some of the most coordinated work toward proficiency I was able to do. Working with these new teachers who were eager to learn as much as they could, their energy was infectious. I was able to work with the best, my dream team and as we grew the teachers and the programs their creativity flourished. Designing a “Cone of Proficiency” In our third year I formed a leadership team with representation from each language. These teachers met weekly and the synergy was inspiring to say the least. As we struggled to make proficiency meaningful and important to our youngest language learners these creative geniuses had the answer. Borrowing from video game language to describe moving through levels (i.e. leveling up) and an icon that most children enjoy (ice cream) we […]
Listen to understand, not to respond. When I heard those words two years ago, they really resonated with me. The context was teaching toward proficiency, but really, I think they’re good advice for life in general. Listen to understand, not to respond. Since 2014, in teaching toward the goal of student proficiency, I have become a better teacher. Obviously a better teacher of language and SLA, but really, I have become a better teacher of people. I’ll say that again: proficiency has made me a better teacher of people. In learning the rubrics and indicators, I’ve had to really hone my ability to analyze my students’ language development (or lack thereof, sometimes). What is the difference, really, between novice low and novice mid? Novice high and intermediate low? And then, how do I articulate that to a student? i.e. “You can level-up your language here by ______,” in student-friendly language that’s measurable and attainable. Whew – it’s a lot to think about! And then to lesson plan around being able to actually have time to have those conversations while not tearing your hair out and/or wondering what the other 35+ are doing? Ha! Sorcery, I tell you, sorcery. That listening, […] Share this:Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
In thinking about assessing proficiency and growth as I approach the end of the year, I sometimes feel overwhelmed and a bit of self-inflicted pressure. Since making the switch to teaching for proficiency, I’ve come to understand the importance of assessment and feedback like never before. I am greatly influenced and inspired by the wonderful proficiency focused teachers on #langchat–many of whom work in secondary education, and have planned creative, effective IPAs for the end of the year. At the elementary level, the process of assessment looks a little different– and when I feel overwhelmed with the task of assessing all of the levels I lead, I try to remember what makes language learning in elementary so unique–it’s the long haul. The privilege of teaching elementary world language is developing a long term relationship with my students and the students’ long term relationship with the language. What this means in my school setting, is that I’m not looking at where the children are at the end of 2nd or 3rd grade always, rather where they are functioning at the end of 8th grade. It may take up to two years to see real measurable growth–especially because I only see my […] Share this:Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
It’s important to confess right here at the beginning that I am a firm believer in learning and playing being one and the same—specifically every step along the way from Novice Zero to “survival language” Intermediate Mid-ish. So, the lessons, materials and activities I present and discuss here are firmly rooted in the idea that students need to be doing things (and HAVING FUN) to acquire language in the short term and stick it out long term. I should preface the rest of this blog post with a quick “About me”. The truly curious can take a peak at my bio, but for now I will briefly say that my name is Matt, I am 23 years old and currently pursuing my M.A. in Second Language Acquisition at the University of Maryland. I have been a Spanish teacher since the age of 16, and a Chinese teacher since the age of 19. As a full time student, I don’t have much time to teach during the school year, but I currently still teach Chinese every summer at a STARTALK program. For those who are not already aware, STARTALK is a federally funded grant program that trains language teachers and provides […] Share this:Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
At a conference recently I listened to several key leaders of our profession talk about the critical need for advocacy and their work in ensuring that languages are “at the table” through these efforts. I honestly applaud all efforts that advocate for language learning. You see, I think languages are a gift, a look into another culture, another perspective. While we cannot all be a part of lobbying in Washington or at the negotiation table, I would argue that teachers hold the most critical role in advocacy. Every day, students leave our classrooms with opinions of who they are as language learners. It is in our classrooms that our students find success or not, they grow and can examine that growth in terms of proficiency and not an imaginary standard of perfection. We build a case for language learning or not. Our practice and examples of student success leave students and their parents enrolling in the next course or looking for a loophole. And here we are again with the pressure on you the teacher. You can incite a revolution that supports language learning from your classroom. There are many of us across the US and if we banded together […] Share this:Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
So it’s not a surprise to anyone that I am a super fan of foldables, but I’ve realized that Twitter is not really the place to try to explain how to make and use them, so here we go. Some of them are really complicated (the secret door foldable), but this one is really basic, so here it goes … a step by step of how I make my city foldable, and a way to use it communicatively. What I’ve found is that foldables give me three really great things that I want in my classes. First, they store the vocabulary and structures in a way that is simple, organized, and somewhat artistic. Second, that vocab-storage thing requires listening to me speaking in Spanish the whole time, and trying to make their creation look like mine. (Sra. Spanglish and I started a #foldablefailures hashtag for when the listening and the creating get out of sync) Finally, the foldable is the tool they use as their scaffolded security blanket resource for speaking. I have started to put speaking activities in the middle of things instead of after just to help chunk the content a little more and squeeze in more targeted […] Share this:Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
