Inspired Proficiency

Inspiration for World Language teachers! From Ashley Uyaguari of Desk-Free.

Two Way Dual Language with Serena Keeney Horsch 05/12/2020

A Proficiency Journey with Ashley's former student Araceli 04/29/2020

Big Experiences for our Learners with Glenda DeHoyos 04/13/2020

Classroom Chronicles with Abelardo Almazán-Vázquez 04/01/2020

Passion, Play & Proficiency with Gale Stafford 03/26/2020

Special Edition #Covid19WL Episode 03/20/2020

Corrective Oral Feedback with Joshua Cabral 03/17/2020

Corrective Oral Feedback with Joshua Cabral A note from Ashley: This was recorded before all the schools began closing because of Covid-19. I hope you can still be inspired by what we share, an interview on feedback, a new game and new calm tip! But, I understand if this is something you prefer to listen to later on. I will share this episode again when things are settled down. I will release a special edition #Covid19wl episode by Friday of this week. Featuring Meredith White, Diego Ojeda, Samara Spielberg and Stephanie Carbaneau. Thank you to everyone who has been sharing in this difficult time. Please let me know if you have other requests for the next few weeks. Best, Ashley Shownotes: Play Inspired Trivia: Visit Wayside to answer the trivia questions and enter the prize drawing! Winners announced on Twitter. Welcome to Inspired Proficiency and thank you for joining us for episode 5 of season 2. As always, please tweet any takeaways and inspirations to #inspiredproficiency. Don’t forget that Ashley and her podcasts are also on Facebook in the group “Inspired Proficiency Teacher Collaboration” with lots of great ideas for the classroom. Ashley just returned from an amazing conference where Stephanie Carbonneau was named the Maine Teacher of the Year. Congratulations Stephanie! The Corona Virus is affecting us all. If you want to share out how it's affecting you, get on Twitter or Facebook and share your story! Stay healthy and try to be positive! Next week Ashley will put out a special Corona Virus Resources episode so stay tuned! Today’s Interview: Today Ashley talks with Joshua Cabral of World Language Classroom about Corrective Oral Feedback. Joshua presents at conferences and trains teachers in workshops as well as teaching French and Spanish to grades 1-8 in MA. Joshua is also a huge supporter of the podcast and Ashley is always excited to talk to him. He is doing a lot of traveling and presenting this year. He loves working with teachers and helping them learn and grow! Josh is a big fan of Starbucks, in case you hadn’t heard! Feedback Any information you provide to students to show them where they are on their language learning journey Feedback is supposed to help students move faster along the journey towards proficiency Grades and correcting are what we think of a lot as feedback but it doesn’t have to be JUST that THREE TYPES Appreciation Coaching Evaluation Indication of where they are right now Summative assessments (sometimes) Proficiency mindset means it's more about where they started and where they want to go and where they are currently and the student is participating in setting these goals There’s always room for more goals How do we choose what to give feedback on? Errors are when a student has not acquired this skill yet, they’re guessing Mistakes are when they HAVE acquired it, but they have an inaccuracy in the moment Mistakes are more likely to happen in the moment (speaking) but less likely if students have time to think it through properly (writing) FOCUS ON FIXING MISTAKES, not errors Clarification requests Avoid the native language as much as possible, keep it communicative in the target language Take a part of the incorrect sentence and focus on it with a pause or a rephrase to see if they really have acquired it or not to see if they can correct their mistake or if you need to provide more input for their error Similar to clarifying with a question Starting the sentence again for the student to repeat with a new order or new mindset, they might be able to fix their mistake again Changing SOMETHING about it might help them realize they made a mistake and they can have another opportunity Might be as simple as adding a pronoun they weren’t using, or it could be more complex related to tense Keep the communication going, avoid the native language Elicitation Repeat the sentence back, stress the inaccuracy It's very likely that a student will be higher at reading and listening than they are at speaking and writing so they will hear the mistake themselves and THEN be able to fix their error after hearing it repeated and stressed Repetition It all goes back to the modes where interpersonally they might be lower in their proficiency level, but interpretively they are higher and can now notice the mistake Recast is saying the correct form for the student Embedded means recasting the correct way but stretching it to add more information to keep the conversation going Very personalized feedback Can be challenging for the ENTIRE class Embedded recast Maybe do it in stations so you can work with small groups Tips for teachers Take a couple days and listen to EVERYTHING students say and practice in your head to see if you can tell the difference between a mistake and an error. THEN stop correcting the errors and focus on the mistakes. Once you’ve had your practice, pick ONE type of feedback to try first. Start small so you’re not overwhelmed and then work your way through all four! Game Segment with Sarah Breckley: Musical Story Chairs Calm Segment with Julie Speno: Yoga/ Tai Chi Resources and links mentioned on the show: Stephanie Carbonneau On Twitter @MmeCarbonneau, Maine Teacher of the Year Larsen, Freeman, and Long Jennifer article “Your Rubric is a Hot Mess; Here’s How to Fix it” Cult of Pedagogy podcast and blog by Jennifer Gonzalez, Single Point Detailed notes at www.deskfree.wordpress.com Yoga with Elmo in and Learn in Spanish and French Guests: Joshua Cabral on Twitter @wlclassroom, on Instagram @wlclassroom, and his and TPT Sarah Breckley on Twitter @SarahBreckley and her Julie Speno on Twitter @MundoDePepita and her /episode/index/show/inspiredproficiency/id/13576100

