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Title: Spanish Word of the Year 2015
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Here are the Fundéu BBVA’s 12 candidates for Word of the Year 2015 - great to connect language with culture and current events with your students: http://www.fundeu.es/las-candidatas-a-palabra-del-ano-2015/
Source: Fundéu BBVA
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Title: Prescriptions for Talking about Star Wars in Spanish
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Your InterCom editor really enjoyed the latest Star Wars movie, while meanwhile the Fundación del Español Urgente, which is affiliated with the Royal Spanish Academy, has compiled some tips for talking and writing about the movie series with proper mechanics: http://spanish.about.com/od/tipsforlearningspanish/fl/Spanish-Today-Tips-for-Learning-and-Using-Spanish.htm
Source: About.com
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Title: Report Recommends Longer School Day for English-Language Learners
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From http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/learning-the-language/2015/12/report_recommends_for_longer_s.html
Report Recommends Longer School Day for English-Language Learners
by Corey Mitchell
December 16, 2015
A report from the National Center on Time and Learning explores how three U.S. schools are using expanded school days to provide extra support for English-language learners.
The report profiles two Massachusetts expanded-time schools—Hill Elementary in Revere and Guilmette Elementary in Lawrence—and Godsman Elementary in Denver, and examines the strategies educators used to boost the achievement of English-learners.
The study, Giving English Language Learners the Time They Need to Succeed, identified four best practices that worked in the schools:
Extended literacy blocks, with upwards of 2.5 hours per day focused on skills needed for reading and writing.
Using data to pinpoint areas where individual students struggle, then subdividing those students into small groups where staff can help address the challenges.
Maintaining support and services for fluent-speaking English-learners who need to boost their academic English skills
Ensuring that teachers meet often to align lesson plans, and identify and address student needs.
Read the full article at http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/learning-the-language/2015/12/report_recommends_for_longer_s.html
The report is available at http://www.scribd.com/doc/293428914/ell-report-12-14-15
Source: Education Week
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Title: Game for Reviewing or Pre-Assessing: Wits and Wagers
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From http://mrpiedrasclassroom.blogspot.com
Here is a game where students make educated guesses about questions that have numerical answers. This game could be used as a pre-assessment activity or later in a unit to see how students make use of what they have learned to make informed guesses. Read a description of the activity here: http://mrpiedrasclassroom.blogspot.com/2015/12/wits-and-wagers.html
Source: Mr. Piedra's Classroom
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Title: Inspiration for 2016 from ACTFL Teachers of the Year
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Happy 2016! When I was a Spanish teacher in a small Montana town, I found it hard to stay inspired in January and February. I walked to school in the dark and walked home in the dark, only seeing the sunshine through my classroom window while I taught and feeling it on the cold walk between my building and the cafeteria for lunch. My students dragged themselves to school each day after long nights tending to pregnant and birthing cows and their new calves and we all struggled to connect the Spanish-speaking world with our day-to-day lives. Fortunately, thanks to the connections that the Internet provides for us in 2016, and especially thanks to the generosity of some fantastic teachers, we have some inspiration for you, to kick off the new year and carry you through the next month. Several ACTFL Teachers of the Year have volunteered to write Topic of the Week articles about an area of their passion and to share activities that you can adapt to your classrooms. I am inspired both by the content that these teachers have shared and my interactions with them as we've been preparing for this month's series. I hope that you start 2016 inspired -- and for even more inspiration, check out these TOY Talks from several of these teachers.
Lindsay Marean, InterCom Editor
Source: CASLS
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Title: Original Writing Revisited
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Dr. Edward M. Zarrow, tzarrow@westwood.k12.ma.us
Title: Original Writing Revisited
Format: Individual
Target Audience: This activity is designed to be used in a second / foreign language classroom with minimal facilitation by the second / foreign language teacher.
Purpose: In order for students to move through the ACTFL foreign language proficiency continuum more efficiently, they must be cognizant of their linguistic development and have ownership of their improvement and ability to use more advanced linguistic structures throughout the process. The following activity allows students to work on their creative writing skills – something that they are being asked to do less and less of outside of the foreign language classroom, especially at the high school level. Students will build a story over time, adding newer grammatical structures as they go to the same material. For me, this is an ideal activity to use before and after a vacation, a prolonged break, or an extended unit.
Time: Variable
Materials: Any image of the teacher’s choosing which will prompt students to tell an original story in the target language. The image may be projected and / or provided to students with space to source new vocabulary and write out a story. At a later time, the same image must be provided again with additional space to write.
Directions:
- Present students with an image. Ask them to source all of the familiar vocabulary as a class and keep track of student input. Ask them what they see! Have the students write down as many nouns, adjectives, and verbs that describe the action taking place. At the teacher’s discretion, add / share with students new and unfamiliar vocabulary.
- Give the students 5-10 minutes (although longer is possible for advanced or particularly motivated students) to write an original story using as many of the vocabulary words they have just sourced as they can. Depending upon the level, they may write in the present or past. The teacher should circulate to assist with specific student questions about grammar and especially to see what kinds of common mistakes are being made by the group so that these can be addressed immediately and not become systemic. At the teacher’s discretion, student papers may be collected for review and returned to the students for correction. It is important that the student writing not be evaluated formally at this time. In any case, students should hold onto their writing.
- After a new grammatical / linguistic concept has been introduced to the students, students should be instructed to rewrite their original paragraph; however, they must now use the new concept in their writing – whatever it may be. In my Latin classes, this is a particularly strong exercise when we learn the imperfect tense (students have to change all the verbs from present to imperfect) or relative clauses (students must use relative clauses rather than adjectives to describe nouns). Several positive things happen as a result. First, the writing is theirs, so the material is comprehensible to them, and they continue to catch and correct mistakes, often on their own. Second, students can immediately compare their two writings and take direct ownership of their improvement. And third, students are often buoyed by what they can express, and this moves from their writing into their interpretive reading, interpersonal speaking, etc.
