There’s a lot to do the first week of class, but what we choose to include in our first lessons really shows our students what we value most. I want students to walk away with an experience with the language and a positive impression of language learning…starting on day one! The purpose of this first-day
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I’m starting to see teachers on social media heading back to school! Where did the summer go?? The syllabus can be one way to set proficiency expectations at the beginning. We have a template for you to download and modify so you can focus on the fun things like decorating the classroom.
Do your students understand your questions? It’s easy for students to get most of what you say but miss the QUESTION word! For example: _________ did you eat? The question could have easily been… when, where, with whom, or why. The question words are important… and they take practice! That’s why we love these simple question
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If we want students using the target language at the start of a new year (especially at the novice level), then we have to have resources to encourage it. I’d ask students “¿Cómo estás?” and most really wanted to answer me in Spanish. Without help though, they’d scramble up the easiest response (bien) OR jump
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Thinking about decorating your classroom or cart? Or using Target Language from day 1? We have something that will do both! It’s a post from the past and we still love it, so we gave it a fresh update for the new year. We hope you ♥love♥ today’s #free #DailyDownload!
…what it feels like to be a novice? Remember how it feels to be surrounded by a new language?
“Latin Grammy Show” (November), “Premio lo nuestro” on Univision (February) or any other TL award show can be the focus of the never-ending music unit.
Art is a pretty common topic in any upper-level language class. I spent a lot time researching and trying to learn art history and artists like Dali, Kahlo, and Picasso before teaching this unit. I thought that was what they “needed” to know for college, AP, or to support their Humanities course. The more I
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That first level 1 unit traditionally includes greetings, names, ages, numbers 0-100, months, dates, alphabet, weather, and “¿Puedo ir al baño?” It took so long to teach all of that! I still want to cover those, but not all at once. Here’s my unit that I used to teach some of those basics in a cultural context.
We had a great time presenting with Erika Shupe and Kris Morehead on a session called “Teaching outside of the box.” We all shared a story and it got me thinking about real audiences and how motivating they can be!