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I was once told that I should look at my lesson plans to fix my classroom management issues. I was a little offended at first. Then I really looked at my plans and realized that they mainly consisted of writing activities from the book. It was boring. It was repetitive. They were not speaking in Spanish. No wonder they acted up!

Now I have a template that reminds me to cover a variety of skills, stay focused on the goal (backward design), and input before output.

Usually I mark all over this and include all of my activity ideas. I don't use all of them, but then I have it to look at next time. I add numbers to show what order I want to present them. Just remember to have input (listening and/or reading) before output (speaking and/or writing)! See the post "My biggest teaching mistake" for more about this. Also I use Post-it notes to add a date so I can reuse these.

Special thanks to Roya P., Julia S., Mariam, Kristy, and others for this post idea! We love it when you let us know what you'd like to see.

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I was once told that I should look at my lesson plans to fix my classroom management issues. I was a little offended at first. Then I really looked at my plans and realized that they mainly consisted of writing activities from the book. It was boring. It was repetitive.

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STARTALK acknowledges there are many lesson plan templates available, however in order to ensure a strong connection to the approved curriculum, programs are expected to use the learning plan template specifically designed for STARTALK programs. The following templates are made available for download in Word Format in both color and black and white.

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ZERO PREP Smorgasbord (#EdMarchSanity 1) - Indwelling Language

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ZERO PREP Smorgasbord (#EdMarchSanity 1) - Indwelling Language

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Following French teacher Rebecca Blouwolff's inspiring lead, I'm putting out several posts in March and beyond with simple ideas for peace, balance, joy, and success.

After brainstorming four or five #EdMarchSanity topics, I remembered that this whole blog is basically about learning and teaching happier, not harder. So, this first installment assembles some of my favorite ZERO PREP, repeatable, scalable activities and routines from past posts. This one is for teachers; stay tuned for tips for learners and habits for anyone.

ZERO PREP Activities and Routines

I really mean ZERO: Even tasks that would require no more prep than finding a picture or a quote didn't make the cut. Pick one that looks good to you and give it a shot! No-prep novelty is one of the best boosters of teacher energy.
Good Idea / Bad Idea Whiteboard Doublestack Brain Unbreaks Choral Translation Rando Mitem, Your Friend and Mine: using random items to spark conversations How to Use Your Windows PlusDelta, a simple tool for daily reflection 9 Ways to Happify Your Class
If you experience joy and success with one of these, let us know in the comments on this or the original post! Also, if you discover a good way to tweak the task, please comment so that we can try your version.

If you have related ideas, consider sharing them on Twitter using hashtag #EdMarchSanity. (I originally proposed #MarchSanity, then realized it was already in widespread use among both basketball fans and anyone trying to direct attention away from March Madness. Noob Note: Always check first to see if a hashtag is already in use and for what!)

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ZERO PREP Smorgasbord (#EdMarchSanity 1) - Indwelling Language

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Following French teacher Rebecca Blouwolff's inspiring lead, I'm putting out several posts in March and beyond with simple ideas for peace, balance, joy, and success. After brainstorming four or five #EdMarchSanity topics, I remembered that this whole blog is basically about learning and teaching happier, not harder.

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French I Guided OWI Presentation: Middle School - Google Slides

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French I Guided OWI Presentation: Middle School - Google Slides

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Past-tense French I Guided OWI Presentation: Middle School

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How to Build a Theme for an Elementary Foreign Language Program | TpT

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How to Build a Theme for an Elementary Foreign Language Program | TpT

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How to Build a Theme for an Elementary Foreign Language Program

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This is a step by step guide to the process of creating a theme for an elementary foreign language program, with concrete examples and questions to ask yourself and guide you through the process. You can also see my Periscope conversation on this topic on Periscope and on our

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Novice description with a deep cultural AP twist | Musicuentos

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Novice description with a deep cultural AP twist | Musicuentos

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Who are the most beautiful of the beautiful?

Let's take a basic novice skill that we all have in all our curricula:

I can describe someone using common adjectives.

We've all seen and done a million activities to get students practicing description. Today, let me offer another alternative, one that offers a deep, critical-thinking aspect to this Can Do statement and brings an AP theme (Beauty and Aesthetics) down to your Spanish 1 class.

People Magazine annually dares to don the right to define who are the most beautiful people in the world, and we breathlessly offer them that right as we eagerly sacrifice our self-esteem on the altar of "if only."

As your students practice using physically descriptive adjectives, what if you asked them to take a look at the " most beautiful of the most beautiful " - the 24 people who have been elected to People's list of Latino/a beauties five or more times? What if you asked them to make a list of possible adjectives and check off the ones that describe each "beauty"? Where would the check marks fall?

Blonde? Dyed? (You betcha.)

