Inspired Proficiency

Welcome to Inspired Proficiency and thank you for joining us for episode 9 of season 3. As always, please tweet any takeaways and inspirations to #inspiredproficiency.

Today Ashley chats with Bertha Delgadillo and then for the variety segment she will share more from her classroom and interviews for student portfolios. See detailed shownotes at www.deskfree.wordpress.com

Interview:

Bertha Delgadillo is a teacher from Mexico currently teaching in Savannah, GA. She has been teaching for five years and has taught Spanish at all levels of the high school and has some middle school experience. Bertha is here today to share her story of shifting her classroom to using more Comprehensible Input (CI). See detailed shownotes at www.deskfree.wordpress.com

What does CI mean to Bertha?

• Delivering messages the students can understand
• Her job is to go slow, show pictures, and make sure students are acquiring input
• Repeated exposure and compelling material is necessary

Inspirations:

• Martina Bex and the Comprehensible Classroom
• Mis Clases Locas and Allison Weinhold
• Many other blogs and Facebook communities

Resources and links mentioned on the show:

Guests:

Bertha Delgadillo on Twitter @profedelgadillo and her blog here

Other Resources:

• Martina Bex and the Comprehensible Classroom
• Mis Clases Locas and Allison Weinhold
• NTPRS Facebook page
• Tina Hargaden blog and youtube
• La Maestra Loca blog and youtube
• Ashley's workshops in MA
• How to use Google sites for portfolios
• How to use Google Drive for portfolios
• How to use Youtube for portfolios
• Seesaw
• Flipgrid

Presenting Sponsor:

• Wayside Publishing #followtheowl

Episode Sponsors:

• ACTFL Membership

Stand up for all language educators –join today! And if you join online at actfl.org using the code "INSPIRED" by May 31, 2019, we'll take 20% off your first year's membership! What are you waiting for?

• Boomalang
• El Mundo de Pepita
• Puentes books from A.C. Quintero & Jennifer Degenhardt

As always, with season 3, see detailed shownotes at www.deskfree.wordpress.com

Welcome to Inspired Proficiency and thank you for joining us for episode 8 of season 3. As always, please tweet any takeaways and inspirations to #inspiredproficiency.

Ashley starts off the podcast talking about this time of year and negativity that can come with it. She mentions some ways to change your mindset and force out the negativity. Detailed notes at www.deskfree.wordpress.com

Ashley chats today with Mira Canion about class novels. There is another giveaway of her novels listen for details!

Interview:

Mira (My-ra) Canion chats with Ashley today about using novels and stories in classrooms. Mira is a teacher, author, and presenter. She has been teaching for 20+ years in Colorado at the middle and high school level. She started learning German when she was in high school and studied as an exchange student. She began as a German teacher and somehow started teaching Spanish with few credits to her background. She traveled to Mexico and lived with a family during the summer and read chapter books to help herself improve. She took intensive classes and watched telenovelas. This hard work inspired her to push students to read more and more to learn a foreign language. She would read books and if they were too hard she couldn't finish them. She wanted to use that motivation to help students understand and still be motivated to keep reading without giving up.

Read detailed notes at www.deskfree.wordpress.com

Resources and links mentioned on the show:

Guests:

Mira Canion on Twitter @mcanion

Buy her books here.

Season 3 Presenting Sponsor:

• Wayside Publishing #followtheowl

This week's episode 8 sponsors:

• ACTFL Membership

Stand up for all language educators –join today! And if you join online at actfl.org using the code "INSPIRED" by May 31, 2019, we'll take 20% off your first year's membership! What are you waiting for?

• Boomalang
• El Mundo de Pepita
• World Language Classroom
• Puentes books from A.C. Quintero & Jennifer Degenhardt

Welcome to Inspired Proficiency and thank you for joining us for episode 7 of season 3. As always, please tweet any takeaways and inspirations to #inspiredproficiency. See detailed show notes at www.deskfree.wordpress.com

Do you want to contribute a blog post for Wayside Publishing with classroom tips, a fun activity, or a success story in the classroom? Head on over to their website to see what types of contributions they are looking for or email [email protected].

Congrats to Caitlin Frantz for winning the last episode giveaway from A.C. Quintero!

This awesome podcast will be coming back in the fall for a fourth season and Wayside Publishing is going to be the presenting sponsor!

On this episode Ashley chats with Kia London. The variety segment offers a few game ideas to add fun at this time of the school year when energy levels from all of us might be low. Ashley is also offering her workshops in Tyngsboro, MA this summer and details are on her website here.

