Proficiency-Based Instruction: Input & Interaction in World Language Education will give experienced teachers as well as those who are just beginning their career numerous resources to support your teaching. The book couples these resources with sample lessons from real teachers' classrooms to make proficiency-based teaching a reality for you and your students!

While We're On the Topic: BVP on Language, Acquisition, and Classroom Practice is from one of the leading figures in the field of second language acquisition and second language teaching, While We're on the Topic... offers an up-to-date overview of six principles underlying contemporary communicative language teaching. In a conversational style, Bill VanPatten addresses principles related to the nature of communication, the nature of language, how language is acquired, the roles of input and interaction, tasks and activities, and focus on form (grammar). Each principle is informed by decades of research yet all are presented in a manner accessible to veteran and novice educators alike.

This book is a must read for all interested in 21st century language teaching. With special features such as Foundational Readings, Discussion Questions and Food for Thought, I... statements for self-assessment, and While We're on the Topic reflection boxes that invite the reader to ponder related topics, this book can easily be used as the foundation for any course on contemporary language teaching.

Students continually ask, Does this count? Is this on the test? They want to know how they'll be evaluated. Discover how to answer these questions in ways that shape student learning and keep teaching focused on what really matters. Written by language expert Paul Sandrock, this superb manual clarifies precisely what language educators need to understand in order to successfully assess student performance. Relevant to new teachers and seasoned professionals alike, Sandrock provides step-by-step guidance on how to design assessments, illuminates the process of designing rubrics that focus on proficiency and helps educators create assessments that motivate students to offer language samples that accomplish authentic purposes. School administrators will also benefit from the section that focuses on the impact of performance assessment on instruction and program design.

The fourth in the series, this book underscores the importance of the teacher in the learning equation. With an emphasis on the need for instructors to possess a wide variety of strategies, substantial time is devoted to modeling the kind of thinking that skillful instructors employ to decide how learning can best be facilitated. Each chapter includes the opportunity for readers to analyze sample challenging scenarios and think about different ways of addressing them. With a focus on strategies backed by the most current research, this book gives educators powerful ideas to make language instruction meaningful and purposeful.

The second edition of Words and Actions: Teaching Languages Through the Lens of Social Justice features an expanded framework, a variety of new unit, lesson, and activity examples from different languages and levels, and additional content on how social justice education fits within the context of contemporary approaches to language instruction.

The revised text provides concrete examples to help readers navigate the opportunities and challenges inherent in adopting a social justice lens, such as the differences between a good cultural lesson and a social justice lesson. Expanded chapters also provide support for adapting curriculum in different contexts, including those that emphasize immersion, comprehensible input, Teaching Proficiency through Reading and Storytelling (TPRS), and content-based instruction. New educator voices and examples from both commonly and less commonly taught language classrooms provide an authentic picture of social justice work taking place in classrooms across the United States. A new chapter about critical moments in the classroom has also been added to provide a clear guide and explicit tools to help teachers address complex events and challenging moments in the classroom.

A concise go to guide for new language educators that provides basic practical information, suggestions, and templates, without going into the detail found in a more comprehensive methods textbook. Since the publication of the first edition in 2007, concepts of planning, instruction, and grading have evolved, proficiency-based NCSSFL-ACTFL Can-Do Statements have been created, and, of course, the available tools and resources have changed a great deal. When this text was originally published, overhead projectors were common in classrooms, students rarely had their own cell phones, and social media were still relatively new. Today the instructional environment is different, as are the tools and resources available to teachers.

Amid all the ways in which teaching has changed, much remains the same. Learners still need to be meaningfully engaged with the language. Educators must plan opportunities for learning that are relevant for learners. Students must believe that teachers care for them as individuals. Language and intercultural skills are increasingly important in our global society. Teaching is difficult, and educators new to the profession need support and guidance.

New teachers must learn a great deal, regardless of the amount of preparation they need before entering the classroom. This second edition of The Keys to the Classroom captures the changes and additions that meet the needs of language educators in today's rapidly changing environment.

Enacting the Work of Language Instruction: High-Leverage Teaching Practices, Vol. 1 presents an approach to teacher education and professional development that emphasizes carefully deconstructing fundamental instructional practices that are complex and often not visible through observation, definition, or brief explanation. Its goal is to assist teachers in learning how to enact specific practices, referred to as high-leverage teaching practices, deemed essential to foreign language teaching and situated in theory and research.

Six practices are presented:

Unique features of the book include deconstruction of each practice, activities for rehearsing the practices, rubrics for assessing performance, tools to assist teachers in enacting the practices, and discussion of how each practice relates to larger educational issues.

The second edition of Keys to Planning builds upon the information shared about effective curriculum, unit, and lesson design by introducing current research and thinking related to curriculum design. The information presented in this second edition also captures insights and suggestions from classroom teachers who have attended workshops given by the presenters and who are now developing and implementing thematic units in their classrooms. The intent is not to convey how teachers might do things better, but rather is intended to focus the discussion on how teachers might do things differently given the need to support learners as they acquire the skills needed for 21st Century Literacy and Global Competence.

