Author: Holly Morse

Reading Time: 4 minutes

I have been studying, learning, speaking, teaching, and tutoring Spanish for 40+ years, forever seeking the secret formula for language learning for my students that have ranged in age from 3 to 80. Many ask me what the best Spanish learning programs are.

Honestly, since I learned through school, study abroad, travel, and many extended immersion experiences, I have never felt like an expert on Spanish learning programs. That being said, I have taught thousands of Spanish students, and I listen to what they tell me about Spanish learning programs outside my class, and I note how they help my students.

There are no magical programs that do the work for you, of course! You have to be dedicated and committed to learning another language and use a multi-faceted approach to get results. Even though there are no perfect Spanish learning programs on the market, I will mention a few that have been popular with my students.

Spanish learning programs for adults

Many of my adults have been learning Spanish with me for 15+ years. Some tell me it is a hobby and they enjoy the pure challenge of it. Others are motivated to communicate as professionals with their clients or patients or are interested in traveling the culturally diverse and spectacular Spanish-speaking world. Or have read the fact that learning a new language grows brain cells and helps to prevent Alzheimer’s.

While I have learned from these dedicated language students that there is no perfect Spanish learning program, I have heard of several that are widely popular and even addictive.

Language student’s favorites

The competitive and conscientious students love Duolingo. I have one brilliant British student who calls it “Duobongo.” Cracks me up every time she says it with her accent! She always tells me that this Spanish learning program has helped her build vocabulary. She loves its discipline in between our weekly classes, where we practice using the language to build oral proficiency.

Another student told me that the best Spanish learning program for her was Behind the Wheel since she could listen to it in her car, and the language was very practical.

Last year I had one of my AP students tell me about a podcast series that she was listening to to improve her listening comprehension called Espanolistos. Another student said to me that she enjoyed listening to News in Slow Spanish in between classes to improve her listening comprehension.

Quite honestly, children have the most facile brains for learning language. Still, traditionally, elementary schools in the United States have not prioritized world language learning programs, missing an excellent opportunity to help students achieve native pronunciation in a second language and create intercultural awareness that fosters global citizenship for a lifetime.

Newsela is a Spanish learning program that creates interesting and relevant articles for students to read in Spanish. You can determine what reading level is best for you with options to read the same article with more or less detail.

All of these students learned that even though many of them had been studying Spanish for years, they had to find a Spanish learning program to supplement 1-3 hours a week in class. I highly recommend sampling the many programs on the market and finding one that enhances your learning and motivates you to practice Spanish every day!

Spanish learning programs for children

I became more convinced than ever about the importance of teaching a second language to children when I was tasked with creating a Spanish learning program for children PK-4th grade in the ’80s. Since I was teaching in Wisconsin, I had the opportunity to learn from the master of language-learning for children, Helena Curtain.

I learned all about how contact hours predicted outcomes and that there were minimum requirements for students to actually start building proficiency in what could be considered a FLES program.

I learned that an hour a week would not be enough to expect development in proficiency and would be considered a FLEX program with the “EX” indicating EXploratory. These Spanish learning programs simply served to create enthusiasm for learning languages in the future.

I have been searching for results for a long time and always come back to the same conclusion; no Spanish learning program will do the work for you! The results come with the opportunity to study and practice consistently in a way that motivates you.

FL4K: Foreign Languages for Kids

Upon my retirement from teaching last year, I had the opportunity to put some of my years of experience and professional development to good use when a former colleague asked me to join her in working to enhance a Spanish learning program for Novice-Intermediate Spanish students, FL4K.

I couldn’t have imagined a more perfect invitation.

Together with a small teacher-team of experts, I was being invited to help create an interculturality program interwoven with language to build oral proficiency. I had my Modified Oral Proficiency Interview (MOPI) certification, and as department chair of a world language program at a private school, I helped convert a traditional world language department to a standards-based proficiency-driven one. Through this experience, I truly began to further unlock the secrets to success in language learning.

Now I was being asked to help scaffold an intercultural curriculum to push proficiency? No brainer for me!

Many of the textbooks and Spanish learning programs I have used through the years are grammar-driven and bereft of cultural material relevant to Gen Z students. Aside from being dry, they are not written in a way that my students can access information in language written for their particular proficiency level.

