In my last few posts, I mentioned the two biggest take-aways from my 43-year tenure of teaching:

1.) Make your classroom a can-do classroom, inviting every student to make progress toward building skills;

2.) Building relationships with your students is one of the most important secrets of successful teaching;

3.) Keep your classes student-centered, building community among your students.

In the next few posts, I am going to delve into what it means to have an ACTFL-aligned curriculum both in terms of proficiency standards and World-Readiness Standards. 

Oral Proficiency

Making oral proficiency a priority in my classroom was a game-changer for my students and me. I came from a very traditional background of grammar-based teaching with high expectations for my students. I had my masters in language and literature and truly had much knowledge to impart to my students.

The best and brightest thrived in my classroom. They learned their verb tenses and all the rules for the subjunctive. I was always proud of how I pushed them to learn and they succeeded. The only problem was that they weren’t really learning to speak the language and, except for the linguistically talented and extra studious, many of them did not feel successful at learning the language system in all its intricacies.

Then, another colleague and I had the opportunity to head up our K-12 language department. We were excited to explore the path to oral proficiency with our students. We sponsored a MOPI workshop on our campus and consulted with some of the best in our field, Helena Curtain and Greg Duncan.

When the consultants did a walk-through of our K-12 program, they saw very little of the kind of teaching that promotes oral proficiency. Our classrooms were too teacher-centered and grammar-focused. Our lesson plans were lacking in interactive activities with ample opportunities for our students to practice speaking. During the MOPI workshop on our campus, we learned in-depth the meaning of the terms novice, intermediate, and advanced with the gradations of low, mid, high. We observed live interviews and learned how to evaluate language proficiency. Most all of us went on to get our ACTFL MOPI certification that truly helped put us all on the same page. Several of us even traveled on a grant to Singapore to see a world-class K-12 oral proficiency-driven language department.

Implementation

Once all in our department members decided to prioritize oral proficiency in our classrooms we were able to write a mission statement and decide on best practice guidelines for all K-12 teachers in our program. It was such a relief to begin to eliminate all that interdepartmental competition and dispute about who was a “good” teacher. We threw out our grammar-driven textbooks and all began to work towards a skill-based curriculum, designing our own units based on mutually chosen themes, carefully scaffolded vocabulary, and chunks of communicative language.

After a few years of this messy process, we finally adopted a text published by Wayside Publishing Company in both Spanish and French, Entreculturas/Entrecultures. It is not perfect! What we have loved about it is that it is AP and IB themed; the focus of the book is on oral proficiency with many opportunities for the students to listen and speak, and there is ample comprehensible input with a variety of readings that have intercultural themes, and much more.

There is no magical textbook that will do the teaching for us! The truth is that we have to hone our teaching skills, making sure that we provide interactive activities every day that invite students to practice their language skills. We need to give them ample opportunities to record themselves doing mini-dialogues and conversations. We need to reduce the size of vocabulary lists and the expectations for rote memorization, taking the emphasis off of grammar and grades and putting the emphasis on real-world communication skills!

This shift can be magical! After all, how many adults do you know that say they studied a world language for years and can’t say a word? Let’s change that! 

While you wait for next week’s teacher’s tool tip, check out our other blogs on language, and be sure to follow FL4K on social media through the links at the very bottom of this page so you don’t miss the next Tool Tip and other language fun!

Missed my past Tool Tips? You can read about the Can-Do classroom, the importance of building relationships with your students, and the Student-Centered Classroom on FL4K.com right now!

In his book, “Tribe,” Sebastian Junger uses the tenets of self-determination theory to explain that “we have a strong instinct to belong to small groups defined by clear purpose and understanding–”tribes.”

This tribal connection has been largely lost in modern society, but regaining it may be the key to our psychological survival.” He says that we all want to “be, belong, and become.” I think our classrooms should be an opportunity to prioritize this tenet. Make your classroom a place where students can “be” themselves, “belong” to a community of learners, and “become” successful at progressing in language skill development.

In my last blog, I made reference to the importance of building community in the language classroom. Today, I am going to suggest that a student-centered classroom is the way to create an inclusive, can-do atmosphere that gives our students a sense of belonging – ultimately leading them to become confident and successful language learners.  

The Student-Centered Classroom

First, we can begin to understand the four stages of group development and make them a priority in planning our student-centered class activities.

This week I will touch on “Forming,” the first stage, when a group comes together at the beginning of the year or at the beginning of a class. It is the time when everyone is sizing each other up to see who is going to stand out as a leader, a follower, a cooperator, etc. In the student-centered language classroom, there are many ways for students to get to know each other in non-threatening ways.

Katrina Griffin, language consultant and 2016 ACTFL Teacher of the Year, taught our department an activity called “This or That” that helps students to create a connection with other class members who like the same thing. Start by making a slideshow with lots of opposites like “chocolate or vanilla, beach or mountains, Instagram or Snapchat, Packers or Bears” and have the kids go to opposite sides of the classroom depending on which they prefer.

Once the students who like the same thing have found each other on one side of the classroom, have each one say a few more words within their new group about their choice (Novice) or explain “why” they have chosen something (Intermediate). Kids can be encouraged to use simple chunks of language or to incorporate connector words like “also” and “but,” with this activity, depending on the proficiency level of the class.

