Coffee Break Espanol!

http://radiolingua.com/shows/spanish/coffee-break-spanish/


I love this series from Radio Lingua Network. Marc and Cara are great hosts of Coffee Break Spanish. My students really enjoy listening too because they hear "real" Spanish with Spanish (from Spain accents). They also think it is funny to hear the hosts speak English because they are from Scotland. Coffee Break is great because it is free to download on i-tunes and it reinforces the skills and grammar that I am teaching them. I do use the podcasts in class sometimes if we have time. Usually though I just tell students the episode number and they can (and do) download it themselves. When parents ask me for additional tools to help kids at home I also recommend this because it is free--unlike Rosetta Stone or other tools. And this isn't a package; you can download one or all the episodes depending on what your needs are.

Coffee Break has several languages available if you're interested.

Speaking Tests

Part of teaching a foreign language is teaching students to speak it--obviously. The difficulty for me comes when assessing students' speaking skills. There are several reasons why it is difficult but the 2 most prominent are: 1.) kids are nervous and 2.) it isn't authentic. Due to the extreme anxiety the kids feel about speaking Spanish even to just me is incredible. So typically we (the teachers) give them a list of prompts, they write/memorize their answers and then draw numbers for what prompts they answer. That leads to difficulty #2: that isn't an authentic conversation or utterance. So what to do?

Note: this entry doesn't take into account what to do with the other 30+ students who aren't currently being assessed....that's another entry all together.

The purpose of this blog or the passion driving it is a method of reflection and growth tracking. While implementing different things in the classroom there is bound to be success and failure; moments of "hooray we did great things today" and "whoa that could have been better." For me this blog will not only serve as a place to share different things I am trying to do in my classroom but also a place for reflection over the highs and lows of the day. A collection of articles and teacher stories.

Today I needed collegial coaching. It is something we talked about and even practiced in our community but I hadn't really thought much about it until today when I knew I was in a situation that I couldn't handle by myself. Usually I am not a person who asks for a lot of help. It is a personality thing...oldest child "do it yourself" type. But that wasn't going to work today. I needed to swallow my pride and admit that this is a growth area for me where I needed help. Thankfully my principal recognized that this situation did call for some coaching and he met with me for a long time so that I felt comfortable with what I was going to say and how I was going to say it. Then when it was resolved he came back to check in and see if I was ok. To me it just showed that he is invested in making sure that I am comfortable doing all aspects of my job to the best of my ability.

Article on Peer Coaching

Bienvenidos!

Bienvenidos!

Bienvenidos! Welcome to the blog of a middle school Spanish teacher. Currently I teach levels 1a, 1b, 2 and World Langauges (Spanish, French and German). This will be a collection of stories, articles and things to share.