Looking for inspiration as you begin to plan for the next school year? Realizing that returning to “normal” is not possible and ready to reconsider how to move forward? Wanting to ensure that the focus is on what learners can do with their language skills? Join other world language educators to hear inspiring messages from some of the best in the field. Participate in both Livestream and pre-recorded events throughout the summit. Engage with others via chat and by accessing common google forms connected to each session. Be prepared to challenge your current mindset as you explore new content and gain insights on what is possible in today’s world language classrooms.

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The National Foreign Language Center (NFLC) welcomes educators from across the United States and around the world for the second Virtual Summit powered by our Language Resource Center PEARLL (Professionals in Education Advancing Research & Language Learning). We thank the College of Arts and Humanities at the University of Maryland for being a sponsoring partner of the Virtual Summit.

Featured Speakers

Hear from the 2022 ACTFL Teacher of the Year, Heather Sweetser, and educator and author, Florencia Henshaw, as they challenge our thinking, offer insights that will allow us to consider new paths forward. These LIVE sessions will focus on common issues from different perspectives allowing all to embrace new ways of thinking as we move forward.

LIVE!

Monday, June 27 – 10:30 AM (ET)

9:30 AM (CT) 8:30 AM (MT) 7:30 AM (PT)

LIVE!

Tuesday, June 28 – 10:30 AM (ET)

9:30 AM (CT) 8:30 AM (MT) 7:30 AM (PT)

LIVE!

Monday, June 27 – 1:00 PM (ET)

12:00 PM (CT) 11:00 AM (MT) 10:00 AM (PT)

LIVE!

Tuesday, June 28 – 12:00 PM (ET)

11:00 AM (CT) 10:0 AM (MT) 9:00 AM (PT)

Live Podcasts

Ever wanted to see how a podcast is made? We’ll feature three popular language teaching podcasts (We Teach Languages, Language Lounge, World Language Classroom) as they produce a new episode LIVE during the summit. And you can be part of the conversation by submitting your questions to the podcast hosts and guest.

LIVE!

June 27 – 11:00 AM (ET)

10:00 AM (CT) 9:00 AM (MT) 8:00 AM (PT)

LIVE!

June 27 – 12:00 PM (ET)

11:00 AM (CT) 10:00 AM (MT) 9:00 AM (PT)

LIVE!

June 28 – 1:00 PM (ET)

12:00 PM (CT) 11:00 AM (MT) 10:00 AM (PT)

Recorded Presentations

Select from a variety of recorded presentations that focus on the TELL Domains of Planning, Leaning Experience, Performance and Feedback and Environment. Practicing educators from all levels and others will share examples of how they apply or support specific characteristics of teacher effectiveness in their educational setting. Collaborate LIVE with the presenter and others viewing the sessions using a common google document. Share your thinking, pose questions and offer resources and help to others.

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  • June 27: Pathways to Planning


  • Current research is providing teachers with an increasing knowledge base that can be used to design lessons that maximize learning in the classroom. Identify essential components found in all effective lessons and consider ways to move from teacher-directed activities to those that allow students to demonstrate individual progress toward the learning targets.
    Click here to collaborate and share your notes using the Google Processing Guide for this session!
    Planning

  • If you’ve ever been asked the age-old question from students: “What are we doing today,” this session is for you. As the only French teacher on campus used to having 2 to 6 preps per semester, I’ll demonstrate how daily learning targets and properly sequenced activities can help your students learn more deeply and have greater success– all while making your busy life easier! We will also look at how to design and effectively implement these tools.
    Click here to collaborate and share your notes using the Google Processing Guide for this session!
    Planning

  • What students already know when they enter the classroom—before we have even met them—is the strongest predictor of how well they will approach instruction and how they will experience it . What can teachers do when disruptions in learning impact skills and readiness expectations at subsequent levels? This session examines how acceleration works, how it connects to processing and practice, and how intentional attention to retrieval in planning and instruction can positively impact student outcomes.
    Click here to collaborate and share your notes using the Google Processing Guide for this session!
    Planning

  • In this presentation, Diego Ojeda shares strategies and ideas that will help teachers make their lessons more relevant and interesting to their students. Many of the activities done in language classes require that students pretend that they are in a real situation. Diego will demonstrate ways to bring real situations to the classroom.
    Click here to collaborate and share your notes using the Google Processing Guide for this session!
    Planning

  • Many students choose to study a language because they want to use it for their enjoyment and advancement within their communities. In this session, participants will explore ways to use the ACTFL Communities standard to engage their students' interests, and present them with real-life opportunities to use their acquired language in their schools and out in their local community.
    Click here to collaborate and share your notes using the Google Processing Guide for this session!
    Planning