- (Optional) Teachers may again collect student writing for review. The teacher will often know quickly what needs to be retaught and what new linguistic structures have been mastered.
- (Optional) Samples of student writing from the original and later writing exercises may be kept and filed by the teacher in order to provide subsequent evidence of student linguistic improvement.
Source: CASLS Activity of the Week
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Title: Presentational Writing Improves Interpretive Reading
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Dr. Edward M. Zarrow (tzarrow@westwood.k12.ma.us) teaches Latin at Westwood High School in Massachusetts. In addition to his language teaching and advocacy, he is the 2016 ACTFL Teacher of the Year.
For many years, I used to teach Latin in a traditional way. I prepared my students to read and interpret ancient texts, although I was never satisfied with their ability to read and comprehend a text that they had never seen, despite my best efforts. Over the past five years, as a result of using more active methods for teaching Latin and focusing on building student proficiency in writing, my students have shown marked improvement in their ability to comprehend unfamiliar, authentic reading passages. By making fluency with Latin writing, rather than exclusively reading, one my principal goals for my students, they now demonstrate greater aptitude with Interpretive Reading long after they leave our program as well as greater retention of linguistic structures. The extended writing assignment described in this week's Activity of the Week is one part of that.
This is an ideal activity for bridging a long unit or even a long vacation. I have had the most success with it in Latin II and beyond, when the students are making or have already made the transition in their Presentational Writing from novice high to intermediate low. For instance, shortly before the winter break, my students were shown a picture from a chapter we were going to read. As a class, we sourced familiar vocabulary and verbs that would help us to describe the content of the image, and we added some new words as well. Before we read anything from the chapter itself, I gave students some time to write their own story based on the picture – the goal of which was for them to use and internalize the new vocabulary. While they were writing, I was able to see what mistakes were systemic (naturally ones with the verb “to be” - argh!) and address them before they would become habitual. Some students volunteered to read their short stories to the class. We then set aside our original stories and read the actual chapter; it was remarkable how similar it was to what the students themselves had written. At any rate, we filed our stories for later.
In the chapter / unit, students were introduced to relative clauses. Once I was satisfied that they had learned all the forms they needed, students went back to their writing (which they hadn’t seen for about a week) and now added as many relative clauses to their original text that they could in order to describe the nouns in greater detail. Again, students were eager to read their passages aloud, and they were truly comprehensible! The two extended writing activities bridged the unit effectively, students had ownership of their new linguistic structures as well as their improvement, and even ones who can be somewhat challenging to motivate became active listeners. In the end, despite this being designed as a writing activity, there was actually a great deal of reading, speaking, and listening as well. I hope that you’ll give it a try! Let me know how it goes!
Source: CASLS Topic of the Week
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Title: Book: CLIL in Action
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From http://www.cambridgescholars.com/clil-in-action
CLIL in Action: Voices from the Classroom
Edited by David Marsh, María Luisa Pérez Cañado, and Juan Ráez Padilla
Published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing
This volume explores the current position of Content and Language Integrated Learning on the three main fronts where it is attracting particular attention in specialized literature, namely, implementation, research, and teacher training. To this end, it presents evidence from national and international research projects, governmentally-financed pedagogical initiatives, grassroots experiences and investigations, and inter-institutional training programs which offer insights into how CLIL is working in action on the afore-mentioned three levels.
Visit the publisher’s website at http://www.cambridgescholars.com/clil-in-action
Source: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
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Title: Book: New Frontiers in Teaching and Learning English
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From http://www.cambridgescholars.com/new-frontiers-in-teaching-and-learning-english
New Frontiers in Teaching and Learning English
Edited by Paola Vettorel
Published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing
The contributions to this volume explore several focal issues related to the global spread of English and their implications for English language teaching, providing both theoretical and empirical perspectives on recent research and implications in educational terms. The volume is divided into three thematic sections, namely “Developments in ELF research and pedagogic implications”, “Raising teachers’ awareness of ELF”, and “ELF and ELT practices”.
The book provides up-to-date perspectives on the issues, implications and repercussions that findings in ELF research can have for ELT practices. The contributors are all scholars and researchers who have long been engaged in ELF-related research, and who have undertaken operational and practical work in the field, and, as such, offer novel perspectives on the effects of EFL research on the teaching and learning of English. The volume also presents the findings of innovative projects in teacher education, involving pre- and in-service teachers, providing exemplificative good practices of possible new routes into pluralistic, ELF-aware and ELF-oriented didactic perspectives.
Visit the publisher’s website at http://www.cambridgescholars.com/new-frontiers-in-teaching-and-learning-english
Source: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
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Title: The 14th New York International Conference on Teaching Chinese
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From http://clta-gny.org/16conf/cfp.html
The 14th New York International Conference on Teaching Chinese, sponsored by the Chinese Language Teachers Association of Greater New York (CLTA-GNY), New School University and Nanjing University, will be held on Saturday, May 7 at New School University in New York City.
Proposals are being solicited in the following areas of interest:
1. RESEARCH: This area includes Linguistics, culture, pedagogy, program implementation, assessments, etc.
2. PRACTICES: This area includes student motivation, administration, program promotion, teaching materials, classroom instructional strategies, ACTFL 5 Cs standards application, teacher training, community engagement, etc.
3. INNOVATIONS: This area includes technology and media use, online and distance learning, application of recent research on brain and learning theories, etc.
Proposals are due by February 15, 2016.
View the full call for proposals at http://clta-gny.org/16conf/cfp.html
Source: CLTA-GNY
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