I did a demonstration for teachers this week. The students were from a 7th grade middle school Spanish I class. All of the middle school world language team leaders in the school district observed. The students were in the middle of a unit that focused on: Greetings Classroom expressions [...]
This is an excerpt from my book Hi-Impact Reading Strategies Ping Pong Reading (AKA Volleyball Reading) This is a reading and oral interpreting exercise that you can do every so often as a review. I would not do this every day, maybe not even every week, because so much L1 [...]
Teachers often ask me why I feature verbs so prominently in my training and materials for beginning students. It's because that's where the action is! And using verbs over adjectives can make for compelling storytelling. I try to follow the storytelling advice from the creators of South Park: the [...]
Ojalá que llueva café is a classic—an oldie, but a goodie. There are many ways this song is helpful for Spanish teachers. Here is a complete lesson, an example of how to teach and use music in Spanish class. My Spanish students have always enjoyed this song because it's [...]
One of the shortest but most useful sayings by legendary French teacher Susan Gross, is, “Shelter vocabulary, not grammar.” It is important to teach and use verbs as vocabulary, rather than as drilled formulas. When the sound/meaning pair is different, verbs may need to be presented explicitly—but this is [...]
Regina, a teacher that attended one of my BER seminars last year, is using Special Person interviews in her Spanish 1 and Spanish 3 classes. She has some implementation questions: Hi Regina, These are good questions. For more information, look on the Special Person Interviews section on the Free [...]