Make your classroom engaging for the Gen Z student.

According to published educational articles, these students need real-world communication skills, hands-on activities, and to have you relate to their world. In my future blog posts I will talk about the subsequent stages of group development, “storming, norming, and performing,” with ideas for how to be attuned to them as you plan activities to create a student-centered classroom. So be sure to keep an eye out for those!

According to the TELL (Teacher Effectiveness in Language Learning) project, the following learning activities guidelines can help a language teacher to consider including a variety of learning activities in the student-centered classroom 

The teacher-centered classroom is no longer a very effective model for teaching languages.

In the Gen Z language classroom, students need small chunks of new material followed by ample interactive practice. Ideally, this would include simulated dialogues with playback features, hands-on activities, and collaborative games both in-person and online, as well.

There is no question that it takes a lot of creativity to foster a student-centered classroom; however, the positive results are undeniable.  Actively engaging your students helps them to build the necessary confidence that leads to greater proficiency in the language classroom!

While you wait for next week’s follow-up blog post, check out our other blogs on language, and be sure to follow FL4K on social media through the links at the very bottom of this page so you don’t miss the next Tool Tip and other language fun!

Missed my past Tool Tips? You can read about the Can-Do classroom and the importance of building relationships with your students on FL4K.com right now!

Building relationships with your students is one of the most important secrets of successful teaching! When you know your students and care about them, they will forgive a multitude of teaching blunders. This is especially important when you are just starting your career!

In all honesty, it took me 43 years to hone my skills to the point where I actually thought I was doing a pretty decent job teaching Spanish!

While you are perfecting HOW to teach, get to know your students and what makes them unique! Make your classroom an opportunity to interact individually and take a personal interest in every child! What are their lives like outside the classroom? What sports, extracurriculars, or leisure activities interest them?

Make an inventory sheet for them to fill out in ENGLISH so that you can begin to find ways to relate to them! Stand at the door when they come in and at the door when they go out! Look them in the eye and take an interest in them personally on a daily basis. No matter what happens in the classroom, good, bad, embarrassing, etc. they will begin to understand that you care about them and this will help them to build confidence and begin taking risks in the world language classroom.

It is intimidating for many to venture to speak in a new language in front of their peers. You have to be the one to encourage and create the right atmosphere for this exciting new adventure.

Many students dislike the world language classroom because it feels threatening on so many levels! What if I have the wrong answer, have a terrible accent, have no clue what the teacher is saying to me?

In my next blog, we will explore the importance of building a safe and inclusive community in the world language classroom. You truly have such an opportunity to create a positive and productive atmosphere for language learning. The first step is building a relationship with each child no matter how amazing you are at teaching your subject! 

In the meantime, check out our other blogs on language, and be sure to follow FL4K on social media through the links at the very bottom of this page so you don’t miss the next Tool Tip and other language fun!

Missed my first Tool Tip? You can read about the Can-Do classroom here right now!

Are you looking for a way to have all your language students feel confident and find success in the classroom? 

In my experience, one of the absolute miracle approaches to teaching a language is to engender a can-do attitude in every student! Once I adopted this way of thinking in my classroom and actually began to teach toward standards, I could not believe the results!

Every student learns differently

Every student, no matter what the learning challenges were, was engaged and working toward a goal that was not necessarily the same as the student sitting next to him! Once I began comparing students to the ACTFL standards and not their gifted and talented classmates, miracles began to happen in my classroom. Whether students lacked confidence in speaking and felt extremely defeated by language learning when they came to my classroom, they left feeling proud of the skills that they had developed. The truth is, no matter how weak or challenged a student feels upon entering our classroom, we have an opportunity to help them develop real-world communication skills at their own pace that will build their confidence and truly their whole attitude about language learning.

Everyone CAN learn to speak another language, just not the traditional way of grammar and massive vocabulary lists! That can be a boring approach that does not engage students in practical learning!

How to find success in the classroom

Of course, this is not an approach that I can teach in one blog post. So stay tuned for Tuesday’s Teaching Tool Tips, where I will share what I have learned about teaching for proficiency and how I finally, after decades of teaching, saw the results in my students that I had always dreamed of: Confident students with real-world communication skills!

Not only will you see results with teaching for proficiency, but it will also change your whole teaching experience! Don’t you want to have every day be a positive experience for you and your students?

Next time, I will begin to share my story about becoming a standards-based teacher with some ideas about how you can get started. Imagine! You can start learning now what I learned in the last decade of my 43 years of teaching! Throughout that extensive teaching career, I always loved the beginning of the year to wipe the slate clean and start over, thinking, I will get this right! Well, that finally and fortunately happened in my last year! I actually said to myself, I finally got it! That “it” is what you will find in Tuesday’s Tool Tips to help you find success in your classroom.

Next time, I will delve into the educational process of becoming well versed in the ACTFL Standards. It is important to understand what it means to be a standards-based teacher (MOPI workshops) and how to help your students progress on the ACTFL Standards continuum. 

If you’re looking for a language program for your children or students that follows ACTFL standards, be sure to check out FL4K’s new immersive program. You can sign up for early access here! 

In the meantime, check out our other blogs on language, and be sure to follow FL4K on social media so you don’t miss the next Tool Tip and other language fun!