Oscar 2024

Cultural competency is a buzzword that has been floating around in education for a few years. But what does this look like in our classrooms? We share best practices for creating an anti-bias classroom and work through case studies that will help put theory into practice. These case studies present instances of microaggressions in the classroom and participants learn and practice different strategies and language to address them.

An IPA (Integrated Performance Assessment) is an assessment sequence using the modes of communication–Interpretive, Interpersonal, & Presentational–but which can also provide a framework to design curriculum and instruction. We can repurpose the IPA as a framework for designing learning sequences and curricular units. We explore the IPA framework to deliberately move learners from meaningful input to authentic interaction, providing specific classroom examples drawing from our new (2022) ACTFL publication “Proficiency-Based Instruction: Input & Interaction in World Language Education.”

This session highlights the development and sequencing of a proficiency-oriented unit that uses a feature film in the target language as its base. Participants discover how to gather supporting authentic resources, utilize engaging discussion techniques, underscore targeted grammatical structures and develop appropriate assessments that support the themes of the film aligned with proficiency goals. By using high-frequency vocabulary and high-interest topics these engaging units of film study provide optimal comprehensible input and boost language acquisition.

A Rountable Discussion and Open Forum on the varied programs of the Goethe-Institut and the way teachers can work together to build their networks, featuring the work of the SPARK program and the study abroad exchange program GAPP. Join us to share your insights and strengthen your program.

William Lee, the 2023 ACTFL National Langauge Teacher of the Year, shares instructional strategies to engage and motivate students, combining language and culture to develop learners' language performance. These strategies, both technology-based and non-technology-based, can help you reach all kinds of learners in the classroom and are applicable to all languages and levels. Be inspired with new ideas and examples that can have immediate impact in your classroom.

How do we guide learners from input to output while also making our students more independent learners? The Gradual Release of Responsibilities (I do, we do, you do) is a framework to help scaffold our lessons and units to achieve those goals. Explore this framework and how it applies to learning a second language. We examine lesson examples in the 3 modes of communication as well as how to apply this framework to planning thematic units that gradually guides students to communicating independently