Category Archives: Language Learning
Tuesday Teaching: No More Novels?
Earlier this month, The Washington Post published an article titled “Common core sparks war over words,” in which it worries that the adoption of the Common Core State Standards in English (by 46 states & DC, to date) will lead … Continue reading
Posted in Language Learning, Media, Teaching
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Tuesday Teaching: Nurture Shock
This week I head back into teacher training and setting up my classroom. Next week, the kids are back and the school year starts up again. I’m not sure how much I will manage to do differently, but one book … Continue reading
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Monday Media: High-Low Fiction
The problem: A terrifying percent of high-schoolers can’t read. (77% of 8th graders read below grade level in CA.) The solution? Write books for teens at a 3rd-grade level. The LA Times reported that Saddleback Educational Publishing is launching a … Continue reading
Posted in Language Learning, Media, Teaching, Writing
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Tuesday Teaching: Editing Essays
As I grade the final essays for my Spanish 2 class this evening, I am remembering how awful assigning peer-edited essays used to be. It seemed I had only two options: Have students “peer edit” each other’s essays and get … Continue reading
Posted in Language Learning, Teaching
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Tuesday Teaching: Cooking Commands
This project idea was given to me by Renee Dacey, Spanish teacher extraordinaire at Burlington High School. I just used the BHS 1-to-1 iPads and a class YouTube channel to spice it up a little. LESSON: Given a unit in … Continue reading
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Tuesday Teaching: Musical Subjunctive
My Spanish 3 class is deep in the throes of learning the subjunctive, that wonderful tense in Spanish that you use whenever the resulting action may or may not occur. It is not the easiest tense in the world for … Continue reading
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Tuesday Teaching: BBC Mi Vida Loca
To anyone out there with a desire to learn Spanish while living through a Carmen Sandiego-esque computer adventure (and really, who doesn’t want to do that?), I highly recommend the BBC’s fantastic interactive language learning mystery: Mi Vida Loca! Even my high-schoolers … Continue reading
Posted in Language Learning, Media, Teaching
