Virtual Workshop Archives

All archived virtual workshops are available to NYSAFLT members for $10 each or three for $20.

CTLE Credit (Members Only)

You may request CTLE credit for sessions that you participated in live or which you viewed as a recording. Once you have particiapted in/viewed a webinar, please fill out this form.

When you submit your form, you will receive an email which you may use as proof of your participation. If your school absolutely requires something in certificate format, please contact us at info@nysaflt.org.


2020–2021 Virtual Workshops

Caution: Heavy Load – Practical Ways to Keep Proficiency-Based Teaching Sustainable and Purposeful

Presenter: Meredith White, Gwinnett County Public Schools, Gwinnett County, GA
Many times, we as teachers are overwhelmed with professional development: session options, new technology tools, constant collaboration, lesson planning, the list goes on. Meanwhile, we still have the same goals: foster students’ enjoyment of language and culture while advancing their proficiency. This presentation will provide ideas to empower teachers to keep language teaching sustainable and forward-moving, divided into three tiers: organization, planning, and assessing. Don’t come for the latest, greatest, all-new teacher shiny; come to reflect and possibly even level-up what you’re already doing. You, as a teacher, are already enough, and this session looks to validate and align the work you’ve already put in and see if it can be pushed further. All slides, resources, videos, and tools mentioned will be available before, during, and after the presentation.

WhiteMeredith White is a Georgia transplant who earned her B.A., B.S., M.Ed., and Ed.S. all from the University of Georgia. Her focus on novice learners works to ingrain proficiency, authentic resources, genuine tasks, student-centered thematic units, student-guided lessons, and making language learning enjoyable. When she isn’t at PRHS teaching Spanish, she’s at Georgia State University teaching educational methods classes in the evenings and at state, regional, and national workshops, both attending and presenting. Furthermore, she blogs, moderates the PLN #langchat (@PRHSspanish), and serves on the GGC College of Education Advisory and SEALLT Executive Boards.


Planting the Seeds of Proficiency in Elementary and Middle School

Presenter: Joshua Cabral, Brookwood School, Manchester, MA

Students are successful in the elementary and middle school classroom when instruction is aligned with principles of child development. Language learning is most productive and effective in a classroom community that makes learners feel safe, valued and successful. In this workshop, you will learn activities that provide a supportive context for risk-taking, build community, focus on authentic communication and follow language proficiency guidelines. Can Do Statements and speaking goals are not just for older language learners.

CabralJoshua Cabral has an MA in Applied Linguistics, specializing in second language acquisition. He has been teaching French and Spanish at the elementary, middle and high school levels for 22 years. In addition to teaching at Brookwood School in Manchester, MA he regularly presents workshops on language proficiency and cultural competence at state, regional and national conferences. He also consults with schools and districts across the country as they build proficiency-based language programs. Joshua is passionate about access to education in developing countries as well and works closely with schools in Haiti and Nicaragua.


#AuthRes 101: Finding & Embedding Authentic Resources in the World Language Classroom 2.0

Presenter: Michelle Walpole, Penfield High School , Penfield, NY
Back by popular demand, this webinar will go through the way to find, embed, and utilize authentic materials in the World Language Classroom. Attendees will go through the process with several examples to see how to use authentic resources in an engaging way. Where do you start? How do you make them accessible to your students and what will they do with the resource? Is the language at the correct level of difficulty? In this webinar, the
presenter will walk you through the steps for finding and integrating authentic resources into instruction, designing meaningful interpretive assessments, and finding practical resources already created online. Attendees will leave with a tool kit of strategies for embedding authentic cultural resources in their classrooms.

WalpoleMichelle Walpole is a Spanish teacher at Penfield High School. She has had a variety of teaching experiences during the last seven years in multiple educational settings. She holds a B.A. in Spanish & Secondary Education from SUNY Geneseo and a Masters of Spanish Education from the University of Nebraska Kearney. She has had many opportunities to present at conferences around the state. In addition, she was part of the NYSAFLT Leaders of Tomorrow program in 2018, and presented a webinar on authentic resources in 2019. She believes the ideal recipe for student success in the classroom is student rapport, authenticity, engagement, empathy, and creativity.