Interview:

Kia London teaches middle school Spanish to grades 6-8 (Novice level) in Northwest Suburb of Chicago, IL. In the past she has also taught high school Spanish grades 9-12 as well as elementary learners.

Kia discusses:

• Incorporating Student Interest into Our Classes

• Student Culture in the Classroom

• Equity in the Classroom

See detailed show notes at www.deskfree.wordpress.com

Variety Segment:

Here are some fun game ideas to help continue to build community within the classroom and lower that affective filter while using language in an authentic way. Ashley is always happy to share these games but it's so much more fun to share them in person so considering heading to a workshop she's running this summer. See detailed show notes at www.deskfree.wordpress.com

Resources and links mentioned on the show:

Guests:

Kia London on Twitter @MaestraLondon

Episode sponsors:

• Wayside Publishing #followtheowl
• ACTFL Membership - If you join online at actfl.org using the code "INSPIRED" by May 31, 2019, we'll take 20% off your first year's membership! What are you waiting for?
• Tina Hargaden and CI Liftoff
• El Mundo de Pepita
• World Language Classroom
• Puentes books from A.C. Quintero & Jennifer Degenhardt

See detailed show notes at www.deskfree.wordpress.com

Welcome to Inspired Proficiency and thank you for joining us for episode 6 of season 3. As always, please tweet any takeaways and inspirations to #inspiredproficiency.

Download the episode here: http://traffic.libsyn.com/inspiredproficiency/IPe6.mp3or listen and subscribe on Apple Podcasts here or find it wherever you listen to podcasts!

On this episode Ashley chats with author A.C. Quintero who is offering a giveaway to Inspired Proficiency listeners! Enter to win a trilogy from author A.C. Quintero by tweeting! Listen for details!

Ashley starts the episode with information about a project in her classroom called Teacher for a Day based on ideas she got from Laura Sexton. Laura was a guest back in season 1 on episode 9. Listen to her episode here.

Teacher for a Day

Students plan, prepare, and lead an entire class period in Spanish. They pick themes, vocabulary words, and activities. Rule of thumb- stick with general words to cover more content and not super specific things. Students can use props and bring their class to life. They hook the other students, do movement, and do a reading and writing activity. The kids come up with awesome material that the teacher can use and play with other classes later on. The content can be anything so the students are really empowered to do a lot with the language and lead really powerful activities. Students might need more help the first year but they quickly realize how much more language they possess year after year and push themselves to be even more creative in the second or third year of the project.

Details and resources can be found at www.deskfree.wordpress.com

Interview:

Alicia Quintero is a Spanish teacher from Chicago. She teaches levels 1 and 4 in an IB school. Some of her readers are available in French but they are all available in Spanish. Alicia has been writing since about 2015 and has been teaching for 14 years. Her writing came from a lot of storytelling in class and she was using this avenue to try to solve problems happening within the classroom.

What does FVR (Free Voluntary Reading) look like your classroom?

It depends on the class and the level of engagement with reading. We as teachers need goals for what we want to accomplish during a reading session. We know that reading bolsters second language acquisition but they can also learn more than that, like a life lesson.

Big Takeaway! Get your students reading and if you have a story to tell, write it! A.C. Quintero is not the only author writing awesome FVR books for World Language classrooms. Go explore all the authors out there and give your students something to be excited about in class!

Continue reading detailed notes at www.deskfree.wordpress.com

Resources and links mentioned on the show:

Guests:

A.C. Quintero

• Alicia's FVR Implementation Strategies
• Twitter @klasekastellano
• Instagram @a.c.quintero
• Website
• Video Promo of New Book
• Places to buy her books
• • Amazon
  • Bryce Hedstrom's website
  • Fluency Matters
  • Carlex
  • Discounted Book Bundles and Resources at Novels and Resources by AC Quintero

Other resources:

• Shownotes for Inspired Proficiency Podcast
• Visit Profe Ashley here
• Laura Sexton (PBL in the TL) on Twitter @sraspanglish
• IB schools
• El Internado
• Bryce Hedstrom

Episode sponsors:

• Wayside Publishing #followtheowl
• ACTFL Mentoring Program
• Tina Hargaden
• El Mundo de Pepita
• Puentes books from A.C. Quintero & Jennifer Degenhardt

Welcome to Inspired Proficiency and thank you for joining us for episode 4 of season 3. As always, please tweet any takeaways and inspirations to #inspiredproficiency. As always, find detailed notes from Season 3 at www.deskfree.wordpress.com

Ashley is offering workshops this summer from August 14-16, 2019. You can find more information here on her website, deskfree.org

On this episode Ashley chats with the hilarious Sarah Breckley who lives and breathes adding fun and laughter to everyday teaching. Then Ashley herself walks us through a big reset she did with one of her classes that was struggling to not use English in class.

