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.
2021–2022 Virtual Workshops
Language Advocacy: Planting the Seeds Every Day
Presenter: Anna Cartwright, Orchard Park High School, Orchard Park
As language teachers, we often find ourselves struggling to attract students to our program as they build their schedules for the following year. But if we built advocacy techniques into our regular routines, would we have to fight as hard for their attention? In this webinar, we will examine a framework for setting advocacy goals for teachers, for their schools and for their departments. We will explore ways to inform students and parents of opportunities to practice language skills in the community. Suggestions will also be provided about how to reach out to administrators, politicians and other influencers about the importance of multilingualism in our world.
Anna Cartwright received her Bachelor of Arts in French Language and Literature from Nazareth College of Rochester, where she also minored in Italian and obtained her teaching certifications for French 7-12 and Special Education. She completed her Master of Arts in French Cultural Studies at the NYU Institute of French Studies. She currently teaches French 2, French 2B and AP French at Orchard Park High School in Orchard Park, NY.
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ALL IN!: Awesome Acquisition Driven Activities for High Engagement and FUN!
Presenter: Annabelle Allen (La Maestra Loca), Bricolage Academy, New Orleans, LA
Engaging our learners in this fast-paced, screen-based world can be a challenge, but teachers are here for it! This session will introduce educators to several amazing activities that are certain to engage World Language students! They’re all acquisition driven and will help to facilitate language for every student in the class while also increasing their JOY!
Annabelle Allen (La Maestra Loca) was christened “La Maestra Loca” by her students long ago, but what she is really crazy about is building a positive, inclusive, success-oriented language community that promotes equity and anti-racist education. Annabelle’s love of students, people, languages, and of life is contagious, while her deep understanding of the nuts and bolts of teaching for communicative competence will leave you eager and inspired to return to your classrooms and start implementing all of her strategies for equitable engagement! She’s currently in her 10th year as an educator, teaching Middle School Spanish in New Orleans at Bricolage Academy.
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Kitty to Lion: Building Learners’ Interpretive Skills and Confidence
Presenter: Rebecca Blouwolff, Wellesley Middle School, Wellesley MA
Build up learners’ toolbox and confidence in the interpretive mode. While reading and listening tasks rely on students’ existing literacy skills and willingness to take risks, there are many practical strategies that teachers can share with students to expand their repertoire and independence. Come learn a set of concrete steps for guiding learners to interact with authentic materials with confidence. Explore sample interpretive tasks for Novice Mid, Novice High and Intermediate Low targets. Never again feel that you and your students “can’t handle” authentic resources!
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, 2020 ACTFL Teacher of the Year, and a certified MOPI tester.
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Writing to Grow: Building Blocks to Proficiency
Presenter: Greta Lundgaard, Consultant, Dallas, TX
An intentional writing plan provides opportunities to process, practice, and apply new learning in context. A writing plan enables teachers to teach grammar in context while moving students across proficiency borders. This session will highlight the connection between writing and proficiency growth and explore output and revision strategies that deepen and expand writing performances and grow language proficiency.
Greta Lundgaard is a World Language Consultant who works with world language educators at local, state, regional, national, and international schools. She taught German at all levels before serving as the Coordinator of Foreign Languages for Lewisville ISD, Texas and Plano ISD, Texas. She gives workshops on behalf of ACTFL and PEARLL and previously contributed at the National Foreign Language Center as a Senior Associate for Professional Development. Greta has served on the Board of Directors and as President of the Board for SWCOLT, as President of NADSFL, and as President of the Texas Association for Language Supervision.
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The Five Facets of Leadership
Presenter: Lyanne Terada, Horizon High School, Thornton, Colorado
Every person is uniquely qualified to lead like a multifaceted diamond. With five leadership principles based on the industry standards of diamonds known as the 4 C’s, this webinar will help polish and refine each participant’s leadership skills so that everyone can sparkle more brightly in all areas of their life.
