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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)
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 […]
I wanted to write an encouraging, end of semester blog what would linger over the holiday and inspire us to come back raring to go in January. Unfortunately, I have to tell you, I’ve been in the weeds this semester. I felt like that 80s movie with Rick Moranis, Honey I shrunk the kids. You know, the one where the kids get lost in the backyard and have to make their way back to the house but everything is an obstacle—the blade of grass, the ladybug, the beetle carcass, the aluminum can, the water sprinkler. Our familiar world and things we never give a second thought become overwhelming hurdles that seem so daunting we feel we will never reach home. That is how I felt this semester. Wasn’t I just being super cheesy and telling everyone how much I love back to school???!! Yes, Yes, I did write my previous post about my joy of back to school, and how it is the most wonderful time of the year. About how much I love it—I really do! And I meant it. I really did. Then. But like the shine on a new toy, the excitement of a new school year […] 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)
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 […]
It was a busy week on the Path to Proficiency blog that took a very reflective turn. Four new posts, including a new author, that shared some vulnerabilities and reminded me of the human side of teachers. I’ve been saying for years, I often know how effective a teacher is by their reflections. Many of the most effective teachers are often also the most reflective teachers. Blogging certainly is one way of reflecting on your practice and perhaps even processing your own reflections. I’m thankful for teachers who have chosen to share that important process with us publicly. Here are the reflections that caught my attention this week. EPIC Telenovela PBL Unit & Final Exam Spanish teacher, Laura Sexton, recently attended the TELL Collab Nashville and shares how the EPIC Growth Plan model is now playing out in her classroom as she prepares to close the school year on a high note, developing a PBL Unit for her students. Read Laura’s post –> The “Level Up” Writing Workshop Class… Allowing students to provide peer feedback on their work can be a daunting task that requires a carefully designed structure to ensure it truly supports the performance & feedback process. Japanese teacher, Colleen […] Share this:Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
Back in September 2017, we’d just adopted our newly-revised performance feedback form/rubric for our program. Eight teachers had worked that summer for many hours to create it. (See my 2017 post, I’ve never met a rubric I liked to read about that journey and my prediction for where we’d be a year later). We began that school year on a mission—to use the rubric as a tool to help us calibrate our standards, to help students have a clear picture of those standards, and to help them move up on the proficiency ladder. In practice, the rubric still seemed clunky and uncomfortable for most of us —which had been the problem motivating us to redesign it in the first place. My response options were exasperation or perseverance. I chose perseverance (Well, OK, maybe, possibly, probably, I chose exasperation too at some points in the year). We had to figure out what the trouble was. Why was it so challenging for teachers to hold student work up against the performance targets we’d so carefully described and to give them feedback on their work? Why was it so hard to assign a grade to that work? One of the challenges teachers reported […] Share this:Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
I think that most world language teachers will agree with me that interpersonal assessments (assessments on which two or more students interact with each other) are very hard to get right, but they are arguably the most important. Most of us have learned that there has to be some type of problem for the students to solve; otherwise, the students spit information at each other without actually having to interact. However, they also need to be prompts that allow/require both (or more) students to communicate. Twice in my very short career (and I am sure this number will increase), I have had to have the students redo an interpersonal assessment because my prompt just did not fit the bill. This week, I gave the students an interpersonal assessment that I thought was going to be amazing, and it totally flopped…and it was totally my fault. We all make mistakes, right? What went wrong? So, the students did an interpretive reading on tapas in Spain, and we have been working with that material for a while. On the original interpersonal assessment that I developed, the students were given a hotel name and a tapas bar, and they were leaving from the […] Share this:Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
We know that teachers make a lot of decisions, many of them split-second and with a lot to consider. In all of that question answering, however, I think we as teachers sometimes forget to do some of the asking. Coupled with that is how hard it can be to prioritize and decide when assessing if we can answer at all, especially if the question deals with our own wellbeing. Confession: I’ve always thought teacher “wellbeing” was a tad vague, and, if not made concrete, meaningless to teachers. We put others’ wellbeing before our own many days, and it can be hard to figure out what our own self-care, mental health, etc. even looks like. Plus, we teach in 2017 – there’s a constant pressure to make lessons jazzy, smooth, and exciting, because if they aren’t tech-filled and pedagogically sexy, our classroom will be the backdrop of sleeping students on Snapchat, or, gasp, we’ll be known as the “packet” teacher who spends hours at the copier and does anything but engage students. The horror! The truth? Just because we can do anything doesn’t mean we have to do everything. Innovative teaching lies somewhere in the middle of the aforementioned so-called extremes. […] 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)