Interview:

Sarah Breckley teaches Spanish 2 to high schoolers in rural Reedsburg, WI. You may know Sarah as Fiona from Señor Wooly's video Feo. She travels with her students and does homestays and does a lot of communicative activities in her classroom. She films a lot of her classes to share with other teachers on Youtube and Vlog. Sarah is a huge advocate for teachers to find the courage to post a video of yourself teaching and sharing videos of the amazing things we're all doing in our classrooms. She wants us to know that she watched many videos of other educators before making her own so she may be a huge proponent of sharing your awesomeness in the classroom through video but she was not the first one to be so brave.

Sarah had A LOT of amazing information to share with us about movement and games. For those detailed notes, visit www.deskfree.wordpress.com

Variety:

Ashley walks us through a reset with a struggling class this year. Ashley and the class had been struggling along all year and most of her regular techniques to help struggling classes had not been working. They stopped everything they were doing towards language acquisition and got together as a group to problem solve and get back on track.

The problem: Students would come in and not quite know what to do. They're supposed to come in, stand in a circle, and we start chatting and moving into a game. They were not understanding this process and were still using English when they weren't supposed to. They were not committed to all target language use. They would argue when they didn't understand or weren't being understood and wouldn't take the time to stay in the TL and revert to English.

For the solution and resources she mentioned as well as detailed notes, visit www.deskfree.wordpress.com

Resources and links mentioned on the show:

Guests:

Sarah Breckley on Twitter @SarahBreckley

Ashley Uyaguari on Twitter @profeashley

Other resources:

• Visit Profe Ashley here
• Sarah Breckley's vlog
• Tina Hargaden YouTube
• Alina Filipescu YouTube
• MovieTalk
• PictureTalk
• FVR (Free Voluntary Reading)
• GymVirtual YouTube
• TPR Total Physical Response
• Developmental Designs

Episode sponsors:

• Wayside Publishing #followtheowl
• ACTFL Mentoring Program
• Boomalang
• El Mundo de Pepita
• World Language Classroom
• Puentes books from A.C. Quintero & Jennifer Degenhardt

For detailed notes on both segments, visit www.deskfree.wordpress.com

Welcome to Inspired Proficiency and thank you for joining us for episode 4 of season 3. As always, please tweet any takeaways and inspirations to #inspiredproficiency.

On this episode Ashley chats with Jim Wooldridge, aka Señor Wooly. In the variety segment Ashley talks to Audrey O'Clair from soundtrap: an audio recording platform that's like a robust combination of google drive and garage band.

Interview:

Ashley and Jim begin their chat talking about Wooly Week. Jim and his team released a new original song for Wooly Week in February. Wooly Week is a celebration of all things Señor Wooly. They currently have many materials for Spanish of all levels and have just started adding some French materials to their repertoire. They also released integrated professional development within the resources for the new song. Instead of just releasing a song to enjoy and click play in the classroom, Jim and his team worked really hard to make sure that Wooly Week 2019 was full of ALL the possible ideas teachers could do with the songs and stories on the site to make them comprehensible for their students. Teachers were challenged to try new activities while participating and earning raffle tickets to enter the contest for Wooly Week.

Teachers who use SeñorWooly.com can join the Woology Facebook group to collaborate and share ideas. Jim talked about how amazing the teachers who participated in Wooly Week were because they really stepped up to the challenge to connect with each other through Facebook and push their students to higher proficiency levels. Jim is excited for Wooly Week 2020 and has lots of new ideas to share from what he has learned from the first three Wooly Week experiences. Read more detailed notes at www.deskfree.wordpress.com

Variety:

Ashley chats with Audrey O'Claire from Maine who works with Soundtrap, an online recording studio that is user friendly. It is a way to collaborate digitally on voice and music creations. Audrey mentions Noah Geisel and how they worked together to Flashbuild some music programs through Soundtrap at CCFLT in Denver.