Anchor Standard 1: Purposeful Communication Through Language Functions

Presenters:
Bill Heller, SUNY Geneseo, Geneseo, NY
Joanne O’Toole, SUNY Oswego, Oswego, NY

Explore how leading with key communicative functions embedded in the new checkpoint performance indicators for the proposed NYS World Language Standards 1, 2 and 3 can simplify your planning. These language functions help focus instruction on what is essential to purposeful communication and guide your learners to make continuous progress on their pathway of proficiency.

O'TooleJoanne O’Toole, Ph.D., is Professor of Modern Language Education at SUNY Oswego. She has held several world language leadership positions, including NYSAFLT President and NECTFL Director. She currently serves on the NYSED OBEWL Content Advisory Panel Executive Committee. She is a regular presenter at local, state, and national conferences. She previously taught secondary Spanish for 16 years.
HellerBill Heller has taught students at the elementary, secondary, and post-secondary levels for 40 years including 24 years as the high school Spanish teacher at Perry Central Schools. He has been a methods and Spanish instructor at SUNY Geneseo since 2001. He has done workshops, preconferences and keynotes at local, state, regional and national conferences for World Language teachers. He is currently serving on the Executive Committee of the NYSED Content Advisory Panel for World Languages. Bill has served on the NYSAFLT Board of Directors and as Conference Chair for the 2017 Northeast Conference (NECTFL). He and his rescue pup, Sadie, live in Warsaw, NY.


Anchor Standard 2: Accessing Culture through Language Functions

Presenters:
Joanne O’Toole, SUNY Oswego, Oswego, NY
Bill Heller, SUNY Geneseo, Geneseo, NY

“Use the language to…” are the words that both introduce Anchor Standard 2, Culture, and define the relationship between language and culture embedded in the revised New York State Standards. Examine how joining the key language functions with content from authentic resources provides a cultural context for communicative tasks in any mode. Explore how the performance indicators inform culturally-contextualized target-language task design at each proficiency checkpoint.

O'Toole

Joanne O’Toole, Ph.D., is Professor of Modern Language Education at SUNY Oswego. She has held several world language leadership positions, including NYSAFLT President and NECTFL Director. She currently serves on the NYSED OBEWL Content Advisory Panel Executive Committee. She is a regular presenter at local, state, and national conferences. She previously taught secondary Spanish for 16 years.
HellerBill Heller Bill Heller has taught students at the elementary, secondary, and post-secondary levels for 40 years including 24 years as the high school Spanish teacher at Perry Central Schools. He has been a methods and Spanish instructor at SUNY Geneseo since 2001. He has done workshops, preconferences and keynotes at local, state, regional and national conferences for World Language teachers. He is currently serving on the Executive Committee of the NYSED Content Advisory Panel for World Languages. Bill has served on the NYSAFLT Board of Directors and as Conference Chair for the 2017 Northeast Conference (NECTFL). He and his rescue pup, Sadie, live in Warsaw, NY.


Rethinking Grading Practices in a Communicative Classroom

Presenter: Melanie Thomas, Spencerport CSD, Spencerport, NY

As teachers shift their classrooms to focus on communicative proficiency, we need to look at our grading practices. How can we modify our grades to reflect students’ skills and abilities with the language? Students need to be graded on what they know and can do in the target language. Do our grades reflect that?