“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 […]
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)
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)
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)
When I started to teach towards proficiency, I knew what the end product was, but I was not always clear how to get there. What would I do each day in class? However, once I started asking students more and more proficiency questions on my assessments, I would start to notice the gaps in their learning and understanding that needed to be filled. I realized that for interpretive reading, my students missed some key literacy skills. Many times, they would overlook basic text structures that would allow them to understand the text or their description of the theme was vague. Luckily, I combined some of my previous activities and I stole borrowed some ideas from our sixth grade English teacher! These ideas can really support novices as they interpret a variety of authentic texts. One of my favorite pre-reading strategies is having students brainstorm all of the words they can think of in the target language around one topic. Ever since I have read John Medina’s Brain Rules, I like to have students brainstorm and recycle vocabulary as much as I can to help students remember it. I allow students to take one minute to write down as many words as they […] Share this:Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
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)
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)
You know that unit in your curriculum that should be so amazing and interesting and chock full of culture, but ends up being kind of surface and overwhelming? Well, for me, that’s the travel unit at the end of Level 2. They have to revisit how to pack for a trip, and read weather forecasts, and learn to make reservations, navigate an airport for international travel, travel by bus and train, tour around a foreign place, look at stuff, do stuff, eat stuff, possibly get hurt, lost, or sick, make it back to the original airport on time, AND THEN come home and tell someone else what HAPPENED on their trip!! Are you exhausted? I certainly am every time I teach all that. Not only does it have a ton of content, it basically begs for days of explicit grammar instruction to get the HAPPENED part (fight that temptation, my friends, my next post will talk about what I figured out on that topic…). That being said, I wanted to show you how I reworked my travel unit this semester, since I was amazed at what my kids produced, and give you the slides if you wanted to try it […] Share this:Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
How many times have you set a goal? It may be too many to count. Perhaps the better question is how many times have you set the SAME goal? The question becomes do we have the right goal for the right time and if we have the right goal, how do we see it through to fruition? The answer is deceptively simple. The answer is consistency. It’s easy to say but difficult for many of us to put into action. So what will be your goal for this school year? How will you ensure you work on it consistently? Here are some ideas to get you started on an EPIC Year. 1. Be Honest Where are you right now? What evidence do you have to support your opinions about your current status? I’d encourage you to use a TELL Self-Assessment to get started. Pick a topic, or a domain or the foundational criteria and jump in. The more frank with yourself you are the better. You cannot make focused, sustainable growth if you do not have a solid grasp on where you are right now. The more accurate you are the better the results. It’s not always easy to look […] 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 have been trying to write a post for over a month, and nothing has been working. I’ve been struggling with writing, deleting, thinking “this sounds ridiculous”, etc, so I’ve written nothing. Tweets don’t count, although, I’ve at least been doing that a bit. As I’ve thought about it, I think what the problem is is that I haven’t quite gotten a grip on my brain this school year, so congratulations, we’re going to work through this together. We’re all on the Path, right? Please feel free to quit reading at any point… So this year I’m at a new school, and I’ve been working really hard to get my life together in this new place. Let me start by saying, I love it! I am incredibly happy, but there are challenges with how I manage my time (which I’m terrible at), how to work with new people, new and different challenges with students and curriculum, and how badly I miss some of the people I no longer see on a daily basis. It’s surprising how heartbreaking that last one is. Don’t discount that feeling, if that’s where you are. Change is hard. If you’re in the situation this year […] Share this:Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
“Effective language learning experiences are facilitated by the use of strategically selected resources designed to support course, unit and lesson performance objectives” the Teacher Effectiveness for Language Learning (TELL) Framework tells us. I was sitting in a meeting the other day listening to one of the publishers of new textbooks for the state of Texas, when it came home to me once again what a mammoth task confronts the language teacher in terms of the selection of resources. About the time we began to realize that the true use of language is in the real world and that students need to confront authentic oral and written text created in the real world, technology took a giant leap forward. The internet became readily available, and suddenly blog posts, newscasts, ebooks, magazines and any other number of text sources became available for use in the classroom. Teachers greeted this windfall of resources with the enthusiasm it deserved, but they soon discovered that pulling resources adequate for their purposes in the classroom took an unbelievable amount of time and energy, and that often, after a tremendous investment of said time and energy, the resource didn’t work, and they were hard-pressed to explain exactly why. […] Share this:Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