  • How to focus on language and intercultural proficiency despite constant change: TELL criteria, in conjunction with the TELL Target Language Use feedback tools, provide focus for supporting teachers and language learners as we navigate through the continued shifts in instructional practices since the pandemic began. The past three school years have been challenging for all of us. Just when we think we know what our schedules will be, or who will be in our classrooms with us in person, or what tools we might be using, it can feel like someone has shaken a snow globe and everything has changed. How can we keep our focus on building students' proficiency so that they are able to engage in relevant intercultural investigations and meaningful and appropriate intercultural interactions in the target language? Participants will learn about resources and scaffolds to support and build students' confidence in using the target language.
    Click here to collaborate and share your notes using the Google Processing Guide for this session!
    Planning

  • Students at novice and intermediate levels will engage in various intercultural communicative tasks and projects that will guide them toward using a language that structures new discoveries about the “other” and themselves. This session shares a few innovative projects ideas that students have completed, such as Rap Songs, How People See Me, Food and Holidays, Marriage and Dowry, etc., to build bridges to the target culture in order to enhance their intercultural competencies.
    Click here to collaborate and share your notes using the Google Processing Guide for this session!

  • What does authentic content mean and in what way can beginner-level language learners already be exposed to it? These are some of the questions discussed in this session. In addition, the presenter will share some resources, tips and tricks on how to find suitable content and ideas for beginner topics.
    Click here to collaborate and share your notes using the Google Processing Guide for this session!
    Learning Tools

  • Joe Dale will explore a range of tools that help all learners to access their learning. Session outline: - Naturalreader in Chrome and iOS - Speak Selection in iOS - Use Immersive Reader on Websites - Helperbird for Chrome and for Google Docs - Microsoft Lens for digitising worksheets - Grab Image Text with Google Keep and PhotoScan - Word + Immersive Reader. View/Immersive Reader - Online Voice Recorder + Generate transcript in Word - Voice typing in Docs and Dictate in Word - CC in Google Slides - CC in PowerPoint/Slide - CC in Flipgrid - Accessibility in Book Creator
    Click here to collaborate and share your notes using the Google Processing Guide for this session!
    Learning Tools

  • Storytelling is a powerful way for students to demonstrate their knowledge of the target language, at any age! In this session, participants will learn how to set up a digital storytelling project for students at all levels. We will learn how to set students up for success by understanding the digital storytelling process, group checklists, storyboard templates, and practical uses of different online tools. Teachers can also guide students throughout the writing process with drafting, revising, editing, and publishing their final story. Ultimately, students will have access to a library of their peer's creations and celebrate their accomplishments together.
    Click here to collaborate and share your notes using the Google Processing Guide for this session!
    Learning Tools

  • How do I set proficiency and performance targets for my classes? What’s the difference and why do they matter? How can I use performance to advance learner proficiency? In this session, we’ll answer these questions using a simple and straightforward guide so that you can deliberately help your students advance along the path to proficiency.
    Click here to collaborate and share your notes using the Google Processing Guide for this session!
    Planning

  • Rating authentic passages can be challenging. In this presentation, we will help you gain the skills and confidence you need to accurately rate authentic passages for use in your classroom. Using several feature categories as guides, we will identify common attributes of the Beginner, Intermediate, and Advanced levels. In addition to this, we will work through a few reading passages in English at each level to give you first-hand experience using these feature categories to rate your passages.
    Click here to collaborate and share your notes using the Google Processing Guide for this session!
    Planning

  • Foreign language teachers need to understand how they can use new technologies and educational tools to create engaging learning experiences to help students move to the next level in a digital era. This presentation will address two questions: 1) How can the instructors use technology to facilitate higher-order learning activities? 2) How can the students interact with technology to achieve constructive and deep learning? The PICRAT Matrix will be used as a guide for the design of technology-mediated tasks. This presentation will showcase different levels of technology-driven language tasks which can be used to engage learners in different levels of learning, from passive learning to interactive learning, and finally to creative learning. The audience will gain a good understanding of how the PICRAT Matrix can help them plan, reflect on, and evaluate the different levels of learning experience facilitated by technologies.
    Click here to collaborate and share your notes using the Google Processing Guide for this session!
    Planning

  • Rebecca Damari reports the results of an NFLC study of how successfully K-16 language educators adapted their existing teaching skills to remote teaching in the early days of the COVID pandemic. The researchers identified differences between teachers of children and adults, and make recommendations for schools and for future research related to remote language teaching.
    Click here to collaborate and share your notes using the Google Processing Guide for this session!
    Professionalism