The program we are building for FL4K is not only relevant and fun; proficiency is a priority. Students delve deeply into the culture of ten different Spanish-speaking countries while building proficiency at their own speed, differentiated for Novice to Intermediate levels.

The built-in practice exercises and games are specifically designed to build proficiency, unlike the majority found in textbooks and online Spanish learning programs.

The polling and commenting features that mimic social media are highly motivating! With built-in language lab recording features, students build confidence in speaking from an early age, beneficial for standardized tests like AAPPL, AP, and IB. The pre-AP cultural comparisons have students building cultural awareness and intercultural competency from elementary ages on.

My colleagues and I have joined a talented team of designers and developers that are making our wishlist for a results-driven Spanish learning program come true.

Please check out our website, Fl4K.com. You will not be disappointed with this state-of-the-art Spanish learning program for all ages!

And sign up to take a class with me, too! It’s always fun to meet and build relationships with other language learners. My students have become some of my very close friends, and they enjoy being in a community with each other!

Stay tuned for next week’s Teacher’s Tool Tip, and if you missed any of my passed tool tips, you can find them all on our blog. Be sure to follow us on social media for more language tips and fun resources!

Reading Time: 4 minutes

Have you ever been overwhelmed by grading? Or felt like grading was capricious, meaningless, or even superfluous? Read on to learn how standards-based grading could solve these issues and how to implement it.

What is standards-based grading

What I discovered in the last decade of my teaching career is that Standards-based grading is the most effective way to evaluate language students. Having rubrics that define expectations clearly according to standards helps students to find their way to success without confusion about the WHY of their grades.

Putting a grade on a students’ project, presentation, or any evaluation without expectations thoroughly explained ahead of time and a clear explanation of how a student performed compared to those expectations, leads to frustration and lack of motivation to improve.

As I started to shift to grading students according to their proficiency and performance levels, I saw not only a vast improvement in the quality of their work but a willingness to try harder to improve. 

How to implement standards-based grading

As an AP grader for many years, I have grown to like the global grading that we do for thousands of students. Our rubric very clearly defines, “Strong”, “Good’, “Fair”, “Poor”, etc. A few years ago, I started using these words with my students at all levels to evaluate their work in comparison with the ACTFL proficiency and performance targets for my classes. These simple words speak to students in a way that they understand what is good or lacking about their work. Of course, I define what “strong” is for them using the standards as assigned to their level of study.

In our program, we have our courses named according to the target proficiency and performance levels. A Novice 1 class has the targets in the range of Novice Low and Mid.  A Novice 2 class has the target of Novice High, for example.

This makes it very clear what the targets are for any particular course and helps students to work toward target goals for proficiency ranges versus a percentage correct on a fill-in-the-blank quiz. This way of evaluating is logical and gives students parameters as well as realistic goals to meet.

In a class where Intermediate Low is the goal for the students, guidelines for a short presentation might be: In order to get a  “Strong” you must:

1. use new vocabulary
2. have connector words such as “y”, “también”, ”pero” to show that you can speak in strings of sentences
3. NOT read your presentation to show that you can create with the langauge
4. include cultural information that you have learned, etc. It is amazing how students will soar with clear parameters.

Suddenly, they start to perform up to expectations because they are clear about what they need to do. This exercise is so much more useful than filling in the blank with verb conjugations. They are actually using what they know and practicing the skill of speaking another language.  When using this grading system, it is easy to tell the students where they are strong and where they need to improve. This is motivating to students, believe me!

Standards-based grading and differentiation

Another key to fair and motivating grading for language students is to compare each child’s progress compared to his own starting skill level.

As impractical as it may seem, it’s unquestionably encouraging for a student to know that he is improving! Even the least confident child will begin to make progress if he feels that his own progress matters more than his competence compared to others.

I always made a point in my classroom to find ways for my students to build on their own skills. This could be built into the rubric. The point of grading should always be to help students make progress. You will find that your students are more willing to try if they don’t feel defeated by difficult tasks that compare them to the most gifted students in the class. 

Pie-in- the-Sky Grading

My dream would be no grades at all! In the world language classroom. I prefer that students be motivated to speak another language versus to get a good grade that tells them very little about their actual progress in developing proficiency in another language.