ThomasMelanie Thomas teaches Spanish at Spencerport CSD. Her experience includes levels I, III, IV and V in conjunction with Syracuse University. She holds her WL National Board Certification. Her MATL from the University of Southern Mississippi focused on the knowledge, skills, and theories in language, language acquisition, and language instruction. This background in SLA supports her strive to teach with Comprehensible Input to help learners acquire the language they study. @senoramthomas
senoraMThomas.blogspot.com Find me on YouTube: bit.ly/CIvids


Shifting Academic Mindset: Lessons Learned from Action Research in Actionable Corrective Feedback

Presenter: Beth Slocum, Genesee Valley BOCES, Pavilion, NY
Whether we are teaching face-to-face, online or in a hybrid model, learner engagement and ownership of learning are essential factors for student success. After a summer of PD and pondering, this teacher engaged in an action research project to implement a wise feedback model with her middle school students. We know that offering actionable corrective feedback is critical in second language acquisition. Join me as I share the ongoing findings of my quest to balance expectations and authentic engagement while students take a more active role in tracking their progress.

SlocumBeth Slocum is a teacher of French and Spanish for Genesee Valley BOCES. After a summer book study of Zaretta Hammond’s Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain, Beth took on the challenge of redesigning the feedback model in her classroom based on Hammond’s Asset-Based Feedback Protocol. In these unprecedented times, never has social-emotional learning been more important. This webinar is a report on a work in progress as Beth embarks on a new journey of action research on SEL and effective feedback in the language classroom.



2019–2020 Virtual Workshops


Keep Them Talking: Fun Games and Activities to Increase Language Acquisition and Prompt Proficiency

Presenter: Belal Joundeya, American Community School of Abu Dhabi

Games are important tools for learning languages because they offer students a chance to internalize the language without the risk of failure, increasing their confidence and growth. Games help students to increase time on task while staying engaged and focused. Students enjoy the games a lot and class positivity is increased. This session will highlight eight amazing activities and games that engage students, create motivation, and increase their language proficiency. Participants will leave with many ideas they can implement right away in their classroom.

JoundeyaBelal Joundeya is an Arabic teacher at The American Community School of Abu Dhabi in United Arab Emirates. Belal earned his MA in education and he has ten years of experience teaching Arabic in K-12 settings including in Jordan, Utah, Oregon, Doha, and Cairo. He previously served as the Director of the Arabic Academy at Middlebury Interactive Languages Summer Camp in Vermont and as the Assistant Director for Arabic Startalk at BYU. He has also taught community education courses at UVU University as well as adjunct courses at BYU, and has spoken at many conferences related to teaching Arabic as a foreign language. He has been asked to speak in many language conferences about teaching languages through fun and interactive ways.


I Carry Your Story & You Carry Mine: Empathy in the WL Classroom

Presenters: Samara Spielberg and Camilla Iturralde, The Allen-Stevenson School

Samara Spielberg and Camilla Iturralde spent 15 months developing and researching a two-month, empathy-based storytelling unit created under the theme, #NoMoreBullying. The action research examined the degree to which their students’ ability to empathize shifted after hearing varied tales of bullying from a range of people, far away, close by, and within. Join them for an informative session about the cultural shifts affecting our students, the action research that they developed, their findings, and why they believe that WL teachers are in a unique position to drastically change the ways in which today’s youth engage in the world around them. World language teachers can be the change!

Spielberg and ituralde Samara Spielberg is the Spanish Department Chair at the Allen-Stevenson School, an all-boys K-9 school in New York City. Her passion for language came to life in Sevilla, where horses clanked up and down the cobble stone streets and flamenco music erupted on every corner. The game changer? Human connection was at the core. She believes every language class can live and breathe in the same way. With the desire to put connection at the center of her classes, Samara and her colleague Camilla Iturralde began to experiment with how to build empathy through world languages. Together they created a four-part framework and completed a study on using different types of storytelling to foster empathy. She is eager to share her pedagogical approaches and findings with you.


Classroom Management in a Comprehensible Input Classroom

Presenter: Mary Holmes, New Paltz Middle School

Teaching through Comprehensible Input (CI) requires student interaction. However, many teachers are reluctant to go all in for fear of their class becoming over stimulated or of losing control. This webinar offers strategies to successful management of a dynamic CI classroom. You’ll learn specific strategies to design rules and routines and procedures that facilitate a CI instruction; to set the tone for a positive and engaged classroom environment; to engage all of your students; and to keep students accountable.