Be the Calm Classroom with Julie Speno 03/10/2020

Season 5 Coming March 10th! 02/24/2020

Real Talk: #Metoo, Equity and Diversity with Jade Cintron 12/05/2019

Reaching All Students with Jade Collins and Ebony Thornton 11/27/2019

Cultural Content Panel 11/12/2019

Planning Hacks Panel 11/05/2019

Formative Assessment with Dr. Mouna Mana 10/15/2019

Authentic Resources for Interpretive Mode with Elena Spathis 10/08/2019

Assessment Panel 10/01/2019

Building a Strong Community with Claudia Elliott 09/24/2019

Assessment with Rhonda Higgins 09/17/2019

Music with Allison Wienhold 09/09/2019

Activities for Stories with Carrie Toth 05/28/2019

A Shift to Teaching with Comprehensible Input with Bertha Delgadillo 05/21/2019

Whole Class Novels and Building Background Knowledge with Mira Canion 05/14/2019

Whole Class Novels and Building Background Knowledge with Mira Canion Welcome to Inspired Proficiency and thank you for joining us for episode 8 of season 3. As always, please tweet any takeaways and inspirations to #inspiredproficiency. Ashley starts off the podcast talking about this time of year and negativity that can come with it. She mentions some ways to change your mindset and force out the negativity. Detailed notes at Ashley chats today with Mira Canion about class novels. There is another giveaway of her novels listen for details! Interview: Mira (My-ra) Canion chats with Ashley today about using novels and stories in classrooms. Mira is a teacher, author, and presenter. She has been teaching for 20+ years in Colorado at the middle and high school level. She started learning German when she was in high school and studied as an exchange student. She began as a German teacher and somehow started teaching Spanish with few credits to her background. She traveled to Mexico and lived with a family during the summer and read chapter books to help herself improve. She took intensive classes and watched telenovelas. This hard work inspired her to push students to read more and more to learn a foreign language. She would read books and if they were too hard she couldn’t finish them. She wanted to use that motivation to help students understand and still be motivated to keep reading without giving up. Read detailed notes at Resources and links mentioned on the show: Guests: Mira Canion on Twitter @mcanion Buy her books . Season 3 Presenting Sponsor: Publishing #followtheowl This week’s episode 8 sponsors: Membership Stand up for all language educators –join today! And if you join online at actfl.org using the code “INSPIRED” by May 31, 2019, we’ll take 20% off your first year’s membership! What are you waiting for? El de Pepita World Language books from A.C. & Jennifer Degenhardt /episode/index/show/inspiredproficiency/id/9769397

Promoting equity in the classroom with Kia London 05/07/2019

Promoting equity in the classroom with Kia London Welcome to Inspired Proficiency and thank you for joining us for episode 7 of season 3. As always, please tweet any takeaways and inspirations to #inspiredproficiency. See detailed show notes at Do you want to contribute a blog post for Wayside Publishing with classroom tips, a fun activity, or a success story in the classroom? Head on over to their to see what types of contributions they are looking for or email . Congrats to Caitlin Frantz for winning the last episode giveaway from A.C. Quintero! This awesome podcast will be coming back in the fall for a fourth season and Wayside Publishing is going to be the presenting sponsor! On this episode Ashley chats with Kia London. The variety segment offers a few game ideas to add fun at this time of the school year when energy levels from all of us might be low. Ashley is also offering her workshops in Tyngsboro, MA this summer and details are on her website . Interview: Kia London teaches middle school Spanish to grades 6-8 (Novice level) in Northwest Suburb of Chicago, IL. In the past she has also taught high school Spanish grades 9-12 as well as elementary learners. Kia discusses: Incorporating Student Interest into Our Classes Student Culture in the Classroom Equity in the Classroom See detailed show notes at Variety Segment: Here are some fun game ideas to help continue to build community within the classroom and lower that affective filter while using language in an authentic way. Ashley is always happy to share these games but it’s so much more fun to share them in person so considering heading to a workshop she’s running this summer. See detailed show notes at Resources and links mentioned on the show: Guests: Kia London on Twitter @MaestraLondon Episode sponsors: Publishing #followtheowl Membership - If you join online at actfl.org using the code “INSPIRED” by May 31, 2019, we’ll take 20% off your first year’s membership! What are you waiting for? Tina and CI Liftoff El de Pepita World Language books from A.C. & Jennifer Degenhardt See detailed show notes at /episode/index/show/inspiredproficiency/id/9677231

