APS World Language Updates - April 2014
Congratulations to Allyson Hage! Alison, a French teacher at Sarah Smith Elementary School, has been selected to represent her school as Teacher of the Year for 2014 - 2015.
Congratulations to Erica Pereira, Spanish teacher from B.E.S.T. High School, for being selected as a finalist for the Fox High Five Teacher award!
Many thanks to Madame Corendis Hardy from Frederick Douglass High School for organizing and hosting the Second Annual French Spelling Bee and French Trivia Bowl. Congratulations to the winners, Jamariel Hobbs from Frederick Douglass High School and Lady Marianne Bacares from Coan Middle School.
Click here to see photos of the winners with their proud teachers.
Congratulations to our FLES Contest participants from Centennial Place! All nine who attended on Saturday, April 19th scored a SUPERIOR, the highest rating! Way to go, Ms. Correlas!
Summer 2014: This summer will be a busy time for APS World Languages Program. June 23rd - 24th will be a two day workshop with renowned expert, Greg Duncan, on World-Readiness Language Education. Based on the information from this workshop, we will review and revise our SLOs and create a new Scope and Sequence for the APS World Languages Program. World Language teachers interested in the 2-day workshop, should sign up in myPLC.
Summer SLO revision: After we complete our Summer Learning with Greg Duncan, we will begin a review and revision of all SLOs. This process will begin on June 25th and last for 5 days. Again, teachers who assist with the revision, will be provided with a stipend.
World Readiness Standards for Learning Languages: Have you checked out the new standards? ACTFL will officially release these new standards this summer. Go to the ACTFL site to read more about the new standards and to get a preview. Click here to download the pdf: Download World-ReadinessStandardsforLearningLanguages
ACTFL Can Do Statements: ACTFL has released the Can Do Statements. This amazing resource helps learners identify what they need to do to function at a specific level of proficiency. The statements also help teachers plan curriculum, units of instruction, and daily lessons to help learners improve their performance and reach a targeted level of proficiency. Check out this wonderful resource on the ACTFL site. Share these with your students!
Summer Curriculum: In July we will begin working on a comprehensive curriculum project that will include a pacing guides, scope and sequence and unit overviews. I will send out an invitation to apply to be a part of this work this summer. Please look for another announcement in the next few days.
Welcome to our new colleagues! We have several new members of APS World Languages. Shara Vega has joined us as the new Spanish teacher for Bethune Elementary, Victorine Mbanya in Spanish at Venetian Hills and Continental Colony and Irene Ferguson in French at Maynard Jackson High School. Please join me in welcoming them to our APS World Language family!
World Language Resources that you may not know about...
Duolingo, Lingua.ly and Bliu Bliu — our new digital immersion platforms that focus on ways to present learners with comprehensible input! Duolingo does it on the sentence level, Lingua.ly uses the whole article approach and Bliu Bliu provides a combination geared at suggesting spoken and informal language from the web. All of these platforms rely on powerful technology to map the user’s unique vocabulary in a language and self-adjust feedback in order to generate a stream of targeted, individualized content. All of them neglect to directly teach grammar. :) Check them out!