HolmesMary Holmes has taught elementary through high school Spanish and French for over 25 years. She has been a presenter for Blaine Ray, Fluency Fast, and for a variety of national and international organizations. Her workshops help teachers successfully bring Comprehensible Input strategies to their classes. Mary was president of the New York State Association for Foreign Language Teachers (NYSAFLT) in 2014. She was the New York State Associate for World Language Education in the New York State Department of Education in 2008. Mary has won numerous awards, including the NYSAFLT President’s Award and Best of New York State. She currently works for New Paltz Middle School in New York State.


Embedding Authentic Resources into Lesson Plans

Presenter: Leslie Grahn, Independent Consultant

Understanding that it is ideal to use authentic resources as much as possible in our lesson plans, how do we achieve that goal? Where can we find ideal sources and how do we adapt them for differentiated use across the modes? In this webinar, we will explore how to make authentic text work for you in the various phases of lesson planning. You’ll be ready to dive in in your own planning after this webinar!

GrahnLeslie Grahn has twenty-seven years of language teaching experience at the middle and high school levels and twelve years of experience at the central office level, most recently as Coordinator of World Languages for the Howard County Public School System in Maryland. Leslie has been a course instructor on foreign language teaching methods and differentiated instruction and frequent presenter at state, regional, and national conferences, specializing in best practices, specifically hands-on, interactive strategies. Leslie is the co-author of The Keys to Strategies for Language Instruction and serves on the boards of NECTFL, NADSFL and ACTFL.


They, Too, Can-Do: Strategies and Accommodations for Diverse Learners

Presenter: Rebecca Blouwolff, Wellesley Middle School Wellesley, MA, 2020 ACTFL National Language Teacher of the Year

Let every student shine! Learn to foster diverse learners’ success with strategies for effective learning and accommodations on performance tasks. See Marzano’s high-yield strategies for effective learning applied to real-life tasks in the world language classroom. Examine accommodations that support students with low working memory, weak first-language reading comprehension, difficulty making inferences, and more. Reflect on your own internal roadblocks to offering accommodations and plan for realistic changes that you can implement in your own teaching setting.

Blouwolff Rebecca Blouwolff has taught French at Wellesley Middle School in MA since 1998, but fell in love with middle schoolers while serving as a Fulbright teaching scholar at a collège in Saint-Omer, France. Novice students inspire her to create engaging, age-appropriate lessons focused on global awareness. She earned a B.A. magna cum laude in American Civilization and Judaic Studies at Brown University, and an M.Ed. in Teacher Leadership at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. She is a National Board Certified Teacher, 2019 MaFLA and NECTFL Teacher of the Year, and certified MOPI tester.


Guiding and Empowering Learners Through Can-Do Statements

Presenter: Rebecca Aubrey, South Windsor Public Schools, South Windsor, CT

The 2017 NCSSFL-ACTFL Can-Do Statements provide a valuable toolbox for language educators to guide curriculum planning, scaffold daily lessons, and empower students to take charge of their learning. In this webinar, participants will have a brief overview of the can-do statements, but will then delve deeper into how they can be adapted to meet different curricular needs. This will lead participants into some specific strategies for how the can-do statements can be used on a daily basis to set learning objectives and empower students to track their own progress on the proficiency continuum.

Aubrey Rebecca Aubrey received her B.A. in Human Ecology from College of the Atlantic, M.A. in Political Science from the University of Connecticut, and a Teaching Certification through the Connecticut Alternate Route to Certification. She has over 20 years of teaching experience at the college level, and 10 years of experience teaching Spanish in grades K-8. Rebecca has presented broadly in Connecticut and at the national level, including two ACTFL presentations. She is the 2019 ACTFL Teacher of the Year. Rebecca is passionate about exploring the cultural and linguistic diversity of our world, and equally passionate about empowering students to do the same.