Professional development at your fingertips!

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I think I am becoming a pro at multitasking! To be clear I am not fond of household chores, I find them so boring and I always end up thinking I am wasting my "brain time" and could do something much more productive! However my whole life is a constant dilemma: I cannot stand being in a messy and dirty house!

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Personalized questions in French: l'étoile du jour.

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This morning, I was reading the Active learner blog post about "Café y conversación" and it inspired me to share about an authentic conversation I had last week with my French students. As mentioned in the post: "When we have authentic conversation about topics that students want to talk about,

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Finding input which will engage English learners.

One of my online Spanish student has an advanced level of English and she wants to practise her speaking skills but she lacks confidence. I have noticed that most language learners often lack confidence when it comes to having a conversation. They can comprehend a lot but they fear of speaking because they think people will not understand them or they will make too many errors.

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How to encourage students to produce comprehensible output on sports

 

 

 

 

 

 

My grade 7 students (12-13 years old) did comprehensible presentations about some popular sports in Hispanic countries. First, I wanted to model a presentation because whenever my students produce Spanish output,

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How to use a mini story in a Spanish beginner class

I have become a fan of TPRS because I do believe it is the most efficient way so far to help students develop both fluency and accuracy in Spanish. However, I am new to the techniques and although I read the Big Green Book: Fluency through TPR Storytelling,

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Cultural input: the prisons in Bolivia (or how to engage Spanish learners)

How to get students engaged and producing a lot of language???? Well.... I recommend purchasing Martina Bex 7-day lesson plans about Los niños prisioneros de Bolivia as it is truly worth the investment! Not only did it save me a lot of prep-time, it also made my students had a meaningful discussion in the target language!

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Civilization project to use the past tense in Spanish

I have covered the past tense in Spanish with my grade 8 students (13-14 years old) this term and I want them to be able to describe past events confidently and accurately. Over my teaching experience I have found out that doing the traditional grammar exercises such as filling in the gaps with the correct verb forms does not really work with students.

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