I have just come across Bryan Kandel's website and he has highlighted a few useful web tools to use in the classroom. One of them is Textivate which is Taskmagic web-based little brother. Ten years ago, when I started teaching Taskmagic was the one software we used in the classroom and language teachers just loved it!
Following my first story script in Spanish to practice classroom instructions, I have just finished creating another one which reinforces classroom intructions and which introduces one important question word: ¿Por qué?. It also introduces other key phrases from the Michel Thomas method such as es así and lo.
When I was a child, I read The Story of My Life by Helen Keller. I read this book over a few days and it stuck in my mind. It is an incredible story of a courageous individual who overcame tremendous odds with the help of a tremendous teacher,
I am huge fan of the Michel Thomas method. The only thing that is bothering me is that it hugely relies on translation. I was trained to use the target language as much as possible in the classroom and my mentor taught me a few tricks to get the students to understand me in the target language like using lots of cognates.
The very kind librarian at my school sent me an email about whether I could send her a list with titles of Spanish books for the library as there is some money to be spent. However, I am not sure what would be the best/most useful for the students to order.
When I prepare dinner in the evening, I like to listen to the radio and it usually falls during Le Grand Entretien on France Inter. François Busnel, a journalist spends an hour interviewing different people from authors to comedians to politicians. I like the way this journalist conducts the interviews.