Resources and links mentioned on the show:

Guests:

Jim Wooldridge on Twitter @senorwooly

Audrey O'Clair on Twitter @audreyoclair, [email protected]

Other resources:

• Señorwooly.com
• Facebook group: Woology
• Soundtrap
• Noah Geisel on Twitter @SenorG
• Flasbuilding sunglasses app at Nordstrom
• Ela Ben-Ur creator of the Innovator's Compass
• Using the Innovator's Compass
• Michael Cohen The Tech Rabbi
• Lots of ideas how to use Soundtrap in ANY classroom

Episode sponsors:

• Wayside Publishing #followtheowl
• ACTFL Center for Assessment, Research, and Development (CARD)
• Comprehensifying and Extending Authentic Resources
• Voces Digital: Nuestra Historia
• El Mundo de Pepita
• Puentes books from A.C. Quintero & Jennifer Degenhardt

Read more detailed notes at www.deskfree.wordpress.com

Welcome to Inspired Proficiency and thank you for joining us for episode 3 of season 3. As always, please tweet any takeaways and inspirations to #inspiredproficiency.

The third episode of season three is a first for Inspired Proficiency. Host, Ashley Uyaguari is interviewed by Wendy Farabaugh about how she makes her classroom student centered. The variety segment interviews Haydee Arnold Taylor and how she brings STEM into the world language classroom.

Wendy Farabaugh teachers French 1 and AP French in Ohio. She participates in #langchat as a moderator on Twitter working behind the scenes to figure out which topics are most interesting to participants. Wendy credits #langchat to helping her stay in the teacher profession and help her find like minded people to connect with.

Resources and links mentioned on the show:

Guests:

Ashley Uyaguari on Twitter @profeashley

Wendy Farabaugh on Twitter @MmeFarab

Haydee Arnold Taylor on Twitter @Sra_Arnold

Other resources:

Season 1 Inspired Proficiency Episode 3 with Kristopher Morehead

Visit Profe Ashley

#langchat on Twitter

ACTL proficiency guidelines

OPI (Oral Proficiency Interview) interview

YouTube

La Maestra Loca

Sarah Breckley

STEM

21st century skills

Episode sponsors:

• Wayside Publishing #followtheowl
• ACTFL Center for Assessment, Research, and Development (CARD)
• Tina Hargaden join her mailing list for weekly updates
• Voces Digital: Nuestra Historia
• El Mundo de Pepita
• World Language Classroom
• Puentes books from A.C. Quintero & Jennifer Degenhardt

Read detailed notes at www.deskfree.wordpress.com

Welcome to Inspired Proficiency and thank you for joining us for episode 2 of season 3. As always, please tweet any takeaways and inspirations to #inspiredproficiency.

On the second episode Ashley continues her conversation with Rebecca Blouwolff, the NECTFL 2019 teacher of the year, about high leverage teaching practices. Rebecca teaches 7th and 8th grade French at Wellesley Middle School, a suburb of Boston, MA. Ashley also chats with Jennifer Bilby about her fame among Spanish teachers who use Señor Wooly.

Ashley is offering her 3rd annual 3 day workshop this summer 2019 in Tyngsboro, MA.

8/14 Proficiency and Target Language Strategies

8/15 Assessment and Feedback Practices Through Proficiency Portfolios

8/16 Community Building Themes and Team Challenges in the Target Language

Episode:

Rebecca has already shared with us about Facilitating Target Language Comprehensibility and today she continues today with Building a Target Language Discourse Community. All her ideas come from reading the book Enacting the Work of Language Instruction: High Leverage Teaching Practices by Glisan & Donato.

Building a Target Language Discourse Community describes talking to your students and getting them to speak to you in the target language. Several strategies involving visual assists to hold kids accountable are discussed to promote target language use. It is a culture that needs to be built and cultivated within the classroom and that takes time. See more details at www.deskfree.wordpress.com

Variety Segment:

Ashley also interviews Jennifer Bilby and her new found fame after being in the new song released for Wooly Week. She teaches Spanish at Pequea Valley High School in Lancaster, PA. Jennifer Bilby won Wooly Week 2017 two years ago and has been patiently awaiting her original song written by the genius himself, Señor Wooly. He shared the song with all of those participating in Wooly Week for an engaging week (or two) filled with excitement for students and professional development for teachers. Her favorite part of her original song is the dancing in the limousine.

She also answers some listener questions from Facebook to talk about how her life has changed since the song debuted. Señor Wooly is a great to bring joy and fun to the learning of Spanish with great music and stories. Jennifer also mentions how great Wooly Week was for teachers and even though not everyone could complete all of the activities, they work with ALL stories and you just modify the activities to work with what you are doing. The activities shared during Wooly Week help teachers to pull out all the elements of language from the song and story.

Resources and links mentioned on the show:

Guests:

Rebecca Blouwolff on Twitter @MmeBlouwolff and her blog https://mmeblouwolff.weebly.com

Jennifer Bilby

Books:

Enacting the Work of Language Instruction: High Leverage Teaching Practices by Glisan & Donato

While We're on the Topic by Bill Van Patten (BVP)

Other resources:

Rebecca's blog post on her 6 hour session on High Leverage Teaching Practices with Dr. Catherine Ritz (on Twitter @ritzforeignlang) and their slides

#langchat on Twitter (What is LangChat?)

