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AAPPL Measures and IPAS I think tests are stupid. A test can't tell you how well I do my job or live my life--or anything you really need to know about me. Now, I'm really good at taking tests, and if you were to look at various test scores I've accumulated in my life, I daresay you'd be impressed with me. But do you know how much bearing the ACT, SAT, or GRE has had on any of my roles since college or grad school application time? Do you know how much impact that Issues in Teaching Foreign Languages or  Masterpieces of Hispanic Art and Literature exam has had on me as a teacher, mother, wife, or friend--or even as a speaker of Spanish?

You need a portfolio for two reasons: to reflect well and look good. Reflection Selecting work to go into a portfolio is a metacognitive process that requires you to compare what you have actually accomplished with the desired end. I would like students to do this more frequently than the end of each grading period, and I plan to make portfolio updating at least a biweekly process. To this end, I've created a whole page within my newly revamped site template for this reflective process (hint: this should also be a gold mine for Assessment of Student Work "time lapse artifacts" for me to show my fitness as an educator). I want students to see their progress in stages.

Literacy expert Tim Rasinski gave me an idea for a bellringer that I think will improve students' vocabulary, fluency, listening, reading, and speaking skills and get them hooked. Rasinski proposes an acronym for those wishing to improve students' literacy skills, and although Rasinski's research and strategies revolve around L1 literacy, I think his theories align perfectly with L2 acquisition. AMAPPS stands for Accuracy as in being able to sound out words correctly Modeling fluent reading Assisted reading e.g. choral or partnered Practice with a variety of texts as well as repeated exposure to the same texts Phrasing or chunking words in common combinations Synergy of all of these elements

I googled Chicago, violencia, and pandillas to find an article to tie to the third page of text from a picture book for Spanish II. La llaman América is about a little girl who immigrated to Chicago from Mexico and her experiences in her home, school, and neighborhood. As authentic texts go, it is a unique perspective but, frankly, awkwardly translated from English. Still, there are enough angles to capture teenagers' attention, and inner-city or neighborhood violence is one of them.