Whole Class Novels and Building Background Knowledge with Mira Canion

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