Recently, I had coffee with a colleague from another elementary school to talk shop. She’s pretty new to the school where she’s the only Spanish teacher, teaches preschool through 8th grade, and is being asked to create a curriculum. To say that she is concerned and feeling a high level of stress, is an obvious understatement. I listened supportively as she unfolded her struggle to find the time and resources to create thematic units while figuring out what to do with the children in the meantime. My friend is a good teacher, and of course, is looking to attend training and build a network of colleagues who can support her efforts. All things that take time. Our coffee was an effort to get information and advice on where to head next, and I answered her questions, suggesting some nice, inexpensive materials to use while she works on developing her own curriculum and set reasonable goals for the class time allotted her program. I ended our conversation by simply saying, “Remember, at the end of the day, if you speak Spanish, the children are interested and understand and maybe use some themselves, that’s what it’s all about.” As I walked away, […] 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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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 […]
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)
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)
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)
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 (baby steps) in my classroom. I started it a few years ago with my Spanish 2s. Last year, I simplified it to teach it to my Spanish 1s. At this point, all of my students know how to describe something, even if they don’t know the proper word. I introduce this concept with my students by introducing it in Spanish. In the parenthesis you will find the translation into English. Circunlocución: Cómo hablar de temas que no sabes (Circumlocution: How to talk about themes that you don’t know) We get started by breaking things down into 3 categories (you can break it down further, I just start with the 3 to ease them in). Once we get the hang of that, we are able to expand upon other concepts. Here is the generic handout that I provide for my students: (Adapted from here: http://profehanson.weebly.com/uploads/1/7/9/9/1799974/circumlocution_level_2_examples.pdf) An example of a […] 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)
“I can’t put Intermediate 1 in the gradebook,” I declared to my class. “I wish I could, but I can’t.” I continued, “So how are we going to show the number equivalent to your proficiency rating?” It turns out that everyone’s fine with being on target unless it interferes with their GPA. Shelby County Schools, where I work, has a built-in pre-unit on proficiency for every level to make sure the students, parents, and teachers are all on the same page in talking about what in the world it means to have a certain proficiency level, so the students–my students–can state the district target, my class target, and how they can achieve each level by the end of the year. That being said, I still can’t put in Intermediate 1 in the gradebook. How do we track proficiency? How do I measure my students’ grades? It’s a tricky thing because while students want to be measured solely on doing all of their work, there’s no way we, as teachers, can provide any kind of feedback based solely on that. If we want our students to be proficient–actually using the language–we must move beyond grading vocabulary or fill-in-the-blank grammar quizzes and […]
This year, I am taking on a big goal, and it is to become more of a language advocate. First, I had to admit that I had not really been a language advocate. In some ways, I thought that I was already doing so. I taught a language, and I believed that if students enjoyed my class they would see the benefit of learning a language and keep studying it. However, I have realized that is not enough. We all know how long it takes for a student to actually become proficient. Two years of a foreign language will not give them a strong proficiency. Also, students have many other passions that cause them to edge language out of their studies. My one class in Middle School or Spanish 2 with them is not enough to motivate them to continue to study language. I want to teach and reinforce the idea that learning a language is important, so they will continue their language studies a long time after they have been in my class. This year, I plan on not only letting students know why they should study a language, but also how I became proficient myself and ways for […] 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 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 […]
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)
