Awesome way to get students writing and speaking in the target language!
Changing Education Paradigms
Stations + Accountability
Where’s Matt?
Excellente!
Language As The First Technology
Technology is the means by which we accomplish something deliberately with the aid of something from our surrounding environment or something we create to carry this task out. This extends beyond the human family – when an otter uses a rock to break open a mollusk, or when a bird constructs a nest, they are making use of technology.
In 2013, it is easy to think of “technology” only in the context of the increasingly multi-pupose smart devices that are becoming more ubiquitous in society, as well as in our schools. It is important to remember that technology takes many forms. In fact, there is a strong argument to be made that language teachers work with one of the most ancient human technologies we have: communicating our thoughts, feelings, needs, and dreams to other people via spoken and written expression.
Language can be extremely simple and unfettered;
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Authentic Resources + Embedded Reading
Teaching accents to heritage speakers
fantástico!
Part of me DOES NOT CARE about accents. Really, I feel like I’ve got many bigger, more important battles to fight than teaching the rules of accentuation… never mind doing it with traditional grammar terms. My principal goal for my heritage speakers is to develop their love of reading, period. During back to school night I recite Krashen and encourage parents to buy anything that their kids actually want to read. With compelling reading students will correct themselves much more efficiently than I could ever do with explicit instruction.
Having said that, I also need my students to buy into my class. Interestingly enough, my heritage language learners come to class in the first month anxious to “fix” their Spanish. They understand the case for reading, but nothing gets their attention like an old-fashioned lesson on the rules that govern the use of accents. Seriously! If you are a non-heritage…
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I’ve Got a New Way to Write!
love these ideas!
Free Writing is common component in TPRS®/CI classrooms. Many teachers do weekly, timed free writes; others are less consistent, but you will be hard pressed to find a trained TPRS®/CI teacher that doesn’t use them at all.
As with anything, though, we like to keep our students guessing, don’t we?! More than that–we need to keep them guessing. If you’ve ever attended a Carol Gaab reading strategies workshop or webinar, you’ve learned about the importance of variety when it comes to reading.
But what about writing? How often do we ‘shake things up’ when it comes to writing?? If you’re like me–not that often. And why not? If variety is so important in all other areas of instruction, it follows that it would be just as important when it comes to writing.
So, with the help of Pinterest, I have compiled a document with nine different ways that you can…
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