The classroom library is an integral part of any world language classroom. Telling stories is so dramatic and compelling that reading can be treated as the ugly cousin of language teaching, but it shouldn't. When done right, reading can invigorate your program and save your sanity. And doing reading [...]
I organize many of the books in my classroom library in discarded library magazine boxes. There are boxes on all sorts of topics and genres, but my favorite is the Butterfly box, labeled "Mariposas" in Spanish. Monarch butterflies captured my imagination years ago when I was driving across the [...]
Teachers are always saying that their students just do not like to read. I realize that this may be true, but I also know that when students say that they are just mimicking their peers and elders, and they may not really feel that way--they do not know enough [...]
El secreto de hablar con las chicas Here is a story we started this week in Spanish 2 about a boy who woos the girls by always responding with a simple "I understand". I offered it as a service to the guys in my class. It went viral in [...]
Over the last three weeks students in my Spanish I classes have been reading self-selected novellas a couple of days a week in class. They chose the books themselves and self-differentiated based on their reading ability and interests. Even though students self-select reading material in my class all of [...]
A new story for level I is up on the Free Stuff page. Get a pdf of it here. This is a fun little story that grew out of practicing the words "opens" and "shuts" with novel commands. the document includes tips to help teachers learn how to grow a [...]