Fill-in-the-blank quizzes and tests do not help students learn what they “can do” toward the goal of using the language for communication. It is an exercise in futility that our parents and their parents did; and guess what? Most of them say, “I studied [Target Language] for [x] years and I can’t speak a word!” We need to change this and start in our classrooms now.

First, we must become experts in the proficiency standards, and then we must teach students to reach them. We should scrap the curriculum with long lists of vocabulary words to memorize and grammar concepts to master. This kind of language teaching is outdated.

Yes, our students need to build vocabulary and grammar knowledge, but within a context and with repeated practice! When grammar and vocabulary ruled our curriculums, the best and brightest students succeeded in the language classroom, no doubt about it. Some even learned to speak the language due to their talent!

Imagine a new way to teach language acquisition that is all-inclusive!

Everyone can learn a language and improve daily, just not the way we used to teach it! Let’s reconsider how we evaluate our students and give them all a chance to succeed.

Let me know what you thought of this week’s Teacher’s Tool Tip! And while you wait for our next tip, make sure to follow FL4K on social media through the links at the very bottom of this page so you don’t miss any updates and for other language fun!

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

Looking to improve your students’ or children’s language skills? Learn how you can get early access to our groundbreaking language program that teaches kids Spanish the fun way! Sign up here.

Reading Time: 2 minutes

I had the opportunity to get back in the classroom this past week due to a former colleague’s extended leave of absence. What an honor to have the opportunity to teach for a few days after six months of retirement! To go in with fresh eyes after working to integrate interculturality in a new and exciting way with FL4K was awesome! The difference that I felt so strongly about was the absolute commitment to teaching culture in an engaging and meaningful way.

Fortunately, the textbook that the teachers still use at University School is Wayside’s EntreCulturas that definitely has a focus on communicating, exploring, and connecting across cultures!

Don’t skip interculturality sections

The pages I chose to cover in the book were chock full of cultural points that I used to ignore because I did not prioritize teaching interculturality. Also, just reading the points in a textbook is not enough to engage our GenZ students!

I chose to emphasize two Enfoques Culturales during my five-day tenure. My fresh perspective as a curriculum writer for FL4K guided me in making the cultural points a priority and helped me to figure out new ways to make the information relevant and interesting for the students. It was a unit about the family featuring the Hispanic cultural traditions of greeting and saying goodbye to each other with a kiss and the practice of conversing with family for long periods of time after meals.

Make the topics fun and relative

In this intermediate low class, I asked the students to share with the rest of us their family traditions around these practices using reciprocal verbs. It was all nicely interwoven with vocabulary and grammar in the textbook, but in the past, when I was using the book, I never thought much about how to make culture an integral part of my teaching. The students were interested in learning about these two traditions because I was more invested in engaging them with culture in a personal way. It was so much fun to hear the different family traditions of the students around these practices. I was amazed at how they could easily talk about all this in Spanish because I scaffolded the lesson carefully, giving them all the vocabulary and structures that they needed to TALK!

I think teaching the skill of comparison and appreciation of other cultures is so important toward the goal of nurturing global citizenship in our classrooms. Challenge yourself in the new semester to make interculturality a priority in your classroom!

Consider checking out some of the curriculum that we are building in FL4K. You will be amazed at the treasures we are digging up about eleven different Hispanic cultures to engage students in our quest for their intercultural competence! Sign up for early access to our new program now!

Let me know what you thought of this week’s Teacher’s Tool Tip! And while you wait for next week’s tip, make 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, the Student-Centered Classroom, and much more on FL4K.com right now!

Reading Time: 3 minutes

Previously, I mentioned the importance of building community in the classroom in order to create a safe space for all learners. Today’s blog is about the importance of discovering the strengths of each individual student.

As teachers, we often get so focused on our lessons that we forget to prioritize making a personal connection with our students. Every child has some attribute or interest that we can tap into as a way of reaching out in a personal way, whether it is a talent in music, art, sports, academics, or an interest in health and wellness, animals, cars, nature, or video games, etc. Once determined, it is important to integrate their interests into the lessons, giving them a chance to shine in their own unique way.

