Growing With Proficiency The Podcast

Episode 61: Simplify Language Teaching and Boost Engagement: One Resource, One Activity, Multiple Possibilities for Pre-Reading, Reading, and Post-Reading with Lisa McHargue

Claudia Elliott, World Language educator

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Are you spending a ton of time trying to find new ways to read a text with your class, check for comprehension, or ask open-ended questions? Do you have great resources but find that many of the activities could use more movement and engagement?

You don't have to create a new activity every day. You don't need to be in front of the class, constantly trying to get your students' attention.

Great strategies and content can be repurposed and used in different ways, with slight tweaks that will feel new to your learners. If this is what you're looking for, then get ready for an incredibly powerful episode where Lisa McHargue shares with us many different ways to do one good single activity with one good single resource. 

Ready? This is an episode that you'll want to listen to many times and perhaps come back to for inspiration.

Key Topics Discussed:

  • Adapting Personalized Questions (PQAs)
  • Engaging Students with Open-Ended Questions
  • Dynamic Reading Activities
  • Utilizing Matching Activities
  • Innovative Approaches to True/False and Comprehension Questions
  • Handling Opinion Questions
  • Efficiently Using Resources
  • Tips on repurposing materials and activities for different classes and contexts

In this episode, we emphasize the importance of creativity in teaching, discussing how simple tweaks to existing activities can greatly enhance student engagement and learning outcomes. Sometimes, we just need to think outside the box and use these strategies to bring dynamism and innovation to our language classrooms.

Important Links:

GWP The Spanish Teacher Academy Waitlist

Dia de Gracias Reading: http://growingwithproficiency.com/thankyou

Growing With Proficiency Blog

My store at Teachers Pay Teachers

Lisa’s Unit Hubs Training: https://lisamch.com/hub

Lisa’s IG: https://instagram.com/lisajmch


Our guest’s Bio:

Lisa McHargue is a former high school Spanish teacher turned online digital organizer. She taught Spanish for ten years, the last seven in a 1:1 school. She's a minimalist living her best life binge-reading fiction and helping teachers and online business owners take control of their digital chaos and create systems to keep it organized. When she's not geeking out about organization or minimalism, she's probably hanging out with her family or pretending to be a contestant on The Great British Baking Show.

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