Formative Assessments and Democracy in the Classroom
Last semester, I grappled with fostering an increase in my students' interpersonal communication skills, creating new routines, activities, and assessments. As my classroom is immersive, it's a space where I speak French 90% of the time, so it often involves a lot of...
read moreSpeaking Still Matters!
Last semester I posed the following question related to a problem of practice (PoP) I faced as a teacher: How might we create routines and tasks in the Spanish classroom so that students engage in authentic conversations with each other? With the help of my...
read moreLetting Students Lead
One of my struggles as a French teacher is to foster independence in my students while providing them with authentic and comprehensible input. Finding a balance between providing good models of language and allowing them opportunities to practice speaking freely in...
read more¡Más y más español!
In my first blog post, I alluded to how difficult it was to get students to speak Spanish in class. I described my struggle with wanting students to speak perfectly and their struggle with actually using the target language in class. After thinking a lot about this...
read moreWhy We Speak French in French Class
The first time I travelled to France happened to be the year I spent studying abroad. I hadn't gone every summer with family or even had the opportunity to spend a week or two abroad with classmates in high school, so it was an entirely surprising experience. Like...
read more¡En español!: Getting Students to Talk to One Another in Spanish
I have taught high school Spanish for almost thirteen years, and the phrase I most frequently proclaim is "¡En español!" If I had a dollar for every time I uttered these words, my early retirement would most certainly be secured. In fact, here is an...
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