This is a response to #Teach2Teach Question 1 from Garrett, about balancing “teaching” and “planning” (full question below). Special thanks to Amy Lenord and Karen Tharrington for starting the #Teach2Teach movement and to those who have responded to their call! Here is Garrett’s question: “How do all these teachers balance the workload between teaching and planning? Now that I am […]
Tag Archives: low prep
Rando Mitem, Your Friend and Mine: using random items to spark conversations
Note: this article is for both teachers and learners. If you are learning on your own or in a small group, you can easily adapt the ideas for your purposes. How many things can you say in your target language about the item in the first picture? What kinds of things can you say? What […]
What You Can Do, I Can Talk About: Using students’ quirky skills to generate language
In the last post we talked about using party tricks as something to talk about in a target language. In a classroom setting, students’ special skills, including party tricks, are a compelling, useful source of content. Just like with a picture, movie, or story, the teacher can use students’ non-linguistic skills either to target specific linguistic […]
“Whatever” Works: Non-Targeted CI Lesson 4, “Frivolity Is the Mother Of Invention”
My second thought when I see this is “Think of all the classy waffles I could make.” This is the Pixel, a customizable waffle maker; you can create your own design by depressing any of the 81 squares. But my first thought is, “This is Non-Targeted CI gold.” That’s right, golden-brown on the breakfast table is straight gold an hour later. […]