I have been judicious about planning what virtual learning that I take part in this summer. It is so important that teachers make sure they take time to recharge especially after such a hectic spring and an unknown fall. However, I did know that I wanted to set aside some time for the NFLC Virtual Summit. However, with over 70 sessions and 12 panels, it can be overwhelming! Also, did you catch the presenter’s names?! So many people that I LOVE learning from! Luckily, I can (mostly) rely on Thomas’ suggestion to focus on my goal. (I am going to sneak some sessions in that are from regional conferences that are a bit far away from Virginia.) To be honest, I didn’t have a goal until the middle of the first day. During the first day and the middle school panel, one consistent suggestion was to give more feedback during distance learning. As I was processing (and tweeting!) my takeaways, I remembered how much I dreaded going through the process of giving feedback online. I felt like I spent a LOT of time giving feedback (and emailing!), and I am not even sure how much my students even used it. […] 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)
Many teachers I meet who are interested in making the shift to a performance driven instructional repertoire have this idea of a false dichotomy. The all or nothing approach – either we teach grammar or we teach toward performance and proficiency. I can say there are few things in life are that clear-cut. Teaching toward performance and proficiency does not negate the need for grammar instruction. It provides us a cadence to how and when we teach grammar. We need for our students to communicate. If no one can understand them, communication is not possible. Just like if our students lack cultural understanding, they also cannot communicate if they are insulting those with whom they interact, but that is another post. Teaching grammar has a very defined role so long as we honor three basic principles. Grammar instruction is aligned to our targets and be presented within a meaningful context while grammar information is easily accessible so that we best prepare our students to meet or exceed performance targets. Grammar instruction is aligned to our targets. While the World Readiness Standards outline for us what we should teach and how to connect it to the student’s native language and community, […] 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)
If students can’t use the language they are learning for practical – REAL WORLD – purposes then why do we do what we do? I think (desperately hope) that most teachers agree our focus should be on teaching students how to use the languages they are learning. Many of us have attended a workshop on proficiency or maybe even several but the conundrum is still how to I move from conceptual understanding to practice? Maybe there is fear of making the shift from understanding to practicing. Fear of student buy in, parental or administrative push back, fear of our own limitations, all equally important to address and mitigate. This conundrum of shifting from comprehension to practice is fascinating to me. As educators, we are all at some stage of embracing the growth mindset for our students but often not ourselves. I have often said that I believe most teachers are overachievers who have embraced a profession that allows us to continue to learn and evolve. I do not think that anyone sets out be bad at their chosen career. So safe can become the default. Peggy Boyles once compared implementing performance assessment to becoming a gourmet chef. She reminded teachers that gourmet chefs did […] 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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
In October, I laid out here the goals I set in the summer and, motivated by Alyssa Villareal’s fall post, committed to reporting back and holding myself accountable to them. This fall, without going down the rabbit hole of politics, I’ve found myself struggling to stay on my path and focus on teaching–as I have in the past when facing personal or family challenges. From time to time, we all have stumbles for one reason or another. Going back to those goals I set months ago, is helping me to refocus and not lose sight of getting better at what I do. Here’s where I am so far on my goal of providing more comprehensible input (overlaps some with cultural goal). First and foremost, my biggest lesson so far is that I don’t have to create everything myself–lots of talented teachers have come before me, created, found and share great materials. What I need to do is exercise good judgement in choosing rich materials that provide engaging comprehensible input. This fall: I put together a lesson on Mexican Independence Day for elementary ages (a holiday I’ve avoided because I didn’t think I could stay in the TL). I used a […] 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)
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)
I am so excited I attended the TELL Collab Nashville, held at Lipscomb University’s Spark Center! It was an energizing way to connect with passionate language teachers, to enjoy some of Nashville’s great local music, and to reflect on my own teaching over this school year. We’ve come a long way. In the midst of stretching our minds and growing our students and reflecting on our practice, it becomes really easy for us teachers to start to feel bad about everything we haven’t done for our students–not given enough corrections, not given them enough authentic resources, not taught them all new vocabulary in context. In addition, it is just as easy to think about all the methods we’ve done that we are having challenged–teaching grammar explicitly, giving heaps of vocabulary lists, having students memorize so many verb tenses. Because we teachers are often over-achievers, this kind of thinking can really put a damper on our end of the year, so instead of feeling invigorated at the end of the year, our classes turn more into babysitting with the hopes of starting afresh in the fall. Forgive yourself. We teachers are good at sharing ideas, so the TELL Collab was such an igniting […] Share this:Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
