This summer I am privileged to be participating in a discussion ofThe Keys to Planning for Learning: Effective Curriculum, Unit, and Lesson Designby Donna Clementi and Laura Terrill. While some of the discussion takes place in an on-air Google Hangout, additional conversations occur on Twitter using the #langbook hashtag. If you haven’t yet read this […]
As regular readers may have noticed, I ended up taking a hiatus from blogging this spring. It all started when I welcomed an awesome student teacher to my classroom who was so well-skilled in proficiency-based instructional methods that I didn’t need to create any new lessons for several weeks. Then I decided to relocate closer […]
I have found that one of the best ways to keep my French 4/5 students engaged at the end of the year is by designing my units around films. The opportunity to watch movies in class is rewarding to the students, who are now able to comprehend much of what they hear in an authentic […]
Over the past few days I’ve been honored to be part of a series of exciting Twitter conversations about what it means to be a proficiency-based language teacher. The conversation all started with this thought-provoking post. Like many of the others who’ve contributed to this conversation, I don’t feel that my own methodologies fit neatly […]
Based on recent comments to this blog, it seems that it’s the time of year that many of us are teaching Le Petit Prince. While I shared my communicative materials for teaching in this post, I did not include the performance-based assessments that I use at that time. As some of you have mentioned, I […]
Tomorrow my French 3 students will start their unit on the environment. Although I developed a unit on this topic last year (click here for post), I’ve made some significant changes in order to provide more opportunities for interpersonal communication. Here’s a short explanation of what I’ve planned for this year: (Click here for the […]
Over the past couple of weeks a few of my virtual colleagues have requested suggestions for designing a unit on family. Although this is a theme that I think almost all of us address in our level 1 classes, I haven’t yet gotten around to sharing my materials for this unit, mostly because I’m not […]
One of the most challenging aspects of my growth in standards-based teaching has been to design lessons that allow my students to acquire the grammatical structures they will need to increase their proficiency. While I have found that most of my students will internalize many structures, such as the use of various articles, many verb […]
As I’ve evolved in my teaching practice, I’ve made significant changes to how I assess oral communication. Here are a few suggestions that have helped me improve my assessment of my Novice students’ interpersonal communication, resulting in increased proficiency among these early language learners. Suggestion #1: Just do it! It seems that many of my […]
I’m taking just a few minutes for a quick share tonight. In an earlier post, I shared some activities that I developed to integrate culture in all of the communicative modes with my Novice Mid students. In this evening;s post I’m including a few lessons I created to do the same with my Intermediate […]