GETTING STARTED
Welcome to our language teacher community!
Scroll down for an overview of what’s on the site.
Here are some quick walk-throughs of the main pages on this website
Member Home Page
Unit Page
Lesson Page
Check out all the units there are!
This can be your complete curriculum
or
support what you are already doing
EVERY unit includes these documents. Click on the icon to learn more.
Unit Overview
Every unit has a planning page that includes all 5 C’s from ACTFL. If you don’t plan for it, it won’t happen. These are our WL standards, so we want to give you lots of ideas to incorporate a few of them in every unit.
Objective Sheets
This was originally called a “stamp sheet” and now it’s so much more. We believe one step to turning “students” into “learners” is to let them know what they will be learning and letting them track their progress.
Experiences
This is a choice board of homework experiences to let them see the language is real while covering additional standards, specifically culture, community, and interculturality.
Performance Assessments
This is what it all leads to… let’s give a real world scenario and see what they can do. These open-ended assessments focus on the reason they are taking our class – they want to communicate for a real purpose.
There are two types of units:
Planner Unit
Unit Docs + Resources to get you started
(orange border)
Complete Unit
Unit Docs + Resources + Complete Lessons
(white border)
What’s on the unit page…
You do not need to download anything from here to teach. Just project it on the board and scroll through it as you go.
If the formatting is off, try this:
- Make the website “full screen” on your internet browser
- Change the browser zoom to 100%
Teaching Tip: Bring up the lesson on a second device (your phone, iPad, etc). Use that to have the teaching directions available while you teach.
We think awesome images and graphics make the lessons more interesting. Our pages are full of high resolution images, so expect pages to load slowly the first time you visit it.
Good access to internet is important since lessons connect to current authentic resources. Due to copyrights, you will need to visit these outside sources.
For documents that are in color that you want to print in black/white, try printing in “grayscale” to help with the quality when copying in black/white.
If you are finding that documents are not printing correctly, try googling the printer’s brand and model plus the problem. Many times the issue can be easily solved by adjusting printer settings. For example, there is one setting called “Print to fit page” or “Print to scale” that will ensure that the document fits on the page correctly.
Option 1: When printing from a PDF program like Adobe, click “Fit” or try some of the other options that have to do with the sizing.
Option 2: You may have to change the “SCALE” from 100% to a lower number.
We use PDFs to maintain the unique formatting and fonts that we use… But sometimes you may want to modify a PDF to personalize it for your class and students.
Here are a few options you can use:
- Kami Extension: This is an extension for the Chrome Browser. Check it out!
- 123apps.com: This is a free website with PDF tools. You upload the PDF to edit it, change it to a different type of document, and more.
- Adobe: You’ll need to purchase this, but many schools have this available to you.
- Good ol’ text box with a white background. Yep, old school, but it works!
Unfortunatly, our images are not editable (that we know of) by using these things above, except the good ol’ text box. We use several programs to make them, so email us if there’s an error.
We love videos! They include it all – language, culture and real people. Here are tips to using videos in class.
1. Preview all videos before showing. You make the decision if it is appropriate for your schools’ climate and your students.
2. Slow down the video if needed.
Click on “Settings,” and then “Speed.”
Change to .75 or lower to slow the video down.
3. Another feature some videos have is Closed Captions (Click the “CC”).
4. Create a YouTube account that you will use only for school. Commercials on YouTube pop up based on your language setting and search history. Set the target language and search only for school-related videos so the commercials have a possibility to be connected to class. It’s neat to see familiar brands advertise in other languages! If commercials are an issue or annoyance, you can purchase “YouTube Red” to remove them permanently.
Note: All videos are linked to the original videos.
1. Explore the units
Build your own curriculum and pick the units you want to use. It’s a buffet! Units are given a proficiency range to help you pick the best ones for your level.
2. Visit the UNIT Page
Now dig into the unit. Look through everything on that page to understand the main goals and resources.
3. Preview the LESSONS
Check out the lessons and adapt to your classes.
Here’s everything else the site offers. Click icon to visit that page.
links are for members only
Toolbox
tasks, templates, graphic organizers, posters, games, & more
Planning
Scope & squence options to create your curriculum
Emergency Plans
Lessons & activities so you can be prepared
Assessing
rubrics, grades, proficiency and more
Mini-PD
Videos and posts to explain all things proficiency
FAQ
Common questions and answers here like “How do I use this site?”