Summer is here in Memphis and it is arriving quickly for the rest of you, even if it doesn’t feel that it is. So this is the time of the year that we work long hours grading final exams and doing more math than many of us care to do normally in order to get grades submitted on time. So my question to you is this, what do your grades communicate? Do your grades paint a picture of the language your students have developed this year? Do they communicate how well they followed directions? Perhaps this is something that you haven’t thought about. As an administrator and working with many principals I can tell you it is an important distinction. Now or as school closes is the time to reflect over the year and the messages we send on the permanent records of our students to advocate for or against language learning. I say it like a broken record, every day in our classrooms we send messages to kids about who they are as language learners. Grades, send the biggest, loudest message. So what do they say? Let me share two interesting situations I experienced this school year to get […] 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)
At this point of the year, I am able to let students take even more control in level 2. They are starting to become more confident in their abilities, and they know what I expect of them when we complete activities. Now, it is time for them to take the reins! Some of my favorite technology tools that I use to help support and navigate students can also be used for them to discuss their own learning. One of my favorite tools for interpretive listening is EdPuzzle. In EdPuzzle, the teacher adds their own video or a video from YouTube to the platform. Then the teacher inserts questions or notes about the video. As students are listening to the video, the video stops and EdPuzzle asks the question. If it is a multiple choice question, they can receive direct feedback. With open-ended questions, the teacher can go back and add the feedback. This platform is perfect for novices. The teacher can provide support via notes and can draw attention to the specific area where the question is located. In addition, the student can replay the section that as many times as they like. This helps differentiate the video for each […] 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)
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)
I took a look at my gradebook at the end of last year. My tasks were all jumbled together and still classified in the traditional 4 language skills: reading, writing, listening. I had evolved to using descriptors instead of numbers, but nothing else had changed. I couldn’t easily tell you how proficient a student was in any particular skill – in part because the information wasn’t easy to find. It certainly did not reflect my journey down the proficiency path. So this fall my colleague Connie and I decided that if we were implementing proficiency then we also needed to fully make the jump to modes. And if we were going to use modes of communication in class, our gradebook had to change as well. At the start of the year I put my new gradebook together with 4 separate pages: Interpersonal, Presentational, Interpretive and “Out Of Class Prep” (our take on what work at home really is). Doing this led to some revelations about my practice, some surprises and, ultimately, necessary changes. Interpersonal – We set these tasks as anything requiring a possible negotiation of meaning between two (or more) students. Wow – if you had asked me BEFORE […] Share this:Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
It’s been a year of growth for the Path 2 Proficiency community: more than a dozen new teachers joined as authors and readership almost doubled, but most importantly the reflections and conversations grew well beyond this site. This blog doesn’t exist to promote anyone or anything. This blog doesn’t exist to showcase the perfect teacher. This blog doesn’t exist to provide all the answers. Instead, this blog allows regular educators like Michele, Jaime, Rebecca, John, Matt, Sharon, Tim, Christi, Maris, Paul, Juan Carlos, Holly, Rose, Amanda, Valerie, Betsy, Alyssa, Lisa and Meredith to share their reflections about what is working in their worlds, what failed, and how they plan on helping their students further their own path to proficiency. If you are a reader of this site, please take a moment to thank these brave teachers for sharing their reflections in such a public format. It’s because of them that we all become better educators. Of course with growth comes growing pains and some parts of our site are currently not functioning properly but that should all get cleaned up in January along with some other exciting updates. Since all of our posts are very personal reflections some posts hit nerves […] Share this:Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
It’s not a secret that reading blogs is one of my favorite hobbies and many mornings my Feedbin (RSS Reader) is the first thing I open when getting online. Over the years, I have been able to create the ultimate curated newspaper for myself through hundreds of subscriptions to a wide variety of blogs. Everything from politics, food, TV, education, silly cat videos, Apple products and so much more. My favorite folder however are the world language blogs. Every day someone is keeping me on my toes by sharing ideas, a resource, or just their musings on why life as a language teacher has been hard, rewarding or crazy on that particular day. It’s my hope to start this series of posts where I can share some of my favorite posts from the previous week. What if I’m just fed up with my students’ attitudes about language? Spanish high school teacher Carrie Toth summarizes her very own path to proficiency sharing results from her classroom and the many sometimes painful steps it took. Her post is such an inspiration for others who might be afraid to start on this journey, she keeps repeating one important message that is so important to hear: it takes time! […] 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)
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)
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)
