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Quien fue… series
One of my favorite books that I’ve added to my classroom library this year has actually been an authentic novel that is probably at the 3rd-5th grade reading level for native speakers, but has been a...
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Reclaiming Cinco
It’s that time again. #ReclaimCinco #MasQueSombreros #MoreThanSombreros SpanishPlans.org You may think that celebrating cinco de mayo in your Spanish class is a fun reward for students at the end of...
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Sprucing up a Story with Sound Effects
We all know that visuals are a great aide to comprehension. But there is another sensory that we can be targeting to add not only comprehension but also fun and humor to class stories. I’m talking...
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End of Year Feedback
Any good teacher is always looking ways to be a better teacher. So at the end of the school year as I reflect upon the last 9 months and look ahead for planning for the new year, I go to the best...
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Summer PD reading
Many of you are either already out for summer or are approaching summer. But we all know that teachers are busy during the summer with summer school, planning for next year, taking classes or attending...
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Pre Amnesia Story
During Wooly Week 2017 Sr. Wooly released one of my now-favorite videos, Amnesia. In the video, a man mysteriously wakes up in the middle of the street and can’t remember who he is. The song is a great...
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How to print a glossary for a book
In the past, we showed you how to take an entire text and put ALL of the words into a glossary. This is especiallu useful when you’ve written a class story and want to print a small booklet for your...
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World Language SLO with Timed Writing
Many states now require teachers to show evidence of student growth as part of their teacher evaluation. One such example is the Student Learning Objective (SLO). This collection of data can be...
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SLO and Vocabulary
SLO 2: Vocabulary Growth See our preview post about using Timed Writing to track student growth. Our second SLO was to take a measure vocabulary growth. We put together a list of 180 words, mostly from...
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Vocabulary in Context
As we looked at the last data collection of student vocabulary, we were a bit suprised that some words had lower correct responses than we expected. So we decided to do a little educational research...
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Papel Picado Bulletin Board
Most teachers will use paper from the butcher paper roll to use as a background for their to their room, we have some classy alternatives in mind:bulletin boards. I don’t blame them: it’s available and...
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4 million
During last week’s first days of school, our blog passed the 4 million total views mark. Wow, what an honor to know that thousands of Spanish teachers around the world have visited our blog. We are...
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Timed Writing Prompts
If you purchased our World Language SLO product earlier this summer, make sure you have redownloaded the updated product, as we added a second picture prompt in late August. The characters in the first...
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Chapter Recaps with Images
This year I hit the gates running with a class read of the Fluency Matters novel “Brandon Brown Quiere un Perro”, a super easy and fun reader. I usually like to act the chapter out before having the...
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Story with 5 Phrases
I was going through some old blog posts the other day and happened upon one that reminded me of an activity that I learned from Carol Gaab at the first annual Comprehensible Midwest. I ended up using...
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Top 10 Novels for Spanish 1
One of my favorite things in my Spanish 1 class is implementing Free Voluntary Reading time (FVR) aka SSR. It is probably the most important thing we do in class. If you need convincing of that, then...
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An output activity
Over the past two weeks, we have done several stories: including Senor Wooly’s La Invitación, La Confesión de Víctor, a movietalk for El Gato con Café, a Movietalk and Story for Bomba’s Estereo Soy Yo...
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Proficiency Mindset Presentation
This past month, at the Illinois Council for the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ICTFL) annual fall conference, I gave my first presentation in a session titled “Proficiency Mindset”. To view the...
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I was recently doing a write/pass/draw activity where I wanted to use a timer to give the class a limit. I usually just use google timer or the regular classroom timer where it counts down on a clock....
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FVR Reading Log
One new thing that I implemented this year with FVR was a reading log. On one side of the sheet of paper I have all the books listed and on the other side is a chart that students can use to keep track...
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