Indigenous? (Not one.)

Black? (No way.)

What about by gender? The darkest by far are male: Luis Fonsi and Shalim Ortiz are as dark as the most beautiful are allowed to come.

Eye color?

White, relatively? (Of course.)

Thin? (You know the answer to that one.)

Asking for the description is the easy part. Asking why and then what to do about it - now there's the real question. But at the end of such an exercise, students will certainly have a better idea about what Latina girls and Latino boys are being told is beautiful. And then? What about comparing the rankings with the U.S. English versions? With what Lupita Nyong'o has to say about her journey to the top?

Asking tough questions in low novice classes - that's a challenge. But here's one that fits and is worth the asking.

And then Thomas Sauer comes along and asks me a question that gets me thinking:

I wonder if the problem is the original learning target. What if the question was embedded there?

In that light, I wonder if we could embed cultural, critical thinking in all our Can Do statements, even the Novice ones:

I can list characteristics of a person People en Español would consider the most beautiful and of a person I would consider the most beautiful.

How's that for turning a Novice Can Do on its head?

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Novice description with a deep cultural AP twist

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Who are the most beautiful of the beautiful? Let's take a basic novice skill that we all have in all our curricula: I can describe someone using common adjectives. We've all seen and done a million activities to get students practicing description. Today, let me offer another alternative, one that offers a deep, critical-thinking aspect...

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Mundo de Pepita: Integrating CULTURE into language instruction

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Mundo de Pepita: Integrating CULTURE into language instruction

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AS LANGUAGE TEACHERS, we know the goal is 90% in the target language, focusing on comprehensible input in context. For most of us, this, although sometimes challenging, is a goal we can attain when it comes to vocabulary and even grammar. Where it gets more difficult is in overlaying culture, making it comprehensible and accessible to our students. Here are some thoughts and experiences that have worked for me in my elementary Spanish classes (K-4), as well as with my adult students in Russian class- SIX QUESTIONS I ask myself when I am considering what to incorporate (or not!) into my classroom:

*IS IT RELEVANT?- Can my students make a connection and/or relate to what I am teaching? Does it have meaning for my students? When students are able to connect emotionally or intellectually to something, they are more likely to internalize and remember it. Teaching about wedding traditions to 8 year olds has little meaning for them as they are not connected to weddings in any fashion- however, teaching about how kiddos get to school each day taps into a daily occurrence in the lives of our students and has real meaning for them. With little ones, keeping it tangible and concrete makes it easier for kids to connect. Abstract ideas, political views, and perspectives are harder for them to relate to as they are not thinking on that level. AND, don't underestimate the power of comparing and contrasting! Kids naturally do this, and being able to make comparisons with their own lives gives them context for making sense of what they are learning.

*IS IT AGE APPROPRIATE?- Since I teach elementary level, my primary goal with culture is to share children's culture with my students; in other words, exposing them to how children in Spanish speaking countries (at the same age as my students) live. There are many fascinating aspects of adult culture that I would love to teach about, but, as I said above, they have little meaning for my students. When choosing aspects of culture to teach about, consider what constitutes the culture of the age group you are teaching- if it's middle or high school, pop culture is a good bet. If you feel you don't know enough about that particular age group in the target culture, ask native speaking friends, do a web search, think about what was important to you at that age (or what were big events in your life) and then search that out in the target culture.

A way of thinking of this, in my mind, is the immersion approach-in other words, like language immersion, immersing our students in culture, instead of just teaching about it, allows them to experience culture, and ultimately, hopefully, it becomes a part of their culture too, their story. (What an amazing thing, right?!)

*WILL IT INTEREST/MOTIVATE MY STUDENTS?- Tying into what I've already said above, ask yourself whether what you are considering will be of interest to your students. Just because you are fascinated by it, doesn't mean they will be. Big motivators such as food, celebrations, and music are always great choices, but there are tons of other areas to explore. I find non fiction information to be a big hit with my little kiddos, most specifically science and geography. My students love animals, so I am sure to include animals from Spanish speaking countries whenever I can!