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)
Whew. Fall semester is over, and it has officially been zero days since I showered and changed into real clothes clean pajamas. The stuff of teacher vacation dreams, right? Besides chugging hot chocolate, only eating food that should come with a side of Lipitor, and bingeing Netflix, I’ve also been coming back to the same reflection: Spring 2020. For me, on block schedule, it’s all new classes, a new prep, and basically the first day of school. There is a lot to think about re: routines, what went well last semester, what could use tweaking (or perhaps scrapping altogether), and so on. This year especially, I feel that my teaching and my teaching behaviors have all matured noticeably and as a consequence, my to-don’t list is getting longer and more specific. In early 2016, I started setting a #OneWordResolution for myself for the upcoming year. My word was enough and was to reinforce that I am enough, my work is enough, my effort is enough, and I am doing enough. It worked, and I saw a spike in not only productivity but also calm. Believing, really believing, that I am already doing enough made it easier to say no, set boundaries […] Share this:Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
Maybe, just maybe, Vanilla Ice was channeling his inner teacher when he wrote the lyrics to Ice Ice Baby. And, maybe, just maybe, the Universe was trying to tell me something on my way home from work yesterday when it came on the radio. Regardless, it did, and it was immediately after one of the most frustrating last blocks in recent memory that I haven’t yet repressed. Seriously – it. was. terrible. The eager students were frustrated with their peers; I, too, was frustrated with said peers; the lesson was completely derailed by nonstop, off-topic comments, questions, interruptions, and beyond sub-optimal conditions for any kind of valuable language input. I left feeling tired, annoyed, frustrated, and generally negative. On my way to teach my methods night class, I flipped on the radio to the exact moment where the downbeat drops in the opening seconds; it had just come on. I had been thinking about what my next steps where, logistically since now that class was behind as well as behaviorally since a handful of students had controlled the fate of the group when suddenly the lyric it, “Stop. Collaborate and listen!” and it dawned on me: “That’s exactly what I need […] 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)
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)
“The assistant principal who observed us was impressed with how you all followed the lesson and participated!” I told my Spanish 3 class. “Did you know he was coming?” asked one student, “because it didn’t feel any different.” That was one of a few epiphanies I had about my teaching methods, as well as this whole path to proficiency. If students can participate in multiple rounds of discussions in partners and small groups, write about what they talked about, then relay that to another partner–all without scripting–then they are really working hard at maintaining a conversation, and they often they tell me they didn’t have enough time to really develop their conversation. After four minutes of speaking in Spanish, these students are telling me–sometimes lamenting–that they didn’t have enough time. I was floored the first time I heard my students say that! Back to my observed class. We have been working with the theme of current events, and two particular structures I wanted to work with were the conditional tense (what might or would happen) and the future tense (what will happen). These conjugations are fairly simple in Spanish, and the students found a welcome relief at not necessarily having to change the whole ending of […] 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)
University School of Milwaukee World Language Teachers Share Their Notes From Visit to the Singapore American School This past May 2017, my colleagues, Alison Dupee, LS French teacher; Neelie Barthenheier, a MS French teacher and LS and MS World Language Chair; and I returned on fire with inspiration to grow as 21st-century world language educators. We had heard about the Singapore American School’s exemplary world language program from our consultant, Greg Duncan. He described it as one of the best elementary school language programs in the world. When I attended a 2016 ACTFL session last fall conducted by SAS’ Upper School WL Chair, Jean Rueckert, and the MS principal, Lauren Merhbach, I was struck by the similarity of their program and ours. The difference was that they had been working with Greg several years longer than we had, and they had already overcome some of the hurdles we were facing. They had renamed their classes according to proficiency levels, developed an efficient three-year rotating cross-divisional culture plan by language, and most impressively shared video footage showcasing the intermediate skill development of an elementary Chinese and Spanish student. How were they developing such communicative facility so early in their students’ language […] 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)
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)
“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)
I love what I do. I love Spanish, and teaching, and I love watching students “get it”. I also love presenting, and how I have a platform to share my journey with other teachers, but y’all, teacher burnout is a real thing. Last year was a crazy year for me, and after my SCOLT presentation, I came back and pretty much hid in a hole and tried my best to make it to June. It was just a slow-rolling meltdown to the end of the school year, with a whole summer of school curriculum writing and STARTALK curriculum & program facilitation ahead of me. It was the first summer I’d put my kids in summer camp instead of being home with them all summer, and that combined with everything else had me really questioning my choices and feeling like I had nothing to share. Then, the coolest thing happened… I started learning Chinese! (No, really, I did!) I’m kind of obsessed with it right now, as anyone who knows me will tell you. In all seriousness, I can tell you that the process of rediscovering my love of language learning snapped me out of my funk, and it has led […] 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)
