PBL in the TL

01/16/2024

I'm trying a new weekly assignment this week and had to flex a little for my examples, since the prompt this week is amigos.

So each week, I have students submit a picture with a post, IG style on Google Slides. Week 1 was "yo" and I took the submissions and had each class match the pictures to their compañeros (which was pretty easy if they knew each other's names...MOST of them included those in their "captions").

Not sure how I'll capitalize on this week's yet because I think I have to see what they submit to decide.

My side has also been considering sketching a couple of kids' posts each week. Think they'd like that?

11/17/2023

My first ACTFL since 2019! My session is this afternoon!

Can your students trust each other? Can they trust YOU? Ice breakers aren’t enough, but ongoing routines like “Special Person” interviews, class stories, and daily structured conversations help students feel seen, heard, and confident enough to communicate in the target language. Explore how to lay the community foundation Day 1 and build students up after.

01/04/2021

Teacher friends going back to school! Post your mask pics for me! I need inspiration 😁
https://www.facebook.com/sxtnimpressions/photos/?tab=album&album_id=466002021414136&mt_nav=1&ref=page_internal

12/09/2020

Comprehensible inspiration from Trailblaze Into Language Learning !

This is a short story written for novice level students. It gives the perspective of a girl watching two influential and inspiring tennis players. This further motivates her to reflect on what makes them great players! The story includes the following: two reflective questions, a glossary, space t.....

12/02/2020

A little sample of my final exam. This is the first in a series of 10 videos that students will respond to as if they are conversing with this "mystery speaker"
https://flipgrid.com/s/n6p4bUKuVxiLepwg

10/23/2020

You can still register! I'm reprising PBLL Basics in the morning!

10/09/2020

🚦NEW POST🚦

⁉️"Why Do Students Use Translators in Spanish Class?"⁉️🤫(It's not just because they think we're stupid)🤫
🔗
bit.ly/pbltlwhy
🔗
Would you believe me if I told you students have LEGITIMATE reasons for using translators? Consider factors like
⌛Time
💪 Confidence
😰 Anxiety
.
🗂️ and Preparation
Some of those things they can control, and some they can't. Even if they CAN control them, it doesn't change their reasons or their framework. It's up to us to seek to understand the SOURCE of the problem, and ADDRESS it, to control what WE can to make the translators flat UNNECESSARY.
📖Read about some of the ways I have been tackling the problems within the hybrid setting in today's post!
       

09/16/2020

This week we are getting into family AND preparing for round 2 of listening assessment (AAPPL style of course). We have some great videos already on the Flipgrid, but we would love it if you could share some more!

PS you are welcome to use any of these for your own listening practice or assessment!

Check out this Flipgrid!

08/23/2020

Aw yiss! coming through with the relevant vocab visuals!

Last week I realized that we had a hole in our class vocabulary: tech terms necessary for functions associated with distance learning. When we are in class together, we don’t need terms like…

08/23/2020

😷NEW POST😷
I DON'T HATE HYBRID TEACHING
🔗 bit.ly/pbltlhybrid 🔗
📈 It may be the most dangerous option outside of 100% business-as-usual. My daughter's school may have called the FIRST DAY to let us know 2 employees had tested positive. But overall, the first week was not nearly the horror show I expected.

In fact, I think this could end up a step toward the way schooling should be.
1️⃣ Small class sizes
2️⃣ Open teacher-student connection
3️⃣ Time together
4️⃣ Connections before content
Read more about my experience teaching hybrid classes the first week on my latest blog post!

08/22/2020

🚫🌎So is this good news or bad news for us language teachers?🌍🚫
I polled all six of my class/cohort groups by using a strategy from .chase.dhs : "Levántate si..." I had the seven types of connections from my recent blog post ( 🔗bitly/pbltlconnect ) on big neon post-its in Spanish on the board and went through, getting the class to help me define and give examples for each. Then I went through the alphabetical list and compared one connection to the next, e.g. "Levántate si FAMILIA es más fuerte 💪 que EXPERIENCIAS" And I rearranged the post-its accordingly.
I took pictures after each cohort/class to compare for the final tally, and the results are in the second photo.
👨‍👩‍👧‍👦FAMILY was unanimously the strongest connection class to class
Some classes cheated and ranked EXPERIENCES, VALUES, and INTERESTS all 2nd, but those were always near the top.
🌏 GEOGRAPHY was dead last, so it got tacked to the map instead of with the official list. Classes today agreed that was good news for me, because no matter where they were from or where they lived, they could make even stronger connections with people ANYWHERE.
📰 LANGUAGE was just BARELY beaten by IMAGES, which could be kind of depressing for me as a Spanish teacher and artist EXCEPT that my students are new to the language. So no matter how bad their Spanish is, they can use even stronger connections to build it up!
So is it bad news that geographic and linguistic connections were deemed the weakest by the very students whose language and culture skills I'm supposed to enhance? Absolutely not. It means that we can be the conduit to discover EVEN STRONGER connections! And I think that's pretty awesome.

08/19/2020

🤡How silly is too silly? I probably worry too much about looking the wrong amount of ridiculous in front of new students, but I hope they get a LITTLE giggle out of this morning's off-site learning overview video (OSLOV?) I used a different video filter for each slide in my Adobe Spark video. (👉Note to self: upload to YouTube rather than Google Photos for more efficient upload/download waits.)
🗂️ Incidentally, after a week poring over Jon Cowart's post on organizing Google Classroom for virtual learning and trying to twist it to fit Canvas hybrid learning with different pages and tables and visuals, the Spark slides were the best way for me to wrap my mind around the whole schedule with a slide for the daily discussion board interaction then another slide for each day.
🎙️I also think having a face at all can help connect with kiddos better than just recording the audio onto the slides, easier though it would be--by FAR. It's extra important, too, since we were masked the rest of the week 😷
🍬If you want to see the clips, I think I'll post them to my class IG, at And maybe I can offer some candy my artist buddy brought me back from Mexico for the first person to match the correct filters to the right days.🤔