Gaslight

The Class That Just Won’t Talk

Planning and Grading Struggle Bus

Accountable Reading

Explicitly Talking About Why We Do What We Do

Gatekeep

Book Study Takeaways

Synonym Stacking

Pronunciation Fun

Girlboss

Having a Unit Framework Slays!

Kicking Butt and Taking Names

References

Social Accounts:

Facebook

Bluesky

Instagram

The Partner Speaking / Q+A Game

Bill’s Unit Planning Framework

Independent Textivities from the Comprehensible Classroom

Bill’s Post for the Educational Knowledge Network: Podcasts as Tools for Knowledge Brokers: How We’re Working to Make Evidence Accessible, Relevant, and Actionable

SLAyyy: Second Language Acquisition for Everyone Website

Gaslight

Grammar as a Concept

Do ACTFL levels describe language development?

Use of the L2 in Grammar Explanations

Balancing Authentic/Found Resources and Created Resources

Gatekeep - Proficiency-Based Instruction: Teaching Grammar for Proficiency by Ritz and Travers

Teaching Grammar? Start with Input!

Referential and Affective Tasks in Structured Input

Bill Talks about SI and Eats It Up

Performance and Proficiency

Girlboss

Form-Focused Feedback

Structured Input 2: Electric Boogaloo

Rethinking Our Relationship to Grammar

References

Social Accounts:

Facebook

Bluesky

Instagram

Stacy’s BlueSky Account

Language Learner Literature Advisory Board - reviews of readers for issues of identity/bias

Stacy’s Session at ACTFL 2025: Friday, 4:30pm, Room 213

Ben’s SideBar at ACTFL 2025: Saturday, 11-11:45am

Common Ground: Second Language Acquisition Theory Goes to the Classroom by Henshaw and Hawkins

Timothy Chavez’ Instagram Account - language teaching research and practice

Artists:

Ben Fisher-Rodriguez, Bill Langley

Main Points

SLAyyy: Second Language Acquisition for Everyone Website

Gaslight

Parking on New Vocabulary

Allowing for Negotiating Meaning

Talking Ourselves Out of Using the TL

Gatekeep - Adu, Michael & Abunya, Levina & Owusu, Edward & Budu, Gifty. (2025). THE IMPACT OF INTERACTION ON SECOND-LANGUAGE ACQUISITION AND LISTENING. 31-42.

Input + Interaction

Quantity + Redundancy + Complexity

Girlboss

Teach to the Eyes (Despite the “Gen Z Stare”)

Teaching Students How to React

Synonym Stacking

MODEL EVERYTHING

References

Proficiency-Based Instruction: Teaching Grammar for Proficiency by Ritz and Travers

Social Accounts:

Facebook

Bluesky

Instagram

Bill’s Rules

Ben’s TL Usage Reflection

Dr. Liam Printer and The Motivated Classroom Podcast

Carrie Toth’s “Discussion Thursdays”

Krashen and Mason: “Comprehension-Aiding Supplementation”

Gaslight

What is it that we want to / have to teach?

There Is No Faking a Storyteller’s Intention

“One Day, You Will Have a Real Conversation”

Gatekeep - Jim Wooldridge

What does the life of a kid look like?

The Novelty Disappears - What is the Driving Reason?

Start With Your Problem and Communicative Purpose

Girlboss

Know Your Context and Know Your Students

Bring Diverse Stories to the Classroom

Tell Your Stories, Explore How to Make Other Stories Work

Does the repetition “teach the structure,” or serve the story?

References

Proficiency-Based Instruction: Teaching Grammar for Proficiency by Ritz and Travers

Social Accounts:

Facebook

Bluesky

Instagram

Woology Facebook Group

Conversations About Language Teaching Podcast

SLAyyy: Second Language Acquisition for Everyone Website

Gaslight

Challenge and Accommodation

The Neverending Rubric

Time Investment

Stuck Between a Rock and a Hard Place

Gatekeep - Tajik, O., Noor, S. & Golzar, J. Investigating differentiated instruction and the contributing factors to cater EFL students’ needs at the collegial level. Asian. J. Second. Foreign. Lang. Educ. 9, 74 (2024).

Universal Design for Learning (UDL)

Content, Process, Product, Learning Environment

Girlboss

Diverse Tips for Differentiating!

References

Proficiency-Based Instruction: Teaching Grammar for Proficiency by Ritz and Travers

Social Accounts:

Facebook

Bluesky

Instagram

Feedback Options (via Meredith White)

SLAyyy: Second Language Acquisition for Everyone Website

Gaslight

Everything Will Work Out in the End (Maybe?)

The Critical Period

Relationship to One’s Own Accent

Gatekeep - Vijay A Ramjattan, Imagining an anti-racist pronunciation pedagogy, ELT Journal, Volume 78, Issue 3, July 2024, Pages 318–325

Webinar on the Same Topic

Refusal - Relational - Activist

Girlboss

Parking on the Language to Enjoy It!

How do we frame pronunciation to our students and colleagues?

Butter Ladder

References

Proficiency-Based Instruction: Teaching Grammar for Proficiency by Ritz and Travers

Social Accounts:

Facebook

Bluesky

Instagram

Bill’s Article About Podcasts as Means of Knowledge Brokering

Growing with Proficiency: The Podcast by Claudia Elliott

Other People’s Children by Lisa Delpit

SLAyyy: Second Language Acquisition for Everyone Website

Gaslight

Missing Out on Kindergarten Day

Kids Books Are For the Adults

Bored During Shared Reading

Gatekeep -

Reading Children’s Books Rule

How many repetitions do they need?

