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Growing With Proficiency The Podcast
Welcome to Growing With Proficiency: The Podcast! Are you a World Language teacher who is looking for ideas, strategies, activities, and inspiration to create a World Language class where you and your students enjoy using the language to learn about the world and each other? Do you want to transform your class into an acquisition-driven instruction space where you intentionally provide a ton of comprehensible input?
If you are, you're in the right place.
Let's start this journey together. Head over to IG, and send me a DM @claudiamelliott to let me know what topics you would like me to cover in an upcoming episode.Join my free Facebook community, Growing With C. Also, check out my blog to start discovering some of these ideas and strategies at growingwithproficiency.com
Growing With Proficiency The Podcast
Episode 193: Three Things That Worked Better Than I Expected This Year
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What actually helped students learn this year?
As language teachers, it's easy to spend our end-of-year reflection focused on what didn't work. In Episode 191, I shared some of the challenges I faced this year. In Episode 192, I reflected on behavior, classroom culture, relationships, expectations, and the lessons I learned from a particularly challenging freshman class.
But reflection isn't only about identifying problems.
It's also about paying attention to what worked.
After surveying 158 students and reading every response, I noticed three themes that kept appearing. Interestingly, none of them were new strategies or trendy activities. Instead, they were reminders of the foundations that have guided my teaching for years.
In this episode, I share:
✔ Why strong student-teacher relationships continue to be one of the most powerful tools for language acquisition
✔ What my students' feedback revealed about classroom community and belonging
✔ How stories, reading, and meaningful communication continue to support student growth
✔ Why students consistently named routines like Free Voluntary Reading and daily conversations among their favorite activities
✔ What student survey data taught me about engagement, structure, and success in the world language classroom
✔ The feedback students gave me about vocabulary support, group activities, classroom noise, and participation
If you're reflecting on your own school year, planning for next year, or looking for ways to create a more engaging and effective language classroom, this episode will help you identify the practices worth keeping.
Resources Mentioned
📌 Download the free Teacher Guide:
https://growingwithproficiency.com/teacherguide
📌 Join the waitlist for Growing With Proficiency: The Spanish Teacher Academy:
https://growingwithproficiency.com/academy
📌 Follow Claudia on Instagram @claudiamelliott
📌 Growing With CI FB Community
📌Blog