TALK rubric

Episode sponsors:

• Wayside Publishing
• ACTFL Center for Assessment, Research, and Development (CARD)
• Voces Digital: Nuestra Historia
• Señor Wooly
• El Mundo de Pepita
• Tina Hargaden
• Puentes books from A.C. Quintero & Jennifer Degenhardt

Welcome back to Inspired Proficiency and thank you for joining us on our journey into season 3. As always, please tweet any takeaways and inspirations to #inspiredproficiency.

On the first episode Ashley talks about high leverage teaching practices with Rebecca Blouwolff, the NECTFL 2019 teacher of the year. Rebecca teaches 7th and 8th grade French at Wellesley Middle School, a suburb of Boston, MA.

Rebecca walks Ashley through one of two high leverage teaching practices she recently presented at the NECTFL conference in New York City. These practices talk more about how to teach and not what to teach. Her ideas come from reading the book Enacting the Work of Language Instruction: High Leverage Teaching Practices by Glisan & Donato. Rebecca describes the importance of watching, doing, and experiencing training to get better at what you're doing and how it important is for teachers to participate when trying new teaching practices.

Big takeaway from the first high leverage teaching practice: Using the Target Language (TL) in class with the kids is the most important thing you can do. We are privileged to be able to provide that environment for our students and get to know them through the language.

For the variety segment, Profe Ashley also plays a fun trivia game with Pamela Russell (@pammycakes_87) and Melanie Thomas (@senoraMThomas). She asks questions about the first two seasons of Inspired Proficiency. Thanks to Pamela and Melanie for playing and thanks to everyone who helped support this podcast into its third season!

Resources and links mentioned on the show:

Guests:

• Rebecca Blouwolff
• • Twitter @MmeBlouwolff
  • Blog https://mmeblouwolff.weebly.com

Books:

• Enacting the Work of Language Instruction: High Leverage Teaching Practices by Glisan & Donato
• Total Participation Techniques by Himmele & Himmele

Other resources:

• Rebecca's blog post on her 6 hour session on High Leverage Teaching Practices with Dr. Catherine Ritz (on Twitter @ritzforeignlang)
• • Their slides
• Greg Duncan's TELL project article "Engaging Language Learners" with references to Total Participation Techniques book
• Shelby County Public Schools
• Total Participation Techniques Resources from Shelby County Public Schools
• Language Specific Hold Ups in many languages from Shelby County Public Schools

Episode sponsors:

• Wayside Publishing
• ACTFL Center for Assessment, Research, and Development
• Comprehensifying and Extending Authentic Resources
• Señor Wooly
• El Mundo de Pepita
• World Language Classroom
• Voces Digital
• Puentes books from A.C. Quintero & Jennifer Degenhardt

For detailed notes on the interview visit: www.deskfree.wordpress.com after 3pm on the day it's released.

Our final episode of this season was inspired by Alison Moran. She suggested it'd be a great idea to host a large "teacher share" to end the year. As always, please tweet out any takeaways to #inspiredproficiency and share what inspires you!

Inga Paterson-Zuniga: Montclair, New Jersey, 7th Grade Spanish, Twitter feed: @IngalaG2, Blog: joyofci.com

Ryan Casey: Lexington High School (Lexington, MA), Spanish teacher; Twitter: @rcaseyLHS

Cherish Reale: Woodbridge, VA Spanish Twitter and Instagram handle is @VTBandera School St Thomas Aquinas Regional School

Angela Williams, Savannah, GA, Spanish teacher, Twitter handle: @AngelaWEducator

Alison Moran, French FLES, Atlanta. Twitter Madame Moran @AlisonM1936595

Stephanie Carbonneau, French, York, ME

In this episode, we talk about…

• Suggestions for "Star of the Day"
• Using authentic games from a target culture
• Tips for using puppets to create dialogue and comprehensible input
• Ways to maximize class time using independent reading
• Ideas for using images for language acquisition, diversity, social issues
• Tapping into resources at your school and on social media
• How to use the "UnLucky Reading Game"

Resources and Links mentioned on the show:

Bryce Hedstrom

Tina Hargaden

Brandon Brown Wants a Dog

Capibara Con Botas

Juego de la Oca

Alice Ayel

Inga Paterson-Zuniga Blog

Duolingo

Dollar Street

Peter Menzel