Lyanne Terada is a Spanish teacher at Horizon High School in Thornton, Colorado. A National Board Certified Teacher and 2008 Hawai`i World Language Teacher of the Year, she infuses passion and joy for language, travel, and multiple perspectives in her classroom to inspire her students and help them develop global, linguistic, and intercultural competencies for immediate use and growing proficiency. She was an ACTFL LILL Emerging Leader in 2015, is currently facilitating LILL Cohort 4, and represents Colorado/CCFLT on the SWCOLT Board of Directors.
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Authentic Resources as Primary Sources for Cultural Inquiry
Presenters: Bill Heller, SUNY Geneseo and Joanne O’Toole, Ph.D., SUNY Oswego
Authentic resources can be an ideal primary source to initiate exploration of cultural products and practices. Authentic resources reflect the voices of members of target cultures as they engage in real-world communication with one another. For learners to make cultural as well as communicative meaning from authentic resources–in other words, to successfully enact NYS World Language Standards 4 and 5–teachers need confidence, skills and strategies. This webinar will explore ways to leverage the interpretation of authentic resources as a vehicle for uncovering cultural perspectives in the target language appropriate to the learners’ proficiency range.
Bill Heller has taught in public elementary, secondary, community college and undergraduate classrooms for 40 years, including 24 years teaching Spanish at Perry High School. He has been a methods and Spanish instructor at SUNY Geneseo since 2001. He is a frequent presenter of workshops, webinars and keynotes. Bill served as Conference Chair for the 2017 Northeast Conference (NECTFL) and is currently a member of the Executive Board and Content Advisory Panel for World Languages at the New York State Education Department (NYSED).
Joanne O’Toole, Ph.D., is Professor of Modern Language Education at SUNY Oswego. She currently serves as principal investigator of the New York State World Language Standards Initiative, and is a member of the Executive Committee of the NYSED OBEWL Content Advisory Panel. Joanne has held several world language leadership positions, including NYSAFLT President, is a regular presenter at local, state, and national conferences and is currently serving on the NECTFL board of directors. She previously taught secondary Spanish for 16 years.
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Engaging Activities to Keep Novice Learners Speaking in the Target Language
Presenters: Valerie Greer and Wendy Mercado, Bay Shore Middle School, Bay Shore, NY
Is it a challenge for you to get your novice learners speaking in the target language? Do you feel that they haven’t learned enough yet to do activities entirely in the TL? During this webinar, we will share several fun and engaging exercises that will keep your students confidently speaking in the TL. We will provide you with ideas that can be used as early as the first few weeks of your level one classes along with easy assessment strategies that will motivate your students to stay in the target language while working on these tasks. Come join us for this webinar to learn how to take the fear out of speaking.
Valerie Greer received both her Bachelor’s &Master’s degrees from SUNY Stony Brook & has been teaching French for 24 years at the Bay Shore UFSD. Valérie has presented for LILT, NYSAFLT, NECTFL, ACTFL, BOCES & FLENJ. She won Best of NYSAFLT 2017 & Best of NECTFL 2017. Valérie served as the NYSAFLT NYC/LI Regional Director from 2017-2019 and she is the Secretary/Treasurer for NYSAFLT. Valérie helped to coordinate & re-imagine the LILT student WL competition. She has worked on the local committee for NECTFL, mentored new teachers for NYSAFLT & NECTFL & has been on the NYSAFLT AC planning committee for many years. Valérie is the 2021 recipient of the Ruth E. Wasley NYS World Language Teacher of the Year Award.
Wendy Mercado received both her Bachelors & Masters degrees from SUNY Stony Brook. She has been teaching at the Bay Shore UFSD for 24 years. Wendy has presented many times for LILT, NYSAFLT, NECTFL & ACTFL and was named Best of NYSAFLT 2017 for sessions at the 2017 NYSAFLT Annual Conference and Best of NECTFL 2017. Wendy participated in NYSAFLT’s 2017 cohort of the Leaders of Tomorrow program and is presently the secretary for ACTFL’s Language Learning for Children Special Interest Group, the LILT Webmaster, and holds several roles for NYSAFLT: Long Island Regional Director, Director of Social Media Chairperson, and Virtual Video Contest Committee Chairperson.
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.
Meredith 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.
Joshua 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.
Michelle 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Bill 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?
Melanie 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.
Beth 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.
Belal 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!
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.
Mary 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!
Leslie 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.
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.
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.