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)
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)
“Is this for a grade?” “Are we turning this in?” “I was gone, did we do anything important yesterday?” Sigh. These student utterances are a tale as old as time for teachers. And, while they may be frustrating, they’re also indicative of other things happening (or missing) in the classroom culture and/or discourse. Expressing the aforementioned frustration only serves to punish the behavior we do actually want to see: students checking in about their grades and progress. Unfortunately, that intention gets lost in student to teacher translation. What we as classroom teachers hear is more along the lines of, “This only matters if it’s for a grade,” which may or may not be true for particular students (and that is OK). I keep myself from being annoyed by that when I honestly reflect on how I have inquired if attendance will be taken should I need to miss a meeting or when I wonder, “I have to slip out early for an appointment, I wonder if anyone will notice? Is that OK?” Knowing that teachers and students both value their time, in different ways, how, then, can we as language teachers keep our intentions transparent to communicate that what we […] 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)
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)
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)
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)
#ACTFL16 was, again, an exciting, worthwhile experience for me. I find it incredibly energizing to be in setting after setting with like-minded language educators, be it a session, a meal, or a champagne toast, with dear friends or new acquaintances. It is important to sustain the energy that a convention activates and to reflect on what you would change if you left feeling like you missed something (confession: been there!). As our careers transition and evolve, so does how we consider professional development – we begin to need it in different quantities and qualities, and this really resonated with me this year at ACTFL. Professional development happens in waves, and like any good tide, the timing is purposeful and exact, and we must be expecting it. If not, we’ll either drown unexpectedly or obsess over the lack thereof. We must realize that developing in our profession does not mean that the figurative water is always at the same level – it adjusts and therefore we must adjust according to what we need to receive. Don’t drown: If you left with a lot of ideas and new considerations, that is wonderful! Give them a few days, especially over break, to float […] 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)
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)
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 […]
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)
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)
I was so glad I was able to attend ACTFL this year in Boston! Though it was my first time attending an ACTFL convention, it really felt like a class reunion more than attending a convention because there were so many friends and colleagues I got to catch up with that I had seen at other events around the country in the previous year! The past 18 months have been a time of incredible personal and professional growth for me, and I have been able to meet some really tremendous people who have pushed me in my world language teaching. Whether it was through participating through #langchat on Twitter or the Leadership Initiative in Language Learning in the summer of 2015 or the TELL Collabs in Austin, Texas and Nashville, Tennessee, I have had some extremely validating and challenging conversations with astounding professionals and leaders in our field who believe that students can grow and become proficient communicators of another language. These are leaders who are making impactful changes in their schools and districts day after day. And that’s exactly what the theme of this year’s convention was: ImpACTFL. We, as language teachers, make an impact on our students to reach beyond the […] 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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
Seriously. While I love the winter holidays, I will confess that Back to School is really my favorite time of the year. I love the stores full of school supplies—row upon row of pens in varying colors and sizes, bins of notebooks and planners waiting to be filled and paperclips, post-It notes, pushpins, markers, construction paper and glitter reeling me in with the promise of creative expression. I love the fresh, clean classroom, and the smell of newly waxed floors. I get excited spending my BEP money and ordering materials for the new, engaging lessons that I am anxious to try after a summer spent collaborating at professional conferences. But what really melts my butter is the idea that we get a fresh start. Second chances. Every season has a gift. Kings bring cake, bunnies leave candy and elves fill stockings. Back to School energizes teachers and students alike with the renewed, rejuvenated feeling that anything is possible. On the first day of school we stand at the door and welcome our students into the magical world of language acquisition, ready to lead them down the path to proficiency, and we begin that very first moment to tap into the […] Share this:Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)