When they feel noticed and cared about as a whole person, not just as a language student, a certain buy-in begins to happen.

As a mentor to newer teachers, I have often seen that students can be very hard on the authoritarian teacher who spouts all kinds of rules and threats about grades. On the other hand, a teacher with a human connection will be forgiven of a multitude of mistakes. This is a simple truth of teaching and so important for the inexperienced teacher to note! 

Consider the strengths and weaknesses of their individual skills.

In addition to tuning in to the different interest levels of your individual students,  it is important to consider the strengths and weaknesses of their skills.

Every child’s brain is a unique landscape that the teacher must appreciate and learn to navigate. To expect each child to perform the same tasks in the same way is terribly unrealistic.

I always told each student that I was tracking their own personal progress in the class. I would let them all know that I was well aware of their different skill sets and was comparing them to themselves, always noticing their personal progress!

Of course, I used rubrics that applied to the whole class for everything I graded, but I was quick to note how they were improving compared to themselves and would reward them for their efforts.

To not compare them to the class superstar was motivating to them! Most students felt that they could do better no matter where they were at the time! This is the “can-do” classroom.

Often, I chose different difficulty levels and length reading assignments for my students or paired them strategically for a better outcome. Many students developed friendships in my classroom because I gave them opportunities to help each other and work cooperatively for the best outcome!

How FL4K incorporates the importance of differentiation in world language

Knowing the importance of differentiation in the world language classroom, at FL4K we have built leveling into our culture program, creating culture posts for 11 different countries with ten different variations for each post that include Low-, Middle-, and High-level cards depending on the frequency of the classes, the expertise of the teacher, and the age and reading development skills of the students.

Within each level, we have created an English version, a direct Spanish translation for the Heritage speakers, and a simple Spanish version for the teachers who adhere to the 90% target language in the classroom theory.

Students 2-6 grade can all learn about the pink dolphin of Perú, but with varying amounts of details according to reading and developmental skills, and Spanish language skills. For the high school student, we have included more sophisticated opportunities for investigation, discussion, comparison, and reflection questions in the target language as well as activities that stimulate conversation at both the novice and intermediate level of language proficiency. Conceivably, students in the same class could be learning about the pink dolphin, but with short segments that are tailored to their particular skill set, setting them up for success and continued motivation as a result.

When students experience success, they build confidence, and soar!

Let me know what you thought of this week’s Teacher’s Tool Tip! and while you wait for next week’s tip, learn how you can get early access to our groundbreaking language program, 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, the Student-Centered Classroom, and much more on FL4K.com right now!

Reading Time: 3 minutes

Here’s today’s tool tip: Attend ACTFL’s Annual Convention to tune into best practices for WL teaching!

If you have been following this series of blogs about what I learned in my 43 years of teaching a world language, I will defer my discussion of differentiation in the classroom to next week and direct all your attention to ACTFL for now; its virtual conference opens this Thursday, November 18.

If you have never attended, it is time to prioritize this premier conference for world language teachers. Don’t miss the unimaginable passion and expertise of these four days.

Many leaders in our field gather and share their expertise about what constitutes best practices for world language teaching. Throughout my career, I have been privileged to have learned from some of the best like Helena Curtain, Greg Duncan, and Katrina Griffin.

Helena Curtain, a fellow Wisconsinite and co-author of Language and Children: Making the Match, a guide to communicative language teaching based on second language acquisition theory, was the first to shed incredible light on theory-based strategies for teaching K-8 students when I was developing a pilot elementary program in the ’80s.

Her encouragement, well-researched pedagogy, and her annual FLESFest were pivotal in helping me to create a very successful program for young language learners that is still going strong today. Many years later, I had the advantage of learning from Helena’s expertise again when she helped our Upper School WL department begin to understand the five C’s of the ACTFL World-Readiness Standards (Communication, Connection, Culture, Comparison, and Communities), taught us the concept of thematic teaching, and encouraged us to create more communicative activities to get our students up and talking in every class.

It was hard for all of us in the WL department at the best private school in Wisconsin to hear that we could be better; however, it is that very humility that we all need to stay current with best practices!

