Foreign Language Best Practices

[steacher]

My school district talks a lot about best practices, and we have even had inservice conferences that modeled some. I don't know if it's just because I'm a new teacher, but I can't seem to apply many of those to my Spanish I and II classes. Does anyone have any suggestions for best practices that work well in a forgein language classroom?

[Boxcar]

I don't have any suggestions, but I wanted to wish you luck. I find general terms like best practices and all that hard to impliment sometmes too.

[busbus]

From a very simplistic point of view, why not try to include some of the best practices strategies and instructional approaches to your teaching and see which ones work for you.

Perhaps you might try differentiated instruction ... I'm certain that all of your students are not functioning on the same level. This might be one way of using best practices. Are you using cooperative work groups and learning centers or readers' workshops and writers' workshops? I think that these can be used in a foreign language class. In addition, you can use graphic organizers and other researched based strategies and techniques which were presented in your inservice conferences.

In essence, all that you are trying to do is to implement instructional approaches that will help to create an active, engaged and student-centered classroom.

[steacher]

Thanks for the advice! The reading and writting workshops sound interesting. Exactly what are those?