Although I am taking a break from my school and “formal” teaching, I have not really quit and I have now started to teach online (via Google hangout or Skype) private lessons to Spanish students who want to improve their English. It is actually very different from teaching a whole class and my students have a good level of English but they are not confident enough.
I haven’t updated my blog for a while now, and as I am taking a break due to my fourth baby coming at the end of September, I wanted to reflect on my last school year. I was teaching Spanish from grade 6 to 12 and I decided to turn to comprehensible input and TPRS since I was never fully satisfied with the traditional way to teach languages.
This is a fantastic idea from one of my emails from the mflresources@yahoogroups.com: “I show the students some clips (2-3 mins each) from YouTube and they play the role of critic – after each clip they get 30 seconds to write their opinion of each clip and then a further 30 seconds to share their opinion with their neighbor.
Here is another story script which follows the last story about little Pedro losing his notebook. This story has lots of repetitions to focus on “lo siento” and “no sé qué hacer“. I am telling those stories using wooden ice cream sticks which the students love.
A few weeks ago, I was asking you for suggestions to order Spanish books for my school library. Over my teaching career, I have found that reading is a key skill, if not the main skill to learn a language. By reading texts and books, language “acquisition”
Last night I posted a video about Spanish table manners from Ben and Marina. Here is another video from Ben and Marina to learn and/or review Spanish fruit and vegetables:
As well as the video, you can get the full list of vocabulary on Ben and Marina’s website.
I posted this picture a few years ago and instantly remembered it when pondering on goal 11 of the 30 goals challenge for educators 2012.
Goal 11 is about impacting our students. As Shelly Terrell mentions in her blog:”