Use of L1 to Get Back to the L2

Program Length, Abstraction, Home Language

Girlboss

Park and Pause

Comprehension-Based Reader Storybooks

Picture Talk

Story Listening

Justice for Kindergarten Day

References

Proficiency-Based Instruction: Teaching Grammar for Proficiency by Ritz and Travers

Social Accounts:

Facebook

Bluesky

Instagram

El último árbol - Margarita Perez Garcia

No somos amigos - Señor Wooly

Story Listening and Guided Self-Selected Reading

Gaslight

New Technology! Goals?

Overreliance

Aligning Classroom with Values

Gatekeep - Ivenz, P., & Polakova, P. (2024). Gen Z students and their perceptions of technology in the process of second language acquisition based on the language proficiency level. Arab World English Journal, 15(3), 3-17.

Girlboss

Nuanced Discussion with Students

References

Proficiency-Based Instruction: Teaching Grammar for Proficiency by Ritz and Travers

Facebook

Bluesky

Instagram

Deepl Write

The Emerging Problem of “AI Psychosis” - Psychology Today

What Are AI Hallucinations? - IBM

New Study Suggests Using AI Made Doctors Less Skilled at Spotting Cancer - TIME

Explained: Generative AI’s environmental impact - MIT News

America’s Digital Demand Threatens Black Communities with More Pollution - Capital B News

Bias in AI - Chapman University

AI teacher tools display racial bias when generating student behavior plans, study finds - Chalkbeat

SchoolAI

Gaslight

We explore the common challenges of using TV series in class: the major investment of time and prep, the difficulty of finding content that is both engaging and linguistically appropriate, and the eternal struggle over which subtitles to use.

Gatekeep

We unpack research showing how to make video work for listening proficiency, based on Zakar & Zippo (2023).

• The Study: Researchers had third-semester German students watch short (~3 min) episodes of a learner telenovela weekly. They watched with no captions after reviewing vocabulary and comprehension questions.
• Key Findings: This simple, consistent routine led to significant growth in listening proficiency, more than in the control group. The study confirms that going caption-free, while challenging, is highly effective for building listening skills.
• Citation: Zakar, & Zippo, L. L. (2023). Effects of extended exposure to video in the language classroom on listening proficiency. Die Unterrichtspraxis/Teaching German.

Girlboss

Here’s how to apply the research in your classroom:

• Simplify: You don’t need complex activities. A routine of previewing vocab and questions is enough to see results. Consistency over complexity.
• Embrace It: If a show is cheesy, make fun of it with your students to generate low-stakes discussion.
• Get Intentional: Plan a series viewing into your curriculum so it doesn't get pushed aside.
• Recommendations:German: Jojo sucht das Glück, Nicos Weg, Hallo aus Berlin, Nailed It! GermanySpanish: Tierra Incógnita, Gran Hotel, Casi Ángeles, Go! Vive a tu manera, EduNovela French: Extr@, Grand Coeur

Housekeeping

• Book Study: Join us on social media (Blue Sky, Threads, Facebook) to read Proficiency Based Instruction: Teaching Grammar for Proficiency by Ritz & Travers. The discussion starts the week of August 18th. Get the book from ACTFL.
• Support the Podcast: Help us cover costs by contributing at slayyypod.com.
• Review: Please leave a rating and review to help others find the show!

Gaslight: Rethinking the Traditional Writing Assignment

The typical solo writing assignment has key limitations.

• Isolated Process: Students lack immediate peer feedback when writing alone.
• Delayed Feedback: The traditional "red pen" is often demotivating and inefficient.
• Missed Learning: Students can't pool linguistic knowledge or learn from each other's strengths.

Gatekeep: The Research on Collaborative Writing

Students writing together is a core learning activity, not just group work.

• The Article: Davison, I., Vega, J. L. M., Chew, S. Y., & Gallagher, M. (2025). Assessing the Learning Potential of Second Language Student Interaction in Collaborative Writing. Theory and Practice in Language Studies, 15(5), 1410–1419. https://doi.org/10.17507/tpls.1505.05
• Collaborative Writing: Two or more students work together to produce a single text.
• Language-Related Episodes (LREs): The crucial conversations where students negotiate language use (word choice, grammar, organization).
• Key Finding: The study found that peer feedback during collaborative writing was overwhelmingly correct (only 7 of 470 instances were incorrect), making it a reliable and powerful source of learning.

Girlboss: Making Collaborative Writing Work in Your Classroom

Adapt the strategy for any level with practical, low-prep activities.

• Write and Discuss: Model collaboration by co-creating a text with the whole class after a shared experience. Use pop-up grammar to model LREs.
• Dictogloss: Have students work in groups to reconstruct a short text they heard. This focuses collaboration on language rather than content creation.
• Formative Practice: Use collaborative writing as a low-stakes practice run before a similar individual assessment to build skills and confidence.
• Information Sandwich: Students with different texts pair up to synthesize their unique information into a single, co-written piece.

Resources Mentioned

• Honing Our Craft (Henshaw & Potowski)
• Anne-Marie Chase on AP Spanish
• languageley.com (Pets unit)
• The World Language Classroom Podcast
• Somewhere to Share (Carrie Toth)