Thursday Pre-conference Workshops 

1:00 - 4:00 PM  

The story of this workshop is based on an exciting Cuban folktale, “The Barking Mouse”.  Participants learn how an expert TPRS teacher takes a story from a children's book and condenses it to a lesson that can be used at the first-year level.  This same story can be adapted for intermediate and advanced levels.  Participants experience the students' perspective through a demonstration lesson in Swedish.  This includes:  TPR (Total Physical Response) with props and actions, PQA (Personalized Questions and Answers), acting out the story and paired-practice activities.  The techniques, strategies and skills can be used to teach any language.  The presenter shows how she teaches this story to her Spanish students and her goal is to inspire you to teach it to your students.  There is time to practice the strategies and discuss language acquisition. Everyone receives a copy of the story, vocabulary list and exercises in Spanish.

W 2  Function-al Raps: A MUST for the 21st Century Toolbox  JOHN DE MADO, John De Mado Language Seminars, Inc.
How do we create inclusionary activities for large classes and heterogeneous grouping?... Activities that allow us to differentiate our expectations for student performance?… Activities that can be inserted into our curriculum mapping plans?... Activities that really lead to language acquisition?...   This highly interactive workshop fuses language acquisition with ‘rap’. Through music, handouts and laughter, teachers learn how to acquire the prerequisite background instrumentals (original sound tracks, sans lyrics) from the Internet, create and then perform ‘raps’ based upon specific language functions appropriate to novice, intermediate and pre-advanced levels. Guaranteed to inject excitement into the classroom and to jumpstart vocabulary, these activities will be ready for usage with students on Monday morning!

W 3  Chopsticks and Brushes are not the Only Tools You Give Your Students to Learn Chinese! Margaret Wong, Breck School 

Every carpenter owns a toolbox to build a house. Learning a language requires a toolbox as well. What are the tools inside this toolbox? The presenter will share 30+ years of experience teaching Chinese to identify the essential tools you must give your students for them to not only learn Chinese successfully but also to become independent language learners.

This workshop replaces "Interactive Boards to Enhance Chinese Teaching", as publicized earlier.

W 4  Assess for Success: How to develop standards-based curriculum anchored with Performance Assessments  Lisa Shafranski, Hopkins Public Schools
Yes, you can. Yes, you really can develop assessments that provide evidence of how well  students can use the language, not just how well they know about the language. Yes, you really  can develop assessments that show how much students can do, not just measure how much they  don’t know. Yes, you really can develop a standards-based curriculum anchored on performance  with both summative and formative assessments. Yes, you can start today. Participants in this  three hour workshop will walk away with hands-on experiences and practical guidelines which will  enable them to begin a transformational journey towards student-centered assessments.