We’re all about the proficiency path at our school. I’ve got the levels posted in my classroom: the ice cream cone graphic in elementary and signs with level descriptors in middle school. We’re using can-do statements in every unit, assessing with IPAs, learning language in context. My alumni students leave with a language immersion trip under their belts and are well on their way to the state seal of biliteracy. Our admin supports attendance in language classes for all students in our school, and made sure there were funds to send me to the OPI training and workshops with Helena Curtain and Laura Terrill to create a proficiency focused curriculum. I’m really fortunate to have my school community on this path. But this spring, I was reminded of one stakeholder who may not have gotten the road map to understand where we’re going: the parents. This spring, I was reminded that the parents’ language class experiences still color their perceptions about their child’s learning. The idea of there being a right and wrong answer, of memorizing grammar points and being tested on them, is still very prevalent. This can be a source of anxiety and worry for them. At our […] Share this:Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
As teachers, we often don’t see ourselves as leaders outside the realm of our classroom. We are in charge of our students and our classrooms. And we think that is it. Generally, that is the way we like it. It allows us to go into our domain, close the door and do our thing. Unbothered, uninterested and unchallenged. However, what if I told you that you are a leader and that you possess incredible attributes for being a great leader? Like it or not, you have leadership skills, albeit laden leadership skills, but you possess great potential to influence those around you. Not just your students. Not just your colleagues, but your administration, your district, your state and perhaps at the national level. However, you have not realized that potential because like I was, you are considered a reluctant leader. Someone who often was voluntold to do something and you just haven’t figured out how to say the word “no.” So you reluctantly go about the task at hand and because you are a teacher (as we all know, they are die hard perfectionist – even if you don’t want to admit it) you want to do your very best […] Share this:Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
OK. I’m just going to say it. I hate grading. When I was a kid and helped my mom grade it seemed like so much fun. Then I became a teacher and it seemed like the punishment for a job well-done. I think it’s because I’ve always felt like this was the area where I am least prepared. Don’t misunderstand, I know my subject content. I can talk about grammar and vocabulary and word choice and syntax. I love all those things and I know the rules backwards and forwards. Imperfect subjunctive is exciting to a language nerd like me. And of course, my education courses in college talked about positive, negative and constructive feedback. Teacher training boiled down to the basics: “good job” and “that’s interesting, but perhaps next time you could try it this way (insert correct answer)” were acceptable. “That’s stupid” and “Wrong!” were obviously to be avoided. Quizzes and tests were marked for correctness, distributed back to students and the next lesson/unit begun. But I don’t think I really understood what effective feedback looked like and just how valuable it could be. Then a few things happened that radically changed my whole practice and perspective regarding […] Share this:Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
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 time with my big, colorful, amazing visuals, pantomiming things they don’t understand, using simplified language, and doing what I believe I am supposed to be doing. Did you roll your eyes yet? I know. I would have too. Are you hearing your admin (or saying to yourself) “You are not supposed to be the center of attention. You are supposed to be facilitating the learning….” I get that. I hear it, but I’ve been fighting it. I felt that I needed to always be the one dancing in front. I mean, my visuals are clear and it’s not a list, right? I mean, this slide pulls prior knowledge of colors and stores and adds new vocab that I label and we describe… It’s not that bad, right? Do I sound desperate? Yeah, I felt desperate. My principal’s favorite phrase is, “The students should be doing […] Share this:Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
When I taught in a charter middle school, the administration wanted us teachers to post summative data about our students–how they did on what test and what the criteria were. I was always behind on posting mine because we did so much formative assessment in class. As the only Spanish teacher in the school at that time, my numbers always looked different because my assessments didn’t look like the other teachers’. Fast forward several years where I’m teaching in a high school and with a greater knowledge of proficiency, I now post students’ proficiency ratings on performance assessments, and it’s worked as a great way to track their progress as an individual student and as a class. For my students, I have six columns left to right: Novice Low and Intermediate Low are on the left; Novice Mid and Intermediate Mid in the center, and Novice High and Intermediate High on the right. I’m giving myself room to add another column for Advanced if I need. In each box is a list of criteria that the students need to meet in order to get that rating. Each student is given a random number, which they will use for their performance […] Share this:Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
Ah, yes, technology. Coming fresh out of a fabulous #SCOLT17 in Orlando, there were lots of technology ideas that floated around in sessions and conversations. These are great, because we do, indeed, live in the Information Age, a time where we can find nearly any piece of information at our fingertips. Therefore, we should definitely be using them with our students, and, even better, design learning opportunities with the technology in the hands of our students (not just us). Yet, school and how we ‘do‘ school largely hasn’t changed. We still require a certain number of hours, days, and credit hours, and students sit in front of adults all day largely sitting-and-getting, playing the game. We offer professional development sessions for teachers on how to get your students “up and moving” because what learning and learning in classrooms ‘look like’ has been ingrained into us to not include that, necessarily. Don’t believe me? Do a Google image search ‘students learning’ or ‘effective classroom’ or ‘good class’. Seriously – search that now. All done? All those fresh, scrubbed, smiling faces; don’t they look like our classrooms every day? Fed, prepared, excited, motivated. Ah yes, our students. Some days, absolutely. Other days? Not so much. […] Share this:Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
