I have just come across Bryan Kandel’s website and he has highlighted a few useful web tools to use in the classroom. One of them is Textivate which is Taskmagic web-based little brother. Ten years ago, when I started teaching Taskmagic was the one software we used in the classroom and language teachers just loved it!
I am huge fan of the Michel Thomas method. The only thing that is bothering me is that it hugely relies on translation. I was trained to use the target language as much as possible in the classroom and my mentor taught me a few tricks to get the students to understand me in the target language like using lots of cognates.
The very kind librarian at my school sent me an email about whether I could send her a list with titles of Spanish books for the library as there is some money to be spent. However, I am not sure what would be the best/most useful for the students to order.
As Kevin Mclaughlin mentionned in his great post Set learning free in 100 words, we as teachers should “try not to overplan, forget the detail and be confident in changing direction as and where learning takes you.” This is exactly what I attempted to do with this project I set up last year with grade 7.
Since this week should be the last teaching week before the awaited holidays, I thought I would share some ideas and links to how Christmas is celebrated by the French.
In Provence, there are many local traditions. This short video explains all the symbols of the Provencal Christmas table and meal with French subtitles:
Some time ago I wrote a post about the Mary Glasgow website and how I used its free Spanish articles and audio versions. Last week I received several French sample magazines and the “Bonjour”
Today I want to share a beautiful song and poem in Spanish about life, love and being thankful. It can be used in class with intermediate to advanced learners to review or reinforce the perfect tense. It could also be used with beginners looking at the vocabulary in the song which is quite simple and then talking about what students are grateful for.