The Last Hoorah
This is what I’ve been saying to students and colleagues lately: the last Hoorah. I’m tired. The students are tired. Teachers and students everywhere are tired. Yet, the work is not finished. There are reviews to conduct, exams to administer and assess, reports to write, end-of-year festivities and meetings to attend…it all becomes just too [...]
Thinking About Student Work
My school recently hosted the NCISR New England Cluster Meeting. One of the sessions I attended in-between teaching and other duties was “Looking at Student Work.” One of the things I took away from the exercise was that I need to provide more opportunities for my students to play with the language they are learning. [...]
Cosmic Zombie
I assigned a webquest on “La Semana Santa” to two of my Spanish classes last week. The day was 11 April, which, incidentally, was my birthday, for which I took a personal day. Although La Semana Santa had already taken place, the webquest was worthy enough to be completed post-holiday. The students, for the most [...]
Got Apathy?
I was part of the most recent Foreign Language Chat, which takes place on Twitter every Thursday from 8-9 pm, EST. The topics are generally useful, and the conversation, for the most part, informative. However, and, as usual, the usual suspects dominated the conversation. Therefore, it was difficult for lesser-knowns like me – LOL – [...]
Weekly Wrap-Up #3
I’m two days’ behind. Had to address other matters, as my two most recent posts indicate. In any event, last week was my first full week at school, following a four-day convalescence at home due to a muscle spasm in my neck and upper back, with referred pain in my right shoulder. I have completed [...]
Having Our Hands on the Right Things
The following is a reply I posted on the now-defunct MFL blog. Due to a lot of flap, the blog has since been taken down. Thus, I am glad I preserved my comments. I don’t think that Mr. Picardo espouses a die-hard tech-only point-of-view. We tweet from time to time. I am also an occasional [...]
It Depends On How One Views the Situation
or…a teachable (anti-racist) moment for teachers. I’ve recently become a fan of a teacher blog, whose target audience is language teachers. I enjoy most of their posts and ideas. But, the one promoting a Mexican Lotería app isn’t one of my favorites. The reason? Some of the game board images are stereotypical, even downright racist. [...]
Weekly Wrap Up #2
Before the clock strikes midnight, and before I fall asleep on the living room sofa, I figured I had better write my post. This time last week, I was in the early stages of what was diagnosed two days later by my primary care physician as a muscle spasm. Its greatest impact was to the [...]
Weekly Wrap-Up
I’m introducing a new feature to my blog. It is called, “Weekly Wrap-Up”, and includes some of the exciting things that went on in my classes during the week. So, first up – online textbook. Not a new form of technology, online textbooks have been around for some time. My place of employ, however, has [...]
A Cultural Visitor
My school has a cultural exchange with Venezuela. So, every year in early January, a small group of students and a teacher from our partner school in Caracas visits our school for about a month. The students are usually in grades six and/or seven, and have been learning English from a very young age. They [...]
