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"Did you know that when reading, one's mind will wander 20 to 40 percent of the time while perusing a text, regardless of whether it is a book, blog, email, narrative, essay, or anything else? This is one of many fascinating findings reported in Dan Goleman's new book, Focus: The Hidden Driver of Excellence and it calls us to remember that students can't learn what they are not paying attention to. "

When I first heard about the exit ticket, I thought it was a great idea.  It seemed like a way to keep myself accountable to assess every student, and it seemed like a way to keep students accountable to do something to show me they'd learned what I'd taught.  It also seemed like a decent classroom management tool - if you didn't pay attention and do the exit ticket task, you couldn't leave.

When I first heard about the exit ticket, I thought it was a great idea.  It seemed like a way to keep myself accountable to assess every student, and it seemed like a way to keep students accountable to do something to show me they'd learned what I'd taught.  It also seemed like a decent classroom management tool - if you didn't pay attention and do the exit ticket task, you couldn't leave.

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.

In 1968, two researchers conducted a fascinating study that proved the extent to which teacher expectations influence student performance. Positive expectations influence performance positively, and negative expectations influence performance negatively. In educational circles, this has been termed the Pygmalion Effect, or more colloquially, a self-fulfilling prophecy. What has always intrigued me about this study is specifically what the teachers did to communicate that they believed a certain set of students had "unusual potential for academic growth." The research isn't overly explicit about this, but it indicates that the teachers "may have paid closer attention to the students, and treated them differently in times of difficulty." This begs the following questions: Why can't teachers treat all of their students like this? How do we communicate to students whether we believe in them or not?

The Language Acquisition Resource Center, LARC, is a national Language Resource Center located on the San Diego State University campus. LARC, a San Diego State University-housed program sponsored by the San Diego State University Research Foundation (SDSURF), is one of fifteen Department of Education Title VI funded Language Resource Centers (LRCs). The LRCs were established by Congress in 1989. Their purpose is to improve the teaching and learning of foreign and second languages in the United States. Our mission is to develop and support the teaching and learning of foreign languages in the United States through research, technology, and publications. Particular attention is paid to less commonly taught languages, cross-cultural issues, language skills assessment, and teacher training.