Howdy everyone. I’m excited to let you in on a great opportunity.
This September, my friend Jared Romey is hosting a 5 day online event packed full of incredible strategies for how World Language teachers can engage and motivate their students to learn and speak a language.
Whether you’re a beginner or have been at this for a long time, you’ll find tons of great ideas and actionable info from world-class experts such as Rachel Lucas, Tina Hargaden, Meredith White, Noah Geisel, Joe Dale, Elisabeth Alvarado, Julie Speno, Allison Wienhold, Lisa Shepard and many more. And I’ve got a video about Bringing SSR to World Languages that you should definitely check out!
To help you keep track of it all and get the most out of the event, Jared just released the 2019 World Language Teacher Summit Playbook.
This guide includes a schedule of each of the masterclasses throughout the summit (World Language Teacher Summit covers everything from Inspiring Curiosity in the World Language Class, Comprehensible Input with Non-Readers, Effective and Efficient Grading Practices, How to Manage Large Classes and much more!).
You can click the image above or right here to check out what the conference offers.
Heads up, though: This conference is free only this week (Monday – Friday). After that, you have to pay. So, get on it this week. There’s literally dozens of hours of great PD topics.
Just last night, I was floored by Jon Cowart’s video on Classroom Management. He’s famous for his behavior strategies that help teachers with their tough classes. He’s worked his whole career as a CI teacher in an urban setting! I had some great take-aways that I started implementing today, IMMEDIATELY!
- Always, always, always have a bellringer that is so easy students don’t have to ask questions about it. In level 2 (my class load this year), my reading program was the bellringer until today. Students were expected to walk into class, get their book, and start reading silently. Well, that just wasn’t happening for my last-block class right now–a rowdy, challenging group. So, Jon convinced me to return to the projected bellringer on the board, and to write the instructions in English so that there can be no misunderstanding. At times, especially at the beginning of the year, students have been confused by the instructions in Spanish, which ruins the whole thing.
- Jon didn’t say this, but another take-away I got for beginning-of-class procedures was to communicate to kids that they are going to be counted tardy if they don’t have their book and aren’t seated when the bell rings. Right now, some social boys are hooting and hollering in the front of class, just visiting and having a good time. I’ve got to curb that!
- Jon reinforced to me the importance of having quality, graded assignments each class, even if they are short, exit-ticket style formative assessments. The point is, kids need to know they are on the hook for whether they are paying attention during the Input in class. Without this graded assignment, there’s no bite to my expectation that they maintain eye contact and really try to understand what I say. So, THIS MORNING, I started leaning on my Timekeeper more heavily. I’ve had them set a timer that alerts me when there are 25 minutes left in class. That’s plenty of time to shut the Input down, do a Write and Discuss (5-10 minutes), re-read (5 minutes) and then assess (10 minutes). Thanks Jon!
Unfortunately, it’s past the free 48 hour window for Jon’s email, so you’ll have to pay for the conference permanent access to watch it. But it serves as a wonderful example of all the valuable free PD available through Friday. So, go check it out here!
ComprehensibleRVA 