Language educators and experts Donna Clementi and Laura Terrill have created a useful guide to assist teachers, curriculum designers, administrators and professional developers in designing thematic units where unit goals and summative performance tasks are organized around the World-Readiness Standards. Starting with an understanding of the 21st century learner, the authors establish a mindset for creating curriculum that allows learners to develop Intercultural Communicative Competence as they learn more about themselves, explore their communities and engage with the world. The authors explain and provide easy-to-follow templates to develop units of instruction and daily lessons that allow learners to explore mulitdimensional themes and essential questions that provoke critical thinking.

Additional Resources

Why a book on the nature of language? The answer is surprising in this new book by Bill VanPatten. Language just isn't what most of us think it is-and because of that, the need to know about the nature of language takes on new importance for teachers who really want to teach for acquisition, who truly want to teach for communicative ability and proficiency. It provides teachers with one of the important arguments for striking out on their own and exploring new methods and alternative curricula and assessments. Engaging and reader friendly, this book will challenge every teacher's ideas about what winds up in learners' heads. It will lead teachers to question the content of most current textbooks and the practices contained in them.

Ever wonder if you are enough?

Ever question your worth based on others?

Ever believe that maybe just maybe it has nothing to do with you?

If the answer is yes than this is the book for you.

It is just reminders that no matter what you have been through you are magnificient just as you are.

The goal of Enacting the Work of Language Instruction: High-Leverage Teaching Practices, Vol. 2 is to assist teachers in learning how to enact specific practices, referred to as high-leverage teaching practices, deemed essential to world language teaching and situated in theory and research.

This second volume continues the discussion of HLTPs begun in Volume 1 by deconstructing an additional four practices that are complex and often not visible through observation or brief explanation: Establishing a Meaningful and Purposeful Context for Language InstructionPlanning for Instruction Using an Iterative Process for Backward DesignEngaging Learners in Purposeful Written CommunicationDeveloping Contextualized Performance Assessments

Features of the book include deconstruction of each practice, activities for rehearsing the practices, rubrics for assessing performance, tools to assist teachers in enacting the practices, and discussion of how each practice relates to larger educational issues.

This volume explains how teachers can move from deconstructing the practices to enacting them, and ultimately to using greater creativity in adapting the practices

Teaching Intercultural Citizenship Across the Curriculum: The Role of Language Education explores how language educators can advocate for and illustrate the importance of language education not only for their students' education but also for their ability to solve complex problems we urgently need to address. This book introduces readers to theory and practice in planning, teaching, and assessing intercultural communication and citizenship across the curriculum. Teachers, teacher educators, and curriculum designers gain a better understanding of designing (world) language curricula for intercultural citizenship by making connections to the students' knowledge and experiences from other subjects. This enables students to apply what they learn in language education in their lives in the here and now.

The aim of the book is also to help language educators work together with teachers of other subjects (e.g., mathematics, sciences, English language arts) to broaden students' understandings and strengthen their intercultural citizenship development. Theoretical investigations are illustrated with practical examples and lesson plans from world language education and linked to other subjects through discipline-specific content. Questions for reflection encourage the reader to interact more deeply with the concepts and the suggested examples. Supporting materials are provided which teachers can adapt for implementation in their own program.

This new title examines a comprehensive framework for implementing the Seal of Biliteracy in the classroom. Covering all aspects of the Seal of Biliteracy's movement, this book will help you frame the work in your school and community, ensure access for all students, and evaluate your efforts, among other critical aspects of using the framework in learning.

This bundle features:
While We're on the Topic

From one of the leading figures in the field of second language acquisition and second language teaching, While We're on the Topic... offers an up-to-date overview of six principles underlying contemporary communicative language teaching. In a conversational style, Bill VanPatten addresses principles related to the nature of communication, the nature of language, how language is acquired, the roles of input and interaction, tasks and activities, and focus on form (grammar). Each principle is informed by decades of research yet all are presented in a manner accessible to veteran and novice educators alike.

This book is a must read for all interested in 21st century language teaching. With special features such as Foundational Readings, Discussion Questions and Food for Thought, I... statements for self-assessment, and While We're on the Topic reflection boxes that invite the reader to ponder related topics, this book can easily be used as the foundation for any course on contemporary language teaching.

The Nature of Language: A Short Guide to What's in Our Heads

Why a book on the nature of language? The answer is surprising in this new book by Bill VanPatten. Language just isn't what most of us think it is-and because of that, the need to know about the nature of language takes on new importance for teachers who really want to teach for acquisition, who truly want to teach for communicative ability and proficiency. It provides teachers with one of the important arguments for striking out on their own and exploring new methods and alternative curricula and assessments. Engaging and reader friendly, this book will challenge every teacher's ideas about what winds up in learners' heads. It will lead teachers to question the content of most current textbooks and the practices contained in them.

Save more than 15% by purchasing all together