A class set of whiteboards + dry erase markers + erasers (I buy mega-packs of washcloths from Walmart and cut them into quarters) is definitely on my must-have list. They allow students to provide suggestions for stories and other forms of feedback in a non-chaotic manner, they serve as mediums for presentations, they are great for note-taking, they allow students to produce output in a non-threatening manner, they provide the teacher with valuable insights during formative assessments…I could go on forever. They are a must-have tool for TPRS®/TCI teachers. My husband was watching a webinar about Evernote the other day, and the company representative said that the concept behind Evernote was that the highest and best use of your brain power is to solve problems, not memorize information. I love this! By posting high frequency words around my room that students can and do access at any time during the class period, they are not wasting their brain power with rote memorization of hard-to-internalize structures like “therefore”, “but”, and “also” they are able to focus on the real content–of interpreting and communicating messages! Because the words are so high frequency, the students reference them constantly, resulting in the acquisition of those structures within the first semester of Spanish sans exertion of brain power. My classroom was always plastered with these, and my students’ fluency–interpretive and productive–improved exponentially when I began using them. If you read all the way to the end, you’ll find out how you can win some of my favorite things □ What tools and resources do you have that you would be devastated to not have in your language classroom? A reader asked me this question a few days ago, and I figured I’d share my answer with all of you.
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