Several years later, with new leadership in our department, we decided to revisit some of the principles of best practices in language teaching that we had learned from Helena. This time we delved into the ACTFL Performance Descriptors with Greg Duncan, another expert in the field. As a result of his guidance, we had an eye-opening experience visiting the Singapore American School where children were learning to actually speak another language successfully in their elementary years.

Next, we sponsored a departmental MOPI (Modified Oral Proficiency Interview) workshop through ACTFL, and began to develop a proficiency-based philosophy of teaching. We re-wrote our mission statement and designed a statement of best practices based on the TELL (Teacher Effectiveness for Language Learning) project.

Finally, most of the twelve teachers in our K-12 department for Spanish, French, and Chinese got certified in MOPI (Modified, Oral Proficiency Interview). We changed the names of our courses to reflect proficiency levels and began to change the emphasis of our program from a traditional grammar-based approach to an oral proficiency-based one.

There is no way to explain how this new focus boosted our students’ confidence levels about learning language!

Once they were not filling in the blank with verb tenses and memorizing unwieldy lists of vocabulary for tests and quizzes, learning the target language for real communication became far more accessible to them and our classes became lively and full of chatter. We learned how to motivate our students by evaluating their skill levels vs. grades. Not only did their confidence and motivation soar, their oral proficiency skills did, too. We were no longer a program for just the gifted and talented AP-bound students; we were a department advocating effective language learning for real-world communication for all!

We continued to seek ways to learn about how to create interactive activities to promote oral proficiency by inviting Katrina Griffin, ACTFL Teacher of the Year 2017, to do a workshop at our school.

We still use many of her ideas to promote proficiency today! And guess what? There are many more experts than the ones I have mentioned in this blog post. You can find them at #ACTFL2021. They are always there, sharing the latest theory in language learning!

Don’t miss the opportunity to be a lifelong teacher-learner! Having a growth mindset is what will keep your skills current and your students successful!

Attend ACTFL 2021 (virtual) and hear from the very best! If you are interested in chatting with my FL4K colleagues, Laura Davis, Elena Giudice, and me, Holly Morse, to learn how we are weaving all these principles into a new state-of-the-art web app for language-learning interwoven with interculturality, visit our FL4K ACTFL21 exhibitor workshops: #OneStopShop for Novice-Intermediate Oral Proficiency Gen Z teachers, 1:40 Friday; #WishlistComeTrue: InterWeaving Interculturality for Gen Z!, 1:50 Saturday; this coming Thursday-Sunday, November 18-21.

Check out our ACTFL page and sign up here to chat with us. 

Reading Time: 3 minutes

My husband used to chide me about spending too much time on my lesson plans. After I had been teaching for a few decades, he actually said to me, “Don’t you have this down to a science by now?” I answered emphatically, “No! Teaching is not a science; it is an art!” He looked at me like I was crazy, but I knew from first-hand experience through my 43 years in the classroom that I had to maintain a growth mindset in order to meet the needs of the generations. Even though I was not a digital native, I wanted to learn how to teach them; and, more importantly, how to engage them in fun language learning for communication in the real world. The truth is that I had to work at this approach until my last day in the classroom.

Why was I willing to keep adapting to the needs of my students? Because I wanted them to love language learning and be successful. I wanted them to be motivated, encouraged, and always growing in confidence about their progress in developing practical language skills. 

Gen Z students’ needs in the classroom

So, let’s take a look at what these modern-day learners need in general according to many sources that I read on the internet:

• real-world communication skills,
• intercultural inquiry, 
• a social media approach,
• differentiated and individualized curriculum,
• hands-on activities,
• music and songs,
• and innovative activities to name a few.

It’s a lot to consider when planning for successful language learning to take place and, actually, there are not many curricula out there that do all this.

The problem with textbook-learning

Most traditional textbooks still take a grammar approach that completely defeats and bores the majority of GEN Z language students. They simply cannot learn the system as fast as a textbook tries to teach it because there is too much presented too fast, and not enough practice embedded in the curriculum. The vocabulary lists are too long, and the books are lacking in interesting content that includes interculturality.

Many teachers make the mistake of racing to complete a textbook with little regard for the practical use of the language that their students are learning. If you have taken any courses in language acquisition along the way, you know that true language acquisition is a slow process.