*IS IT LINGUISTICALLY ACCESSIBLE?- Here's where the rubber really meets the road! Is what you want to incorporate linguistically accessible to your students? meaning, can you integrate it using comprehensible input? At the lower levels, are you able to break down the information into digestible chunks? Can you simplify it enough to make it comprehensible without losing the overall meaning? Picking and choosing what meets these criteria can be challenging- and sometimes you have to dump something because it just can't be integrated successfully without using lots of English to explain- and that's ok! Things I look for what considering this question:
-Is it tangible/concrete? This is especially important with little kiddos and/or novice learners. Authentic games are tangible, beliefs about where you go when you die- not so much. With novice learners of any level, keeping it tangible means you have less linguistic leg work to do in order to frame the context. Keep it simple with these learners!
-Do I have enough resources to talk about this? Most specifically, do I have pictures, videos, realia, etc? Having visuals or other representations is going to help greatly with what language/ vocabulary you need to use to get the idea across. If you don't have these resources, either go find them or look for something else to talk about. Sometimes it takes me years to get together what I want to effectively teach about a particular aspect of culture- there's nothing wrong with an overstuffed closet full of "one day I will get to that" items! :)
-If it's a song or poem or story, are there too many new words? If so, good-bye! Studies show students can only hold on to about 3-5 new words at a time, so anything above and beyond that is either a candidate for a lot of pre-teaching of the vocabulary before introducing it (which then begs the question- is this song/poem/story really the best choice?) or I look for something else. There's always something else......

*WILL IT LIVE ON AFTER THE LESSON/ THEME IS OVER?- I'm big on culture that has a long shelf life. I particularly like culture that is part of our everyday classes, not just facts or themes which my students learn about and then we never revisit. (not that this isn't important!) What are aspects of culture that come up over and over again or are easily incorporated into your daily flow? In my classroom, this entails a whole host of things: greetings and leave takings, idioms and expressions that make sense in a classroom setting, gestures, my 4th graders are organized into teams with country names, regular and constant map references, how we write the date on our paper, how the calendar is set up (Monday first), authentic songs, chants and games we use regularly, tooth traditions with Ratoncito Pérez, the Tooth Mouse, even our clean up song which signals our routine for putting materials away (and is authentic) and so on. In addition, I've set up my curriculum in a spiral format, meaning we revisit "old" themes and vocabulary often. This allows us to have 'blasts from the past' as I call them, singing previously learned songs, playing games from the year before, integrating former knowledge into new themes.

*WHAT ARE THE GOALS FOR MY STUDENTS?- It is always important for me as a teacher to know beforehand what my goals are for any instruction. Does what I am teaching meet a particular standard? What do I want them to get out of the information? or how do I want them to use it? Answering these questions helps me determine whether something is really a good fit for my classroom.

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AS LANGUAGE TEACHERS, we know the goal is 90% in the target language, focusing on comprehensible input in context. For most of us, this, although sometimes challenging, is a goal we can attain when it comes to vocabulary and even grammar. Where it gets more difficult is in overlaying culture, making it comprehensible and accessible to our students.

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5 things to consider when writing a CAN-DO statement | Creative Language Class

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5 things to consider when writing a CAN-DO statement | Creative Language Class

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5 things to consider when writing a CAN-DO statement

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In lessons I have observed, it is often a little step that is missing that could make a real difference to the students' engagement in a particular activity. By asking yourself 'Why should they care?' at every stage of the planning process, it's easy to make little tweaks that could help students to get more involved.*

Do you recognise any of these situations?

Speaking

You ask students to discuss a question like this in pairs:

Tell your partner what you did at the weekend.

They each monologue for about 30 seconds, and the whole activity peters out after less than two minutes. Neither student really listened to their partner, and apart from saying a few words in English, they haven't really got anything out of the activity.

Why should they care?

Here are a few little tweaks that might avoid this situation.

Give them a listening task too. These can also be used as questions for feedback after the activity.
'Find something your partner did that you didn't.' > Feedback = ask one or two students to say what their partner did and why they didn't do it.
'Decide whose weekend was more boring.' > Feedback = put your hand up if you had the most boring weekend.

Add challenge.
Students have 15 seconds to tell their partner what they did - time it strictly. Afterwards they change partners and tell someone else what their partner did. Give them thinking time first to decide/rehearse what to say in that time.
Students can only say two sentences before their partner speaks. Give an example, and make sure you include questions!

Change the interaction pattern.
Students mingle, speaking to as many others as possible. They have to find one person who did the same three things as them/did none of the things they did/did something they wish they'd done.
PlayChinese whispers with two teams racing to correctly write down one thing each person in their team did.

Give them some functional language you want them to use.
'No, really? Why did you do that?'
'That's something I've always wanted to do.'

If you want more ideas for how to adapt speaking activities, I've got a whole e-book of them!

Writing

You ask your students to write a blog post about a place they want to visit. Some of them write a paragraph, others write a whole page.

Why should they care?

Listening

There is a three-minute audio recording about straw bales in the course book your school requires you to use. 30 seconds in, the students are clearly incredibly bored, and starting to fidget.

Why should they care?

Reading

There's an article about gender pay gaps in the news, which you think is an important issue and should be discussed with your students. Some students have previously said they would like to read 'real' things in class, but in the lesson the students just aren't interested in the article, and you end up moving on to something else after a few minutes.

Why should they care?

