Category: Educational

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!

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. 

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!

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!

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!