Free Resources for Foreign Language Teachers

The Language Shaping Team offers workshops on designing your own thematic units. Both the presentations and the resources are available here for attendees to review and for new teachers to discover. To share the resources with colleagues please send them to our website www.languageshaping.com. Video presentations require the flash plugin. and the documents require Microsoft Word, Microsoft Publisher or Adobe Acrobat. The workshops are organized by topic:

All sorts of ideas3 Modes of Communication

We design our instruction to train students to perform in the 3 modes from ACTFL Performance Guidelines: Interpersonal, Interpretive and Presentational.

Interpersonal Templates

Teachers often tell us that they have difficulty creating, managing, and assessing interpersonal tasks for novice and intermediate learners. This presentation offers several quick ideas for using the templates to generate student-centered interpersonal tasks. We also offer rubrics based on the ACTFL Performance Guidelines for assessing novice and intermediate students.

Interpretive Strategies

This short presentation highlights the reading strategies section from our larger workshop in literature-based units. It demonstrates ways that the foreign language classroom can reinforce literacy skills from English language arts. It includes quick tips for impressing your principal and collaborating with other subject areas.

 

Presentational Templates

We offer several rubics based on the ACTFL Performance Guidelines to evaluate novice and intermediate performances. There are also suggestions for managing performances in the classroom. Finally we list some examples of presentational assessments that you can adapt to your classes.

Literature-based Thematic Units

Priscilla Russel and Paris Granville have trained teachers to create their own lessons based on authentic literature at regional and national conferences. They also give workshops for school districts on request. You will find a narrated presenation, teacher handouts and print resources that allow you to use authentic literature as a base for creating language rich lessons that are accessible even to novice-level learners.

Culture-centered Thematic Units

Paris Granville has trained teachers at national conferences and at the national NNELL institute on creating culture-centered thematic units that focus on culture as a contect for communication.

Tips for Filming in Class

Filming your students as they perform in the language is a great way to share their with parents. It doesn't have to be hard.