Deal with part of the topic first.
Have pieces of paper around the room, each with the beginning of a statement. Students walk around and write as many sentences using these beginnings as possible in two minutes. Examples might be 'Women are...' 'Men are...' 'Women can't...' 'Men can't...' 'It's important for women to...' 'It's important for men to...'
Ask students to list five jobs where people get paid a lot of money, and five where they don't get paid much. They compare lists with other students, then decide whether they think more men or women do those jobs.

Use a word cloud. Wordart.com allows you put a whole text into their creator.
Students have five minutes to write as many sentences as they can using the words in the word cloud. These become predictions - they read the text to check what was included.
They choose one big word, one medium word, and one small word, then predict how these are connected to the story. You could also give them the headline to help.

Reflect real life.
Show students the headline. Ask them if this is something they would read about in their own language. Encourage them to discuss why or why not. If they say they would, ask them to read it. If they wouldn't, ask them to choose another article from the BBC homepage (give them a time limit). In both cases, get them to tell a partner what they think they'll still remember about the article tomorrow.
We often read online articles by skimming them quickly as we scroll down the page. If you have a projector in your classroom, replicate that process. Scroll down relatively slowly, but fast enough that students can't read everything. When you get to the bottom, minimise the window and ask students to tell their partner what they saw, what they understood, and what (if anything) they'd like to go back and read in more detail.

Work with the language.
Ask students to find phrases which describe companies or replace the name of the company, e.g. 'major companies', 'organisations with 250 or more workers', 'the carrier', 'the firm'. They discuss why these phrases were selected in each case.
Get them to list five different sentences with a percentage in them, e.g. 'Many financial firms feature in the list, including the Co-op Bank - where mean hourly pay is 30.3% lower for women.' or 'It said 7% of apprentices last year were men, compared with zero in 2016, while 41% of roles involving helping at children's tea time were filled by men - compared with 25% in 2016.' They can analyse the structures these percentages appear in, e.g. 'X is % lower for Y.' or '% of X were blah blah blah - compared with % in year'

Grammar points

You've recently taught students how to use the passive in news articles. In a follow-up piece of writing, there is no evidence of passives at all.

Why should they care?

Vocabulary

You introduced a range of words connected to clothes in your last lesson, like 'button', 'zip', 'sleeve'. During a revision activity at the beginning of this lesson, the students need a lot of prompting and they can't really remember any of them accurately.

Why should they care?

All of the vocabulary tips can be connected to the idea of 'hooks'. This is a metaphor I use to describe how you remember new information. The more hooks you hang something on, the more likely it is to stay where you put it. When you think about learning new vocabulary (or grammar for that matter), you need to give the students as many hooks as possible to 'hang' the new vocabulary from and keep it in their heads.

Pronunciation

When you ask students to repeat sentences after you as part of a drill, they sound really bored and/or refuse to do it.

Why should they care?

Do you care?
Record yourself doing some pronunciation work. Listen back to it. What do you think your tone of voice and body language conveys to the students? What does your intonation sound like?
Before you drill anything, imagine somebody is going to ask 'What was the point of that?' Do you have a good answer for them?

Play.
Experiment with different tones of voice, speeds, characters (the Queen, Arnold Schwarzenegger...), positions (standing, sitting, superhero poses)...
A really popular activity at my school is a stickman drill, where students are in teams. Each team gets a stickman, with one or two extra features of their choice, like a hat or an umbrella. Each team repeats the sentence. Whoever the teacher decides did it best can remove part of their opponents' stickmen. The aim is to have the most complete stickman by the end of the game. [I still haven't actually tried this, but I've seen it used many times!]

Add challenge.
Don't just ask students to repeat the same sentence again and again. Get them to change parts of it. For example, in the first sentence of this paragraph, you could change the verb (ask), the person (students), the infinitive phrase (to repeat the same sentence) or the time adverbial (again and again). This is known as asubstitution drill. Students or the teacher can decide what changes.
Use key words or images as prompts, so students have to remember the language without having it all in front of them.

Add extra support.
Give students a minute to read and remember the language you're going to drill, then close their books during the drilling process.
Break down longer sentences into smaller chunks, then put them back into the full sentence. This is known asbackchaining if you do it from the end of the sentence.

*I recognise that a lot of the tweaks I've suggested above may more appropriately answer the question 'What can I do about it?', but I find the phrasing 'Why should they care?' adds a bit more impact when I'm asking my teachers!

Have you tried any of these tweaks? What other little tweaks do you use to encourage students to care more about activities in class?

P.S. This blogpost has been in the back of my mind for a while now, and reading this post about lead ins by CELTA train is what made me actually write it today 🙂

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In lessons I have observed, it is often a little step that is missing that could make a real difference to the students' engagement in a particular activity. By asking yourself 'Why should they care?' at every stage of the planning process, it's easy to make little tweaks that could help students to get more...