“We now know enough about how people learn that no child need fail if we changed our minds first. We need new minds for a new millennium”.  Bruce Hammonds

 Here is a report I stumbled upon while doing an Internet search.  It talks about teaching boys in the foreign language classroom, and strategies for raising their achievement therein.  Although written in the UK, the report has much relevance for the way we teach boys in language classrooms here in the United States.

With the establishment of all-boys classrooms, and single gender charter and magnet schools for boys, the report offers a sound approach.

Case in point: Every year, when I present the unit on family, I include a mini-lesson on the quinceañera.  I show a film, “Sweet 15″.  In “Sweet 15″, a girl discovers her father is an undocumented citizen, which jeapordizes her quinceañera.  This year, In addition to the film, I contemplated a project – a quinceañera webquest.  I shared my plans with a colleague.  Although my colleague thought the webquest project was a good one, and one which would engage the girls, she believed the boys, overall, would be less engaged.  That I had not considered.  So, I did not do the webquest.

The report is a long read, but well worth the time and effort.