Will Slade's Language Teaching Blog

Tal vez ya compartí estos enlaces, pero quería hacerlo de nuevo en este blog. ¡Ahora Sí! la versión del Austin American Statesman en español ha publicado una serie de artículos que se llama Pregúntale a la maestra. Incluye muchos artículos muy buenos, y publicaron uno que escribí yo sobre el programa HOLA. (haga clic en los enlaces abajo para leerlos.) I may have shared these before, but ¡Ahora Sí!, the Spanish-language version of the Austin American Statesman has a series called "Pregúntale a la maestra," which includes a bunch of awesome articles. They published one that I wrote about the HOLA program. Check'em out: http://www.ahorasi.com/category/familia-y-educacion/preguntas_maestra/ And here's mine specifically: http://www.ahorasi.com/ensena-a-tus-hijos-a-convivir-con-distintas-culturas-y-razas/

Two things are reinforcing my interest in Bilingual Education: I am substituting for the H.O.L.A. program, a non-profit that is trying to help implement two-way dual language programs at campuses around Austin, 2. an awesome class in Bilingual Teacher Leadership with Deb Palmer and the Proyecto Maestria group. From that group I learned about the Daily Five , a program for helping kindergartners learn to read. My classmates say that their students have learned to read more quickly and successfully with the Daily Five than with any other program they've used. More links soon.

The University of Texas foreign language departments collaborated last semester and this one to put together an impressive series of lectures on different aspects of foreign language education. If you are a language teacher and are curious about improving a particular aspect of your teaching, chances are this site has a video for you. The site is still under construction, so check back regularly over the next several months.

This article from Stanford's website surprised me on several points. I want to read more about the Supreme Court decision they cite from 1973 that says that education is not a fundamental right. I don't know how I hadn't run across that before. It helps explain the problems with our public education system. In the article, Guadalupe Valdés's featured quote is troubling for those of us who aspire to a multilingual, diverse, just society: “In this country we’ve killed immigrant languages, and then we teach them expensively.”

Check out this cool painting that illustrates three models of pedagogy. I stumbled on it in my search for articles about immersion education, and I thought I would share.

In previous posts I've mentioned an interest in group improvisational story telling; I love role play activities that use improvisation, and even the URL of this blog has the word "improv" in it. I wanted to give some ideas for places where teachers and language learners can experience and learn about improv techniques and games for fun and for language learning. In Austin, there are a variety of theaters that put on Improv shows and teach classes in improvisational acting. I am most familiar with the Hideout , the Salvage Vanguard Theater , and Coldtowne Theater . Check them out! I can especially recommend the P-graph show on Thursday nights at 8:00 at Coldetown or classes from Andy Crouch at the Hideout. For games, check out these sites and blogs: Five Minute Fillers , Larry Ferlazzo's games for students , Dave Kees Teach English in China Also, great board games for creative, spontaneous speech are Apples to Apples (especially the youth version), Balderdash ,...

This past week, our methods class has been conducting lessons for each other in some fascinating contexts; I wanted to record some of the cool activities from my favorite groups (to quote Dr. Elaine Horwitz). Several of my favorite books used songs to integrate listening, reading, speaking, vocabulary, and grammar. Of course, this was a hit. Today we heard "Who wears short shorts" as part of an beginners' ESL lesson about clothing. The video they used was a wonderful old 1950s rock video, but the only one I can find is this short commercial for Nair . My favorite group used " Dos Gardenias " performed by Maria Rita for a beginning Spanish lesson on expressions of love. My other favorite group used Hi5 to appeal to small children. I had never heard of this show, but apparently it is popular with small children. My other favorite group did not use a song. They used a really cool game of Clue. I will link to Mieca's site and ask her to share the title...