If your district or school mandates the use of textbooks, consider cutting the vocabulary lists in half, and only completing half of a book in a year. Basically, SLOW DOWN and have fun in the classroom. Give the students a lot of innovative ways to practice simple chunks of language with grammar, vocabulary, and interculturality naturally interwoven. You will be amazed at how much more engaged and consequently more successful your students will be. 

How to ease the lesson planning process

Now, here’s the challenge that most of us confront.

It is time-consuming to create the perfect lesson plan to excite and engage the Gen Z student. Where can we find a toolkit for such instruction that includes motivating music and songs, hands-on activities, innovative activities that provide practice in interpersonal, interpretive, and presentational modes of communication and includes the other 4 C’s of the ACTFL World-Readiness Standards, Connections, Comparisons, Communities, and Culture?

Consider attending ACTFL 2021, November 18-21 to find the latest in resources for language teachers who have a growth mindset and truly want results! Take a look at the many workshops being offered this year. If you want to hear more about this topic or some of the others I have been writing about, you can join my colleague, Elena Giudice, and me for these two workshops:

1. #OneStopShop for Novice-Intermediate Oral Proficiency Gen Z teachers at 1:40 PM on Friday, November 19; and
2. #WishlistComeTrue: InterWeaving Interculturality for Gen Z!  1:50 PM on Saturday, November 20.

We would love to be in dialogue with you about teaching strategies for Gen Z or any of the other topics discussed about language learning in my blog posts. 

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!

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!

Reading Time: 3 minutes

Now that we have established the priorities in your classroom as

• 1.) make it a can-do classroom for all from day one;
• 2.) create community in your classroom, a place where students can belong and become confident language learners; and
• 3.) prioritize oral proficiency as the outcome for your students.

Let’s delve into some of the excellent ways that ACTFL guides world language teachers as to what constitutes best practices in our classrooms.

The 2017 NCSSFL-ACTFL Can-Do Statements Proficiency Benchmarks add interculturality, recommending that students investigate the products, practices, and perspectives of another culture and interact with others as an important part of their language experience.

Often culture programs are something extra that a teacher never finds time to integrate into the lesson plan. It feels like an add-on rather than an integral part of teaching another language as these proficiency guidelines indicate.

How to effectively integrate culture into the lesson plan

The secret to doing this successfully is wrapping in the ACTFL World Readiness Standards that prioritize the five C’s of language education: communication, cultures, connections, comparisons, and communities. Using these to guide your curriculum can lead to much more interesting studies for your language students as can adding in 21st century skills for the Gen Z language student.

Be sure to provide plenty of opportunities for your students to collaborate, make decisions, problem-solve, and engage in critical thinking. Students need to reflect on the practices, products, and perspectives of their own culture in comparison with other cultures where the target language is spoken.

Honestly, the best way for teachers to impart cultural knowledge and understanding to their students is for them to travel and experience other cultures first-hand in an effort to bring their own real-world knowledge and enthusiasm back to the classroom! Write grants, seek opportunities to travel with students and on your own. Make it your professional development priority to know the cultures of the target language! Then, find innovative ways to impart knowledge and invite intercultural inquiry.

Always have your students reflect on the what, how, and why of their own culture in comparison to another. There aren’t many companies that present culture well, weaving in the building blocks of oral proficiency that push students along the path to communicating with confidence. You might take a look at Wayside Publishing Company that has both language acquisition and interculturality interwoven in their updated texts for both French and Spanish, Entreculturas/Entrecultures.

Utilize culture programs

The most innovative and experiential program that I have seen for Elementary, Middle School, and Beginning High School students is Foreign Languages for Kids by Kids. Check out their exciting new “Aventura culturales” program that invites students to participate in cultural studies in an innovative, interactive way. You might even consider attending the FL4K Exhibitor’s workshop on Interculturality at ACTFL (virtual) on Saturday, November 20, 1:50 PM; or at least checking out the Exhibitor’s Booth online to watch a 10-minute showcase of the state-of-the-art culture program.

If you are looking for ways to make culture a more important part of learning a language for your students, start exploring how to commit to this important aspect of language teaching that prepares our students to be global citizens. Let’s open the door to the world for our students!

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!

Reading Time: 3 minutes

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!

Reading Time: 3 minutes

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!