  • June 28: Pathways to Performance & Feedback


  • Design real-world performance assessment tasks that allow learners to demonstrate how well they are meeting the goals of the unit. Create well-designed tasks that have a purpose and context aligned to the theme, topic, and essential question of the unit. Define task expectations and identify the product or performance that will allow learners to demonstrate growth.
    Click here to collaborate and share your notes using the Google Processing Guide for this session!
    Performance & Feedback

  • Do you have a pile of grading that never seems to disappear? Do you think that you are the only person who can give your students effective feedback? Join me as we reevaluate what feedback really is, and who can give it. You will see examples of feedback, peer edits of spoken and written assignments, and options for self assessments. Get out from under the stress of providing feedback to every single student by yourself, and learn how to involve everyone in the room!
    Click here to collaborate and share your notes using the Google Processing Guide for this session!
    Performance & Feedback

  • Students have completed an assessment, but what do you do with that information? This session will start with examples of formative and summative assessments. Then, we will look at how to evaluate student work and how to use this work to plan further lessons. In the end, we will see various examples of lessons post assessment as a reflection of the assessment.
    Click here to collaborate and share your notes using the Google Processing Guide for this session!
    Performance & Feedback

  • Feedback is a gift that leads to growth and student agency. Such a gift in the language classroom must be given in an empowering way and received with appreciation. Feedback can also be daunting to the instructor, but it doesn't have to be. By empowering learners to effectively self-reflect & provide peer feedback, feedback becomes more meaningful to learners, but learners must be taught to provide quality feedback as well as to receive it with appreciation. In this session, participants will be invited to challenge their perspectives on feedback by exploring highly practical strategies to introduce feedback & to facilitate effective and engaging self-reflection & peer feedback classroom experiences.
    Click here to collaborate and share your notes using the Google Processing Guide for this session!
    Performance & Feedback

  • How much do your students really remember from past weeks, months or years? How can we help improve that? Retrieval practice is a low-prep strategy used to help students recall what they previously learned and begin to use it in their speaking or writing. In this session, we will explore how retrieval practice can connect to the TELL Framework to help students recall and use previously learned language in new contexts. We will explore what retrieval practice is and discuss various, simple strategies that teachers can use to help students use their full language repertoire.
    Click here to collaborate and share your notes using the Google Processing Guide for this session!
    Performance & Feedback

  • How can we help teachers shift towards teaching for proficiency? This presentation shares the experience of the MaFLA Proficiency Academy, which was launched in 2015 and has supported over 500 teachers in making the shift. Its collaborative, teacher-centered design has helped Massachusetts school districts be successful in teaching for proficiency.
    Click here to collaborate and share your notes using the Google Processing Guide for this session!
    Professionalism

  • The Teacher Effectiveness for Language Learning (TELL) Framework combines the experience of world language educators with the most recent research findings in second language acquisition and cognitive psychology to help guide educators in achieving the highest possible outcomes for student learning. The presentation illuminates the rationale for TELL recommendations and helps teachers better understand the students’ acquisition process and instructional needs through the recommended teacher practices outlined in the “Performance and Feedback” domain of TELL.
    Performance & Feedback

  • This presentation will focus on Integrated Performance Assessments (IPAs) and their use in the classroom. The very structure of the IPA aligns with all of the criteria highlighted above. Each IPA features three tasks, each of which reflects one of the three modes of communication--Interpretive, Interpersonal, and Presentational. The tasks are organized around a particular theme or content area and create a natural progression in the acquisition and use of language in the real world. Students are provided with rich input, which enables them to complete the subsequent task. Interpretive tasks that include readings, videos and images, are followed by interpersonal tasks based on the designated theme. One component of the IPA might also focus on a targeted grammatical structure as well. Students often complete the set of activities with a presentational task, which can take the form of a written or oral text. IPAs can be designed for novice, intermediate, and advanced levels of proficiency, and can be used with scoring rubrics that rate performance in terms of whether the performance meets expectations, exceeds expectations, or does not meet expectations for the task. Participants will learn about the basic structure of IPAs and will be shown a variety of IPAs for different levels of proficiency.
    Performance & Feedback

  • The focus description for the session is "Have you ever wondered about the possibility of designing a well-rounded game that performs dual purposes? Games in teaching aid in increasing students' participation and keep them engaged. However, designing a game that is tied to defined performance objectives and serves as an assessment requires careful planning. This session showcases collaborative, game-related performance tasks and interactive gaming environments designed with Thinglink, Class Notebook, and Bookwidgets. Participants will unlock the powerful ideas and practical methods to gamify course assessments.
    Click here to collaborate and share your notes using the Google Processing Guide for this session!
    Performance & Feedback

  • This presentation looks at the benefits of using authentic passages to develop language learning materials. It also discusses how to identify and develop linguistic activities with practical examples from NFLC's language learning app Lectia and tips for in-class teaching.
    Planning

