Unpacking Common Ground: Second Language Acquisition Theory Goes to the Classroom by Florencia Henshaw and Maris Hawkins

Like many of you, I have been eagerly awaiting the arrival of my copy of Common Ground: Second Language Acquisition Theory Goes to the Classroom by Florencia Henshaw and Maris Hawkins.  After interacting with these two amazing women on Twitter for the past few years, I couldn’t wait to read this book. I am happy […]

Halloween Hexagons

As I mentioned in my last post, I’ve been having all the fun researching various strategies that we language teachers can use to develop our students’ critical thinking skills for my upcoming ACTFL presentation. One new activity that I discovered via this post, is called Hexagonal Thinking. For this activity, students work in small groups […]

Grading for Proficiency, 2020

Although I have written about my grading policies in the past, my ideas have continued to evolve since these earlier posts.  Prompted by a recent conversation on the French Teachers in the US Facebook page, I thought I would share my most recent policies for grading in a proficiency-based classroom. Step 1: Gradebook My preferred […]

Focus on Function in a Unit about Women’s Rights for Intermediate French Students

As some of you might know, I had the great honor of interviewing Laura Terrill, co-author of The Keys to Planning for Learning (purchase here) as part of a #langbook discussion on Twitter.  (Our interview was featured in this podcast.) As I read the 2nd edition of this crucial text, one new understanding that I […]

Making Learning Visible

Thursday evening on #langchat we had a great discussion about what had worked well for us in 2017.  When I shared that I had begun having my students graph their progress toward proficiency, several people expressed interest. So I thought I’d type up a quick post about what we’ve been doing and what I’ve learned […]