We hope you enjoy this Fall issue of El Profe, HMH's biannual newsletter for Spanish language educators. El Profe brings you insights and ideas to enrich instruction, news on current trends in language education, and the latest information on ¡Avancemos! resources for your classroom. This issue also provides a free resource to connect students to culture—a downloadable Fall Holiday Calendar!
Spanish Holiday Calendar / Spring 2018
Give your students more opportunities to connect language and culture with this new, FREE calendar that will save you hours of time!
Each month the calendar highlights holidays in the Spanish-speaking world along with leveled lesson ideas to get students communicating in Spanish, and links to related media in HMHfyi Español and News and Networking as well as to HMH® web pages featuring holiday-focused articles from ¡Avancemos!
Fill out the form and download today!
Delaware Promotes Multiliteracy
The state of Delaware has a new Certificate of Multiliteracy that honors and recognizes students who have achieved high levels of proficiency in a language other than English. This certificate serves as a credential when applying to jobs or to college or the military. We applaud the Delaware Department of Education for taking this step and hope to see acknowledgment of the importance of multiliteracy become a national trend. As evidenced in the statistics in our printable Benefits of Bilingualism infographic, speaking more than one language is highly beneficial in a number of ways, especially when it comes to today's job market, an important consideration for high school and college-age students.
Delaware, along with 29 other states, also offers the Seal of Biliteracy, which is granted to all students who meet the criteria for the award. For each level, criteria are set for students whose first language is English and who are learning a second language, and for English Learners who are developing academic proficiency in their home language while mastering English.
Online Enrollment in Foreign Language Courses is on the Rise
According to a recent report released by the Evergreen Education Group entitled Keeping Pace with K–12 Online Learning 2016, online enrollment in foreign language courses is on the rise! The report looks at enrollment in 21 of the 24 state-run virtual schools for the 2015–2016 school year and the largest increase in any single category of online courses was in foreign language study, which rose 6% from the 2014–2015 school year. The rise is attributed to an interest in taking courses not offered in students' home districts due to financial constraints, according to Robert Gemin, a senior researcher at the Evergreen Education Group.
Graph from the Keeping Pace with K–12 Online Learning 2016 report published by the Evergreen Education Group in 2017.
New Ways to Make Your Spanish Class Even More Authentic
All language learners benefit from a 'linguistically friendly' classroom, one in which students are free to acquire a second language without fear of sanctions on what they have yet to learn.
According to the HMH® white paper entitled Communication First! Six Best Practices for the Second Language Classroom, authored by John De Mado, "there is an intimate relationship between language acquisition and an individual's willingness to take linguistic risks, to be vulnerable, and to use intuition in order to confront more language than he or she owns. This dynamic is essential to a student's second language growth."
Download this paper for six essential best practices that can transform your classroom into a 'communication first' environment.