How do we convince students to stretch beyond their comfort zone when writing and speaking in the target language? I believe that teachers have to educate students about proficiency, both on a course level and the task level, so that they are invested in our collective work. Truly, we have a mighty task before us as we lead students on this journey. A standards-based rubric can be a powerful tool for undertaking this work. This year our department has a new standards-based presentational rubric that a group of us wrote over the summer to help guide our work on specific tasks. We spent four intense days at the Massachusetts Foreign Language Association’s Proficiency Academy with Thomas Sauer and Greg Duncan, and each afternoon (and some evenings after dinner…and some mornings before breakfast…) we gathered to peruse existing rubrics and think about how to craft our own. Our resulting “patchwork” product is most definitely imperfect and a work in progress, but having one common rubric forces us to hash out our questions and disagreements collectively, which has great value. I can talk to a middle school Mandarin colleague just as well as a high school French colleague as we try to decide what we mean, […] Share this:Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
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 experts are hoarders. The idea is that organizing and arranging clutter does not make it any less clutter. So, as is my tendency, I began to think about the classroom. In the world language field, we have learned to grab everything we can to help us in providing quality learning experiences for our students. How many conferences have you been to where you came home with a suitcase full of handouts containing suggestions to improve the language learning experience? Every time someone shows you an activity they have used successfully in their classroom, do you say, “May I have a copy of that?” Are you the teacher who keeps all the sample books from the last adoption? What about the old literary magazines you subscribed to last year but don’t have the money for this year? And the realia you collected on your trip to […] Share this:Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
Just like magic, standup comedy, sports, and talk shows, effective teaching can look organic and improvised to the naked eye. Experts in those fields, however, know the amount of preparation, precision, and rehearsal that those require. Effective teaching and learning are no different, and actually draws many uncanny parallels. Some elements are highly contextual in the moment; others, calculated, anticipated, and refined. During the school year, there isn’t necessarily time to research, think through, prepare, or organize for innovation — rather, the school year is the time to execute, it’s when we’re in season. Many people who aren’t in education say things like, “I bet it’s great to have the summers off!” Teachers know that “off” should be in quotes and is always commensurate according to a number of personal factors; often we’re taking classes, continuing certification, traveling w/ students, attending PD, catching up on projects at home, spending time with family, and much more. Summer and other breaks are the offseason; they’re when we can rejuvenate and catch up, and rest itself is relative. Master athletes like LeBron James and Serena Williams know that off-season relaxation and preparation are key, and we as the general public know that. I often wonder why […] Share this:Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
The character Leslie Knope from the show Parks and Recreation is known for her love of organizational binders, waffles, and geeking out over giants in her field that other people might not recognize. I do the last thing on this list, which I call “Knope-ing out” from the infinitive “to Knope out.” A couple of years ago, I was looking at the list of conference attendees, and immediately I started to Knope out over who was going to be there, who I might get the chance to meet, and who I might get the chance to talk to. I got to meet some folks and shake their hands while there, but the key thing I learned was that they were educators like me. In fact, one of the first posts I wrote for Path 2 Proficiency was on finding my voice as a teacher leader <insert link>. But every time I go to a conference I still Knope out–no matter if it’s a regional conference or if it’s ACTFL. Passing former ACTFL Teachers of the Year in the hallways or greeting district or state supervisors with a smile and a warm hug still causes my little language nerd heart to […] Share this:Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
It’s been one of those really busy weeks, where I have been counting the days, hours, and minutes until the weekend. For some reason nothing seemed to work this week and everything was due at once. It’s nice to know though that I wasn’t alone and going through these blog posts reminds me that we are together: a family of educators. Hope you find these posts from “my family” as helpful as I did this week. The Empty Desk Being a language teacher is so much more than inspiring young learners to acquire a new language and explore new cultures and perspectives. Anyone that has spent some time teaching, knows that the “it’s all about relationships” mantra couldn’t be more true. This certainly hit home in this incredibly raw post by Spanish teacher Jessica Pederson dealing with a sudden loss in her classroom. What Jessica describes just might be the most important task you have as a teacher. While I hope that not every teacher has to experience this, it provides me with comfort to know that our students are in good hands. Read Jessica’s post –> They couldn’t hear the word “no” This rich post from Spanish über-Blogger, Sara-Elizabeth Cottrell, […] Share this:Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
“I feel like I cannot open my brain big enough to absorb all the information. I’m overwhelmed and excited,” I texted my wife about the TELL Collab. “:)” she replied. On June 26th and 27th, I had the great professional privilege of participating in the very first TELL Collab at the COERLL at University of Texas at Austin. It was a fulfilling and rewarding experience to not only participate with like-minded teachers, but to also hug in real life two of my Twitter besties–Amy and John. I’ve been moved by how they moderate #langchat and how they provide feedback to others. Also, they both are reflective of their own practice, so I was glad to have time to “just be” with them! On Saturday morning, Amy was in the hot seat, and I totally stoked that fire! She talked about her blogging process and said something I hadn’t considered before: I have to make time and a concerted effort to reflect–truly reflect–on my practice. She said that in order to grow, we must b be reflective of ourselves, but also to search out feedback–true and honest and sometimes heartbreaking. But, it’s through that pain that we can grow. She remarked […]