Free Voluntary Reading with A.C. Quintero 04/16/2019

Free Voluntary Reading with A.C. Quintero Welcome to Inspired Proficiency and thank you for joining us for episode 6 of season 3. As always, please tweet any takeaways and inspirations to #inspiredproficiency. Download the episode here: 6.mp3or listen and subscribe on or find it wherever you listen to podcasts! On this episode Ashley chats with author A.C. Quintero who is offering a giveaway to Inspired Proficiency listeners! Enter to win a trilogy from author A.C. Quintero by tweeting! Listen for details! Ashley starts the episode with information about a project in her classroom called Teacher for a Day based on ideas she got from Laura Sexton. Laura was a guest back in season 1 on episode 9. Listen to her episode . Teacher for a Day Students plan, prepare, and lead an entire class period in Spanish. They pick themes, vocabulary words, and activities. Rule of thumb- stick with general words to cover more content and not super specific things. Students can use props and bring their class to life. They hook the other students, do movement, and do a reading and writing activity. The kids come up with awesome material that the teacher can use and play with other classes later on. The content can be anything so the students are really empowered to do a lot with the language and lead really powerful activities. Students might need more help the first year but they quickly realize how much more language they possess year after year and push themselves to be even more creative in the second or third year of the project. Details and resources can be found at Interview: Alicia Quintero is a Spanish teacher from Chicago. She teaches levels 1 and 4 in an school. Some of her readers are available in French but they are all available in Spanish. Alicia has been writing since about 2015 and has been teaching for 14 years. Her writing came from a lot of storytelling in class and she was using this avenue to try to solve problems happening within the classroom. What does FVR (Free Voluntary Reading) look like your classroom? It depends on the class and the level of engagement with reading. We as teachers need goals for what we want to accomplish during a reading session. We know that reading bolsters second language acquisition but they can also learn more than that, like a life lesson. Big Takeaway! Get your students reading and if you have a story to tell, write it! A.C. Quintero is not the only author writing awesome FVR books for World Language classrooms. Go explore all the authors out there and give your students something to be excited about in class! Continue reading detailed notes at Resources and links mentioned on the show: Guests: A.C. Quintero Alicia’s Strategies Twitter @klasekastellano Instagram @a.c.quintero Places to buy her books Bryce Hedstrom’s Fluency Discounted Book Bundles and Resources at Novels and Resources by AC Other resources: for Inspired Proficiency Podcast Visit Profe Ashley Laura (PBL in the TL) on Twitter @sraspanglish IB El Bryce Episode sponsors: Publishing #followtheowl Mentoring Program Tina El de Pepita books from A.C. & Jennifer Degenhardt /episode/index/show/inspiredproficiency/id/9406997