  • This presentation shares with participants concrete examples of our design-based projects that engage our students in authentic learning through all three modes of communications, in investigating cultural products, practices, and perspectives through two murals in San Francisco Chinatown and a famous Chinese painting, and in enhancing their communicative strategies and intercultural competency.
    Planning

  • This session focuses on the use of zero-dialogue videos in promoting interpersonal, interpretive, and presentational communication in the target language. The presenter will share several clips, discuss sample activities for writing and speaking, and discuss low-tech and high-tech tie-ins to the use of silent videos.
    Planning

  • The National Museum of Language is an all-virtual museum that is devoted to language acquisition, utilization, and preservation, including linguistic and cultural diversity. This presentation will give an overview of the many resources and opportunities that the Museum offers online at no cost to language educators and their students. We host unique speaker programs and exhibits on such topics as multilingual stories suitable for younger students, the evolution of American English, international poetry on social justice themes, and a weekly podcast from Puerto Rico suitable for more advanced Spanish students. We also offer language educators the opportunity to participate in exhibit development, assist us in developing lesson plans for our exhibits, give presentations, nominate students for a limited number of paid internships, and serve as state or regional representatives for the Museum on our growing Language Leadership Council.
    Professionalism

  • Fostering full student engagement in a foreign language class within a virtual learning environment is a difficult instructional task. This study explores how to cultivate an enjoyable and humorous learning environment to engage students for learning new vocabulary, for enhancing grammar knowledge, and for increasing critical and creative thinking. The primary focus of this presentation is the use of internet memes to enhance foreign language engagement. Their use has proven to make foreign language learning more engaging for students in both face-to-face and virtual classrooms. Since memes combine both words and images, they form a very effective instructional enhancement for helping students remember new vocabulary or grammar. Memes are also a great tool for students to develop their critical thinking abilities. Using simple and easily mastered online tools, both basic and advanced language learners can create memes to share in class. The presentation will also show examples of the creation and use of memes for different language development purposes. The participants will take away tools for creating memes in as little as a few minutes.
    Planning

  • When designing interpretive activities using authentic resources for our novice and intermediate low students, teachers shy away from listening practice. Interpretive authentic listening activities can be intimidating and overwhelming for our young learners. This presentation will investigate the barriers to authentic listening comprehension with the goal of helping teachers to plan authentic listening tasks that are appropriate to novice and intermediate learners. Attendees will see sample activities that use multiple listens to create scaffolds allowing for deeper interpretation, analysis, and interaction of authentic sources.
    Planning

Getting the Most out of the Summit Recordings

Click each step to help you identify ways to maximize your professional learning with the NFLC Virtual Summit Videos.

Step 1: Determine professional goals

Think carefully about your personal learning goal(s). Determine the Teacher Effectiveness in Language Learning (TELL) domain that aligns best with your goal. Each prerecorded session in the summit is tagged with a specific TELL domain allowing you to identify the core focus of the session. Limit the number of goals that you set for yourself. Research says that anything more than two goals is not realistic, and you’ll likely end up not meeting any of them.

Step 2: Explore the summit sessions

Explore the sessions that are aligned with the TELL domain connected to your goal. For example, if your goal is centered around giving feedback, look at the sessions in the domain of Performance and Feedback and plan to view those that align with your goal. Check to see if a featured speaker addressed an aspect of your goal. Consider how listening to student voices might add a different perspective. The advantage of an online conference is the ability to pick and choose sessions that seem most appropriate knowing that you can exit a session that is not meeting your needs and easily select another session that may be more appropriate.

Step 3: Reflect

Take time to reflect after each session.

  • Jot down your key takeaways from the session. What did you learn?
  • Make note of questions you have. What else do you need to learn?
  • Consider how what you’ve heard applies to what you do. How might you use or adapt ideas for your teaching situation?
  • Make a plan to implement or try something new. What are your next steps?

Step 4: Create community

Collaborate to discuss the ideas from the session with others. Connect virtually or in-person with others who are working on similar goals. Post a comment on the YouTube channel. Tweet an idea or a question. Discuss with others who work with you or in a PLC.

Step 5: Share evidence

Provide evidence progress toward your professional goals. Consider using Catalyst which is an online platform that allows world language educators to set professional goals, identify strengths, and upload evidence and reflections that document their ongoing growth. Catalyst allows educators to connect with others and ask for feedback on the evidence they share.
Catalyst is aligned with the Teacher Effectiveness in Language Learning (TELL) framework and developed collaboratively by the Center for Applied Second Language Studies (CASLS) and Professionals in Education Advancing Research and Language Learning (PEARLL). Set up an account at: catalyst.uoregon.edu.