Getting started with "Proficiency" Proficiency-focused, proficiency based, communicative: there are a lot of buzzwords that can sound intimidating even to us seasoned teachers. Honestly, sometimes they’re intimidating to us BECAUSE we are seasoned professionals. We have been down many roads and many different perspectives before, and so it can be hard to jump into something new (again.) I dragged my feet for a few years before fully embracing the proficiency-focused approach, but never looked back once I took the leap. I want to share the baby steps that helped me! I started by changing my ..read more

Student Reflections + Surveys in Spanish Class Start the year off right I always start the year with my editable Back to School Survey. I find that this preps my students to reflect on their goals and learning strategies right from the start! During those first few days of school, we usually do a LOT of talking. I used to give this survey as my first homework assignment of the year, but realized that I didn’t get them all back or answers seemed rushed. (I’ve also stopped giving homework completely but that’s a different story!) Now, I strategically use this survey during the firs ..read more

My sister Patti teaches science, and called me recently to give me this idea of a flexible grouping activity. She was begging me to make this for Spanish students, because she tried it in her science classes and her students LOVED it! Her exact words were “Please trust me, please try this. The kids will LOVE IT.” I dragged my feet a bit, but a few weeks after talking to her this idea was stuck in my head. I designed Hexágonos to practice Hexagon Grouping in Spanish class. Hexagons work well for this activity because they fit well together to create groups of any size.  SETUP (Keep read ..read more

How does it work? Wordle is a daily digital word puzzle game that took the world by storm a little over a year ago, and is now hosted by the New York Times.  Here’s how it works: The NYT chooses a 5 letter word each day, and you have 6 guesses to discover the correct word. You do this by making guesses of COMPLETE words; not letter by letter, like some other word guessing games. If you guess a word that has a correct letter in the correct place, that letter will appear as GREEN in your guess. If you have a correct letter in an incorrect space, it will appear as YELLOW. You then make ..read more

4 Back to School Resources for Spanish Class These resources will help you get to know your students starting on day 1! My goal for the first days of school is always to involve my students as much as possible, rather than just speaking AT them about routines and procedures. I of course cover routines and procedures… but not on the first day. On the first day, we have fun playing one of my back to school versions of Taco Tuesday, learn about culture using Calle 13’s Latinoamérica, and then a mix of the activities below! The activities below help me get to know my students starting on t ..read more

Proficiency Based Grading in Spanish Class Over the past few years I have worked really hard to shift my mindset from traditional teaching and assessing to a more proficiency based approach. I even offered a PD session this past summer through the World Language Teacher Summit on the topic – and this reinvigorated me to dive even deeper this year!   I truly feel that my lesson planning and teaching practices have improved greatly with this shift in approach to teaching the Spanish language. This year, it was time for me to focus on my assessments specifically. No more 4 page q ..read more

We are thrilled to celebrate Spanish Teachers! It’s almost TEACHER APPRECIATION WEEK 2022! ? (lunes 2 mayo – viernes 6 mayo) We know how hard you are working today and every day and we want to give back to our community in celebration of YOU and everything you do to help students learn world languages! We have several gift cards to giveaway to help you choose just the right lessons for your classes from TeachersPayTeachers!                                    &nb ..read more

The future and conditional tense units are some of my favorites in Spanish 3! At this point, my students have been exposed to a *lot* of the present, preterite, and imperfect tenses. They’ve learned how to talk about their past and their childhood. After the preterite, the imperfect tense usually seems a bit easier to use, and now enter: the future and the conditional. I LOVE these tenses, and my students do too! We love setting goals for the future, and we love class discussions of ¿Qué preferirías? ¿Preferirías vivir en una isla sin personas, o sin technología? ¿Por qué? (The questions emb ..read more

Gratitude and Thanksgiving in Spanish class Gratitude is a popular topic in November and December, but it’s applicable and important all year long! The following activities can be used with your students at any point in the year, during a unit on giving thanks OR simply as a morale boost for any level of Spanish class. 1. Culture + Gratitude First, you could absolutely tweak this cultural lesson if you didn’t use it to start the year with your students (or even if you did!)  While this lesson isn’t designed to be specifically about gratitude, the discussions we have about this son ..read more

Upcoming PD for World Language Teachers: World Language Teacher Summit 2021 I am so excited to present at the 2021 World Language Teacher Summit! This is an exciting virtual conference that will be coming to you for FREE from October 18th-22nd! You will have access this week to 32 sessions from 35 World Language experts – how could it get better than that!? I am grateful to have recorded my session on Purposeful Grading prior to the conference, as I am currently home with my three week old son ? and I can’t wait to relax and soak in all of the great info from the sessions this week! I know yo ..read more