Games & Movement with Sarah Breckley 04/09/2019

Games & Movement with Sarah Breckley Welcome to Inspired Proficiency and thank you for joining us for episode 4 of season 3. As always, please tweet any takeaways and inspirations to #inspiredproficiency. As always, find detailed notes from Season 3 at Ashley is offering workshops this summer from August 14-16, 2019. You can find more information on her website, On this episode Ashley chats with the hilarious Sarah Breckley who lives and breathes adding fun and laughter to everyday teaching. Then Ashley herself walks us through a big reset she did with one of her classes that was struggling to not use English in class. Interview: Sarah Breckley teaches Spanish 2 to high schoolers in rural Reedsburg, WI. You may know Sarah as Fiona from Señor Wooly’s video Feo. She travels with her students and does homestays and does a lot of communicative activities in her classroom. She films a lot of her classes to share with other teachers on and . Sarah is a huge advocate for teachers to find the courage to post a video of yourself teaching and sharing videos of the amazing things we’re all doing in our classrooms. She wants us to know that she watched many videos of other educators before making her own so she may be a huge proponent of sharing your awesomeness in the classroom through video but she was not the first one to be so brave. Sarah had A LOT of amazing information to share with us about movement and games. For those detailed notes, visit Variety: Ashley walks us through a reset with a struggling class this year. Ashley and the class had been struggling along all year and most of her regular techniques to help struggling classes had not been working. They stopped everything they were doing towards language acquisition and got together as a group to problem solve and get back on track. The problem: Students would come in and not quite know what to do. They’re supposed to come in, stand in a circle, and we start chatting and moving into a game. They were not understanding this process and were still using English when they weren’t supposed to. They were not committed to all target language use. They would argue when they didn’t understand or weren’t being understood and wouldn’t take the time to stay in the TL and revert to English. For the solution and resources she mentioned as well as detailed notes, visit Resources and links mentioned on the show: Guests: Sarah Breckley on Twitter @SarahBreckley Ashley Uyaguari on Twitter @profeashley Other resources: Visit Profe Ashley Sarah Breckley’s Tina Hargaden Alina Filipescu (Free Voluntary Reading) GymVirtual Total Physical Response Developmental Episode sponsors: Publishing #followtheowl Mentoring Program El de Pepita World Language books from A.C. & Jennifer Degenhardt For detailed notes on both segments, visit /episode/index/show/inspiredproficiency/id/9310037

Wooly Inspiration 04/02/2019

Wooly Inspiration Welcome to Inspired Proficiency and thank you for joining us for episode 4 of season 3. As always, please tweet any takeaways and inspirations to #inspiredproficiency. On this episode Ashley chats with Jim Wooldridge, aka Señor Wooly. In the variety segment Ashley talks to Audrey O’Clair from soundtrap: an audio recording platform that’s like a robust combination of google drive and garage band. Interview: Ashley and Jim begin their chat talking about Wooly Week. Jim and his team released a new original song for Wooly Week in February. Wooly Week is a celebration of all things Señor Wooly. They currently have many materials for Spanish of all levels and have just started adding some French materials to their repertoire. They also released integrated professional development within the resources for the new song. Instead of just releasing a song to enjoy and click play in the classroom, Jim and his team worked really hard to make sure that Wooly Week 2019 was full of ALL the possible ideas teachers could do with the songs and stories on the site to make them comprehensible for their students. Teachers were challenged to try new activities while participating and earning raffle tickets to enter the contest for Wooly Week. Teachers who use SeñorWooly.com can join the Woology Facebook group to collaborate and share ideas. Jim talked about how amazing the teachers who participated in Wooly Week were because they really stepped up to the challenge to connect with each other through Facebook and push their students to higher proficiency levels. Jim is excited for Wooly Week 2020 and has lots of new ideas to share from what he has learned from the first three Wooly Week experiences. Read more detailed notes at Variety: Ashley chats with Audrey O’Claire from Maine who works with Soundtrap, an online recording studio that is user friendly. It is a way to collaborate digitally on voice and music creations. Audrey mentions Noah Geisel and how they worked together to Flashbuild some music programs through Soundtrap at CCFLT in Denver. Resources and links mentioned on the show: Guests: Jim Wooldridge on Twitter @senorwooly Audrey O’Clair on Twitter @audreyoclair, [email protected] Other resources: Facebook group: Woology Noah Geisel on Twitter @SenorG Flasbuilding sunglasses app at Ela Ben-Ur creator of the Compass Using the Innovator’s Michael Cohen The Tech Lots of ideas how to use Soundtrap in ANY Episode sponsors: Publishing #followtheowl Center for Assessment, Research, and Development (CARD) and Extending Authentic Resources Voces : Nuestra Historia El de Pepita books from A.C. & Jennifer Degenhardt Read more detailed notes at /episode/index/show/inspiredproficiency/id/9229817

Proficiency Driven Curriculum with Ashley Uyaguari & guest interviewer Wendy Farabaugh 03/26/2019

