Blog

Role play for young learners? Yes, please! It’s no secret: in early language education (and even in middle and high school!), finger puppets are a win! Somehow, sometimes, it seems less intimidating to pretend you’re a puppet speaking Spanish rather than be yourself speaking Spanish.  Of course, young children usually love any kind of role […]

Learning in general is often more successful with bold practice and a willingness to make mistakes. Overcorrection from teachers, however, can discourage learners.  In the September 21 #Langchat, teachers discussed how to correct student output while still encouraging them to put forth effort. – Follow the blog on Bloglovin – Determining the Errors to Correct […]

Do students benefit from doing homework? In their September 14 chat, #Langchat teachers discussed how to get the most out of assigning homework for World Language students. Reasons to Assign Homework #Langchat teachers shared some of the reasons they assign homework for their world language students. @MmeFarab shared, “these days, homework [is given] to finish […]

So, how are you today? ¿Cómo estás? It’s one of the first things we teach our learners to understand and answer, and for good reason.  Particularly young children will hear “How old are you?” quite a bit, and of course “What’s your name?” but right up there in the most common questions anyone hears in any […]

Teaching individual goal setting can be a challenging, yet useful tactic to encourage growth in a World Language Classroom. This #langchat discussion looked at all of the possibilities, tools, and benefits to setting goals for world language students. Types of Student Goals World Language teachers want their students to succeed and aspire to gain proficiency […]

Language and culture are tightly interrelated. This week, #langchat participants took a deeper look into what it means to integrate culture into their World Language classrooms. – Follow the blog on Bloglovin – Cultural Topics that Make a Strong Unit #Langchat teachers discussed some great cultural topics that make for strong units inside the World […]

How can we help our kindergarten learners be successful in their Spanish language journey?  In this post, we offer some tips from the trenches of that sunny-yet-conflicted zone called kindergarten. 1. Establish successful routines. All elementary children thrive on routine, but we’ve especially seen this in kindergarten.  These learners have moved from a primarily play-to-learn environment in […]

They changed the Spanish alphabet… As we recently blogged, in 2010 the Real Academia Española made some rather significant changes to the official Spanish alphabet.  Let’s review what those were: The letters ch and ll were removed; they are now considered “digraphs.” The new name of “y” is ye. The only name for “B” is be. The only name for “V” […]

#Langchat teachers gathered once again last Thursday to collaborate and converse about strategies and advice for conquering that first day back to school. – Follow the blog on Bloglovin – Day 1 Essentials #Langchat teachers shared some key techniques and activities to making the first day back in the classroom a success. On day one, […]

Are you a teacher who has recently subscribed to the Calico Spanish Stories Program and wants to know what content you can share with parents at home?  We often receive this question – time for a blog post to answer it! What’s Calico Spanish Stories? Calico Spanish Stories is our all-digital program developed to fill a […]