A Library of Classroom Practices

Every month I receive the newsletter from Annenberg Media which is always full of great links and resources for teachers. There is one resource that I particularly wanted to share with you - Teaching Foreign Languages K-12, A Library of Classroom Practices. From the website:

The Teaching Foreign Languages K-12 video library and professional development guide bring to life the Standards for Foreign Language Learning in the 21st Century. Illustrating effective instruction and assessment strategies, the series documents 27 teachers and their students in K-12 classrooms around the country as they study eight languages across a range of competency levels.

The components of the library are the introduction, standards and the five Cs, assessment strategies, classroom programs, and a professional development guide. Spanish, Latin, German, Japanese, French, Chinese, Russian and Italian are the eight languages included in the library.

For example, here are the lessons for Spanish:

Creating Travel Advice
Food Facts and Stories
Fruits of the Americas
Hearing Authentic Voices
Interpreting Literature
Interpreting Picasso's Guernica
Politics of Art
Routes to Culture

Where to go:
Library of Classroom Practices: http://www.learner.org/libraries/tfl/
Newsletter sign-up: http://www.learner.org/mailman/listinfo/updates

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Keep track of your language learning

While learning a language you might want to record what you have learned and what you would like to learn. The LinguaFolio is the perfect tool for this. From the web site:

LinguaFolio is designed for use by students and educators in secondary schools and in universities as well as for adult learners. Businesses and community employers may choose to use the document to profile language proficiency of their employees or job applicants.

LinguaFolio is designed to assist students with guidance from their instructors in assessing and describing individual language skills and to facilitate articulation from high school to the university level. The three sections of the portfolio are available to teachers and students for building individual portfolios in notebooks and/or as electronic files.

LinguaFolio should facilitate the earning of college credit for language study completed in high school or in transfer agreements among colleges by providing evidence of language learning experiences and intercultural experiences.

There are three parts: the Language Passport, Language Biography and the Dossier which are available in PDF format where applicable.

For younger learners, there is the LinguaFolio Jr. I have used this with my elementary-age student to assess what he knew and what he would like to learn. His mother commented that she really enjoyed filling it out with her son and that it gave her a clearer picture of what he had learned from previous Spanish classes and where he still needed help.

Some sample questions from the language biography section:

What helps me understand when I read words in another language?
What goals do I have for learning a language?
What activities help me pronounce words like my teacher says them?

You will also find a checklist for each level (novice, intermediate, advanced) and activity (speaking, listening, reading, writing). You can assess your child four times a year or fill it out over several years to track his/her progress. Here's a screenshot of a small part of the Advanced section under Speaking:

The LinguaFolio and the LinguaFolio Jr. can be very useful tools in school or at home to keep track of your language learning progress or the progress of your child.

(Here's a link to the Junior European Language Portfolio and the link to the adult version.)
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