Building a Target Language Discourse Community with Rebecca Blouwolff 03/19/2019

Building a Target Language Discourse Community with Rebecca Blouwolff Welcome to Inspired Proficiency and thank you for joining us for episode 2 of season 3. As always, please tweet any takeaways and inspirations to #inspiredproficiency. On the second episode Ashley continues her conversation with Rebecca Blouwolff, the NECTFL 2019 teacher of the , about high leverage teaching practices. Rebecca teaches 7th and 8th grade French at Wellesley Middle School, a suburb of Boston, MA. Ashley also chats with Jennifer Bilby about her fame among Spanish teachers who use Señor Wooly. Ashley is offering her 3rd annual 3 day this summer 2019 in Tyngsboro, MA. 8/14 Proficiency and Target Language Strategies 8/15 Assessment and Feedback Practices Through Proficiency Portfolios 8/16 Community Building Themes and Team Challenges in the Target Language Episode: Rebecca has already shared with us about Facilitating Target Language Comprehensibility and today she continues today with Building a Target Language Discourse Community. All her ideas come from reading the book Enacting the Work of Language Instruction: High Leverage Teaching Practices by Glisan & Donato. Building a Target Language Discourse Community describes talking to your students and getting them to speak to you in the target language. Several strategies involving visual assists to hold kids accountable are discussed to promote target language use. It is a culture that needs to be built and cultivated within the classroom and that takes time. See more details at Variety Segment: Ashley also interviews Jennifer Bilby and her new found fame after being in the new song released for Wooly Week. She teaches Spanish at Pequea Valley High School in Lancaster, PA. Jennifer Bilby won Wooly Week 2017 two years ago and has been patiently awaiting her original song written by the genius himself, Señor Wooly. He shared the song with all of those participating in Wooly Week for an engaging week (or two) filled with excitement for students and professional development for teachers. Her favorite part of her original song is the dancing in the limousine. She also answers some listener questions from Facebook to talk about how her life has changed since the song debuted. Señor Wooly is a great to bring joy and fun to the learning of Spanish with great music and stories. Jennifer also mentions how great Wooly Week was for teachers and even though not everyone could complete all of the activities, they work with ALL stories and you just modify the activities to work with what you are doing. The activities shared during Wooly Week help teachers to pull out all the elements of language from the song and story. Resources and links mentioned on the show: Guests: Rebecca Blouwolff on Twitter MmeBlouwolff and her b Jennifer Bilby Books: the Work of Language Instruction: High Leverage Teaching Practices by Glisan & Donato We’re on the Topic by Bill Van Patten (BVP) Other resources: Rebecca’s post on her 6 hour session on High Leverage Teaching Practices with Dr. Catherine Ritz (on Twitter @ritzforeignlang) and their #langchat on ( is LangChat?) TALK Episode sponsors: Publishing Center for Assessment, Research, and Development (CARD) Voces : Nuestra Historia Wooly El de Pepita Tina books from A.C. & Jennifer Degenhardt /episode/index/show/inspiredproficiency/id/9051902

Target Language Comprehensibility with Rebecca Blouwolff 03/12/2019

Target Language Comprehensibility with Rebecca Blouwolff Welcome back to Inspired Proficiency and thank you for joining us on our journey into season 3. As always, please tweet any takeaways and inspirations to #inspiredproficiency. On the first episode Ashley talks about high leverage teaching practices with Rebecca Blouwolff, the NECTFL 2019 teacher of the . Rebecca teaches 7th and 8th grade French at Wellesley Middle School, a suburb of Boston, MA. Rebecca walks Ashley through one of two high leverage teaching practices she recently presented at the NECTFL conference in New York City. These practices talk more about how to teach and not what to teach. Her ideas come from reading the book Enacting the Work of Language Instruction: High Leverage Teaching Practices by Glisan & Donato. Rebecca describes the importance of watching, doing, and experiencing training to get better at what you’re doing and how it important is for teachers to participate when trying new teaching practices. Big takeaway from the first high leverage teaching practice: Using the Target Language (TL) in class with the kids is the most important thing you can do. We are privileged to be able to provide that environment for our students and get to know them through the language. For the variety segment, Profe Ashley also plays a fun trivia game with Pamela Russell (@pammycakes_87) and Melanie Thomas (@senoraMThomas). She asks questions about the first two seasons of Inspired Proficiency. Thanks to Pamela and Melanie for playing and thanks to everyone who helped support this podcast into its third season! Resources and links mentioned on the show: Guests: Rebecca Blouwolff Twitter MmeBlouwolff Books: the Work of Language Instruction: High Leverage Teaching Practices by Glisan & Donato Participation Techniques by Himmele & Himmele Other resources: Rebecca’s post on her 6 hour session on High Leverage Teaching Practices with Dr. Catherine Ritz (on Twitter @ritzforeignlang) Their Greg Duncan’s project “Engaging Language Learners” with references to Total Participation Techniques book Shelby County Public Total Participation Resources from Shelby County Public Schools Language Specific Hold in many languages from Shelby County Public Schools Episode sponsors: Publishing Center for Assessment, Research, and Development and Extending Authentic Resources Wooly El de Pepita Language Classroom Digital books from A.C. & Jennifer Degenhardt For detailed notes on the interview visit: after 3pm on the day it's released. /episode/index/show/inspiredproficiency/id/8965457

Season 2 Finale: The Big Teacher Share 12/12/2018

Inspired Proficiency

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