1. Adventures in Heritage Teaching
Adrienne Brandenberg and Mary Beth Johnson blog here frequently, offering readers insight into working with heritage Spanish students and inviting conversations with other teachers who share their concerns. Their reflections on various lesson plans are particularly helpful, as they provide teachers with valuable time-saving details about classroom activities.
2. SenorFernie
Albert Fernandez, known to his students as Señor Fernie, writes about his journey into the world of comprehensible input on his blog. In one of his most engaging posts, he acknowledges the community of teachers from whom he has learned all of his best teaching ideas. This blog is his way of sharing what has worked for him with others.
Allison Weinhold is a Spanish department of one, and she creates CI resources for teachers to use in their own classrooms. Story units, high frequency verbs, music, novels, films and movement are her favorite techniques, and she even uses them at home with her two young sons.
4. Lenolandia
Amy Lenord’s childhood enthusiasm for learning Spanish is matched only by her adult passion for teaching it. She has expertise in using authentic resources, collaborative learning, and confidence-building techniques for Spanish language learners. Celebrating student success is key to Amy’s approach to teaching, as well as making them feel like valued members of her classroom community.
Annabelle Williamson née Allen believes that the key to language acquisition is using the target language at least 95% of the time while teaching. With this strategy in mind, she applies CI and OWL techniques to her naturally enthusiastic, flexible and fun-loving approach to working with students.
6. Srta Spanish
Ashley Mikkelson writes under the pseudonym Señorita Spanish, blogging about her ideas and her adventures in the Spanish classroom. Games, stories, reading activities and links to great ideas from her colleagues in the world language teaching community are only a few of the exciting posts available on her blog.
Bethanie Drew has been teaching high school Spanish for over 20 years, and she shares her wealth of knowledge on this blog. By this stage in her teaching career, Bethanie knows how to use her time wisely, and she offers advice to her colleagues who are eager to support student learning while maintaining their own sanity!
8. Owl Language
Darcy Rogers, the founder of OWL, or Organic Word Language, and her team are the foundation members of a community where teachers discuss best practice for their language students. OWL runs workshops for teachers who are interested in applying OWL techniques to their teaching, and they also facilitate full implementation of OWL in larger school settings.
Emilie del Risco lives and teaches in the Cayman Islands, and she blogs about using interactive notebooks. She offers tips on how to get started with interactive notebooks and links her blog to her store for easy access to freebies and other resources for teachers.
10. Profesor Anonimo
Jeremy Jordan reflects on his teaching experiences using TPRS methods with his students on his blog, and in many of his posts, Jeremy is specific about what works and what doesn’t work. This way, he illustrates his successes in great detail for others to understand, and his videos and photographs offer even greater clarity.
Kristin Montgomery has taught French, Social Studies, ESL and all levels of Spanish in France, Spain, Switzerland and Singapore. She is currently immersed in teaching high school Spanish in her home town in Wisconsin, and she is involved in developing programming for heritage Spanish learners and immersion students at her school.
12. PBL in the TL
Laura Sexton is a project-based learning (PBL) pro, and she knows that linking PBL with language learning can be challenging. As well, Laura understands that there is plenty of communication potential that can take place on the road to fluency, and PBL can maximize language production when implemented authentically.
Laurie Clarcq engages with a wide range of teaching-related topics on her website, from CI and TPRS techniques to engaging with teen-aged students when tragedy strikes to classroom management. Her ruminations are often sparked by questions and blog posts by other teachers, which often makes them relatable and encouraging.
14. Maris Hawkins
Maris Hawkins teaches middle school and high school Spanish at an independent school, and her well-organized blog focuses on teaching for proficiency. Posts about using Spanish novels in class, past and current syllabi, and authentic resources are only a few of the helpful reads available on her website.
15. My Generation of Polyglots
Mike Peto is a Spanish teacher who avoids using grammar in his lesson plans, focusing instead on compelling storytelling in the target language. Over the course of a few years, Mike led his entire department away from relying on textbooks and towards CI and TPRS methodologies, a transition that allowed teachers to customize their lessons to their students.
16. Tech 4 World Language Teachers
Rachel Lucas is an educational technology guru, and her blog is full of both written and videoed descriptions of activities and strategies that streamline teaching and learning processes. From online tutoring to creating comic strips, there is something here for every teacher who seeks to engage with all the potential educational technology has to offer.
Sam Finneseth is open and honest about her teaching journey, and her blog posts provide educators with a refreshing glimpse into one Spanish teacher’s successes and challenges. Sam seeks to blend the traditional approach to teaching with CI and TPRS methodologies, and the results of her experiments can be fascinating.
18. Sarah Breckley
Education vlogger and Wisconsin State Teacher of the Year Sarah Breckley teaches Spanish with both traditional grammar-based approaches and CI methodologies. Her video blogs showcase her students in action, as well as her favorite lesson plans. Watch and learn from her class diaries!
19. Nobody Expects the Spanish Acquisition – Tina Hargaden
Tina Hargaden’s expertise is focused on language proficiency, comprehensible input, and literacy strategies. She runs workshops and trainings at the individual and district level as well as private video coaching for educators interested in mastering some of her established teaching and assessment techniques.
20. Mira Canion
Mira Canion is a photographer, an author of historical novellas for teaching Spanish, and a presenter, teacher and stand-up comedienne. She is advocate for teaching language and culture through stories, and her stories, as well as the corresponding teacher’s manuals, are widely popular among educators and students alike.
Carrie Toth has published Spanish readers with Fluency Matters and she has co-authored books with Carol Gaab and Kristy Placido. Her most recent teaching experiences combine science, geography and the environment with Spanish, and she has taught middle school, high school and community college.
22. Magister P
Lance Piantaggini teaches Latin primarily through techniques involving comprehensible input, and he blogs here about his writing of Latin novellas as well as other relevant educational topics for world language teachers. On his blog, he addresses approaches to classroom management as well as classroom set-up that all maximize student learning.
23. Ben Slavic
Ben Slavic will be a familiar name to educators who love TPRS. His professional learning community offers teachers a wide variety of helpful resources, including articles, videos, and comments from other educators. He also runs well-attended CI workshops and can count thousands of teachers as alumni of his unique and successful approach to teaching world languages.
24. The Comprehensible Classroom
Martina Bex is widely known and appreciated for her groundbreaking resources that involve comprehensible input. A mother of five, she has been able to stay involved in the classroom life she loves by creating materials for teachers. Her SOMOS curriculums for Spanish levels 1 and 2 include everything a teacher needs, from vocabulary lists to assessments.
25. Bryce Hedstrom
Bryce Hedstrom has a wealth of knowledge and experience to offer educators, from his time working as an interpreter to his corporate work teaching Spanish to his time in the high school and college classroom. He is a TPRS legend, offering support to both teachers and administrators who seek to incorporate more comprehensible input into their world language classrooms.
26. Spanish Mama
Spanish Mama Elisabeth is a non-native Spanish speaker who teaches without a textbook in Peru. She uses interactive notebooks as well as a multitude of authentic resources to facilitate her students’ learning of real-life Spanish skills, choosing to focus on grammar infrequently.
27. Profe Nygaard
Courtney Nygaard enjoys using blending traditional textbook and grammar-based approaches with music and other forms of comprehensible input when teaching Spanish at her IB school. Her blog contains many entries about creating curriculum, which is a passion for Profe Nygaard, especially as she has recently started working with heritage learners of Spanish.
