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What's Working for My Students
It's been a while since I have posted. Wow, has the beginning of the year been crazy! Busy, busy, busy! I know my fellow teachers have felt it too. It seems there is always a stretch of time after...
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The Smell of Apples: A Christmas Memory
Yesterday, my husband ran to the grocery store while I worked on setting up house after a move. When he got home, he unloaded the goodies and I immediately grabbed a beautiful Red Delicious apple from...
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Synthesizing a Research Portfolio and Performance Assessments
It's time for my Spanish 2 travel unit, but I wanted to do something new. I was recently inspired by Megan Johnston and Kara Parker's Real World Homework idea and tried it out. (Their blog The Creative...
View ArticleWinging It or Sheer Genius?
Today I had half a lesson planned. I knew what I wanted to accomplish, but not a clear direction in getting it done. I think the time change and return from spring break had gotten the best of me this...
View ArticleUnexpected Benefits of Using Authentic Resources
This school year I have been trying much harder than I ever have to use authentic resources as often as I can. It was hard initially because I felt like I was always in search of that elusive, perfect...
View ArticleThe Task is the Thing
I can identify the greatest epiphany I've had in my entire career; language tasks are the most important element of all in teaching or learning a language. Think about it. The tasks we perform with...
View ArticleWhy Textbooks and Ancillaries Just Aren't Cutting It
I don't know of a single teacher who doesn't drool every time book adoption time comes around again and the smorgasbord of workbooks, readers and other ancillaries dazzle us into casting a vote for one...
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Man of Fire Sparks a Student's Interest
Tonight my students are finalizing travel portfolios from a virtual trip to a Spanish-speaking city I assigned them. As part of their "journey" I took them to the computer lab to use Google Maps and...
View ArticleIdeas for Manipulatives, Language Prompts and More
In this week's #langchat, we discussed using manipulatives in our language instruction and the ideas and resources were flying faster than we could keep up with. Here are some ideas that I mentioned...
View ArticleReflections on SWCOLT 2012 - Day 1 - Uvas, Duck Sauce, Bacon and more!
Whew! What a day! What an experience! Amazingly enough, it has only been the first day of the Southwest Conference on Language Teaching here in Arizona. I am so loving this experience and I feel...
View ArticleTeaching Circumlocution
DISCLAIMER: This is a pretty long post, but a good one. At least it has been good for me and my teaching. Forgive me for its length. I would buy you a cup of coffee to have while you read it, but you...
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Teaching Spiraling
Every year I've been a teacher has had its own theme. Year one the theme was survival, much like every first year teacher. Year two was, "Students are people," and I had to remember not to get too...
View ArticleA Language Lesson Inspired by Justin Bieber, Go Figure!
Let me start by saying, NO, I do not have Bieber Fever...However, I am resourceful. I read a tweet this week that I am sorry to say I did not favorite. It said something about how teachers should...
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Infographic Inspiration!
Hello friends!Today I am catching up after a month of taking care of myself and my family. You see, my daughter just graduated from high school and that brought in family, etc. So I have been a busy...
View ArticleChange is Good, but Challenging!
Wow! It's been a long time since I posted, and I have missed the reflection that I get out of writing these posts. If you don't blog or journal about your instructional experiences, I highly recommend...
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Acquiring Vocabulary Through Vocabulary - My Little Trick
This week I started a new lesson on places in the city and what we do there. I teach level 2 students whose backgrounds are sketchy due to a number of reasons and have met a lot of resistance when...
View ArticleAn Instructional Victory in the War with the Ill-Prepared
This is an email I just sent my administrators, department head and team leader because I am so happy about the progress my students have made this year. I am so happy I wanted to share with anyone...
View ArticleStriking Gold - Finding a Gem of a Video
If you know anything about me, you know I am constantly on the look out for amazing resources to use in the classroom to create the most authentic learning experiences possible for my students. I think...
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Conversation Circle - Getting Students to Own Their Language Production
One of my challenges this year has been to get my student to speak Spanish for their own good rather than a requirement I place upon them. Also, if you are like me you have noticed how easy it is to...
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Handy Handouts for Elaboration in Spanish
FRACTIONS Transition and Flavoring WordsToday I am sharing with you the products of two little projects have been working on to give my students some resources to help them elaborate when they speak or...
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Pinterest Inspiration - An Idea for Raising Rigor in Vocabulary Instruction
One of the things I am the most passionate about when teaching language to my students is that I want them to start to take risks recombining the language they are learning into new ways so they can...
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The Race for Authentic Resources - Pinterest Professional Development
Tonight I am blogging to you from beautiful Henderson, Nevada where the anticipation is building up to SWCOLT13! The buzz seems to say that there will be more tweeps here than last year and I feel like...
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Great Spanish Audio Resources
Hey friends,This is just a quick post on Spanish audio resources that are great for the classroom, but can't be pinned on Pinterest because they lack and image for Pinterest to grab. So, I am posting...
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My Spanish Story - Idea for a Self-Assessment Portfolio
I am sitting here grading some of my students' writing assessments and I am thinking a lot about how this year in Spanish 1 has gone and what I want to do differently next year. Student engagement is...
View ArticleGetting Streamlined & Going Home
Hello friends, colleagues and followers,It's been a little while since I have done any posting online. A little over a year ago I moved from the Houston area to a new city, changed school districts,...
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