An important component of our Early Elementary and Level 1 programs is our use of rhythmic chanting. All of our chants are available on our youtube channel. They present the vocabulary in a interactive way that is very catchy for the students. (You will hear the students chanting as they leave your classroom!) We have playlists organized on our youtube channel, but we are now providing you with a resource that will allow you to present them to your students ad-free and give you an easy way of finding them in one place.

Click on the links below and bookmark the ones you will be using with your classes.

And now what you have all been waiting for: RLRA Principle #4 — Make it FUN.

And what do we mean by fun? It’s a bit hard to pinpoint, but fun, to us, is an atmosphere. An atmosphere where students smile and laugh as they engage with the language. A space of interaction and connection. An environment where there is a sense of community and where students feel free to take risks and make mistakes as they bumble their way through the messy process of language learning.

Let me introduce to you RLRA Principle #3: Facilitate Practice. Much like learning a musical instrument or a sport, language is a skill, and practice is absolutely necessary for improvement. My priority for any class period with any age group is to allow students to practice the language with one another and with me as much as possible.

As Denise and I have reflected on our teaching and resource creation, we have distilled our approach to language teaching into four guiding principles. We hope you were able to read about RLRA Principle #1, and please stay tuned for two more important principles in upcoming blog posts.

RLRA Principle #2 is…Give them the tools.

In my personal life, I have been influenced by Kendra Adachi’s The Lazy Genius Way. I’ve read her books and listen regularly to her podcast. I love reflecting on the sixteen principles that she lays out, and I apply them to my every day living.

Happy December, colleagues! We are happy to offer a little something special for your students! This lesson, available in French and Spanish, provides a fun partner conversation that will get your students speaking right away about their plans for winter vacation. It also includes written and oral activities.

Denise and I have been using the Early Elementary Partner Conversations MEGA-Bundle as the foundation of our kindergarten and first grade curriculum for a few years now. We love how this curriculum has boosted our students’ confidence, their comprehension, and their willingness to practice interpersonal communication with their partner. Another benefit has been increased vocabulary acquisition…

A number of years ago, we came up with our favorite teacher hack - creating photo name cards for each group of students. This is a teaching tool I feel I cannot live without. It’s a bit of work on the front end, but it pays off!

The first day of classes can be very nerve-wracking, and often we teachers end up doing a lot of the talking to get things going. I recently hosted a “French boot camp” for new middle school students, and this lesson was a great way to get things started.

We are excited to announce that we have completed our set of Elementary Readers in French and Spanish! They are now available both here on our website and on TPT. These original stories are designed as an end-of-the-unit activity for each unit in Level 1, revisiting the language the students have been practicing in a “novel” way! Students feel so accomplished when they can read and understand a book in the target language, and they feel even more accomplished when they can write and share their own stories!

Happy Spring, everyone! To celebrate the coming of flowers and birds and bike rides, we are happy to offer you a little treat for your students!

We are excited to offer another free resource to support teachers who are using our program. As students move through an RLRA unit, we are seeking to give them enough practice time that they own the language we are targeting.

Denise and I talk a lot about wanting the students to “own” the language we are teaching. To me, this means being able to respond spontaneously to the questions we practice in class, and even better, being able to come up with the question to ask someone else!

The system is simple. We print off many pages of the tickets at the beginning of each marking period and cut them out. Whenever a student answers a question correctly, performs a dialogue in front of the class, or shows particular enthusiasm for learning a new language, we give them a ticket. It is also a great reward for winning a game, practicing a conversation especially well, or singing a song with enthusiasm.