LIVE Teacher Panel

January 19 - 8:00 PM (ET) 7:00 PM (CT) 6:00 PM (MT) 5:00 PM (PT)

Join us for this month’s teacher panel discussion. The focus topic for January is the TELL Learning Tools Domain. This panel discussion moderated by Laura Terrill includes Elena Kamenetzky (KY), Frances Lazette (MI), Heidi Lechner (IL), Beret Norma (ID)

Participate LIVE via YouTube Participate LIVE via Facebook

The National Foreign Language Center at the University of Maryland hosted its first-ever virtual summit on July 21-23, 2020. The three-day event brought together over 7,000 world language educators from all over the US and the world to participate in a variety of professional learning experiences designed to challenge current mindsets while exploring new content and gaining insights on what is possible in today’s world language classrooms. The archived recordings from the featured speakers, the student panels and the recorded sessions from the five regionals CSCTFL, NECTFL, PNCFL, SCOLT, SWCOLT as well as ACTFL are made available in hopes that educators continue to use them for their own professional learning.

View Featured Speakers View Student Panel Discussions View Recorded Presentations

Featured Speakers

Over the course of the summit, six current classroom teachers challenged our thinking, offered insights, and sparked our curiosity through their inspiring stories.

Rebecca Blouwolff

Our World is Changed, Our Goals are Not

Ying Jin

Grow Your Mind and Your Heart

Katrina Griffin

See us as Human

Clarissa Adams Fletcher

How Relevant are our Classes in 2020

Iman Hashem

Planning with Evidence of Learning in Mind

Georges Chahwan

Community by Design

The Summit Continues: Teacher Panels

Join us for this series of monthly panel discussions focused on the current realities of teachers will highlight teacher voices and share ideas and solutions for today’s world language classroom. Each month a panel of teachers with diverse backgrounds and perspectives will discuss one domain of the Teacher Effectiveness for Language Learning (TELL) Framework.


September 29

8:00 PM (ET) 7:00 PM (CT) 6:00 PM (MT) 5:00 PM (PT)

Focus Topic: How do teachers create a safe and supportive learning environment to prepare for learning no matter the teaching context? (TELL Domain: Environment)

Panelists:

Georges Chahwan, Choate Rosemary Hall (CT)
Liz Matchett, Gunn High School (CA)
Marta Silva, Olathe North High School (KS)
Natalie Stamper, Lewis & Clark College (OR)

October 20

8:00 PM (ET) 7:00 PM (CT) 6:00 PM (MT) 5:00 PM (PT)

Focus Topic: How do teachers facilitate meaningful learning experiences that advance language learning? (TELL Domain: Learning Experience)

Panelists:

Henny Chen Moreau, Catholic High School (CA)
Catherine Ousselin, Mount Vernon High School (WA)
Carmen Scoggins, Watauga High School (NC)
Thomas Soth, Chapel Hill High School (NC)

November 17

8:00 PM (ET) 7:00 PM (CT) 6:00 PM (MT) 5:00 PM (PT)

Focus Topic: How do teachers plan learning experiences to prepare for student learning? (TELL Domain: Planning)

Panelists:

Clarissa Adams-Fletcher, Dunwoody High School (GA)
Trudy Anderson, Nathan Hale Middle School, (CT)
Katrina Griffin, North County High School (MD)
Heidi Trude, Loudoun Valley High School (VA)

Student Panels

Listen as students shared what they had to say in this time of unprecedented change. Hear what they had to say about language learning, online learning, and their thoughts on returning (or not) to classrooms this fall.

Middle School Panel

High School Panel

Post-Secondary Panel

Recorded Presentations

Over 70 recorded presentations were part of the 2020 NFLC Virtual Summit providing a space for presenters from the five regional world language conferences to share their work and for educators with diverse and multicultural perspectives to share their voices. Each regional identified currently practicing teachers who had been accepted for their conference giving ensuring that we would hear “voices from the classroom”. Featured speakers were selected by the NFLC with the intent to showcase a diversity of perspectives across the profession.

Find sessions to support your professional growth goals by filtering all sessions using the Teacher Effectiveness for Language Learning (TELL) framework domains. You may view the entire framework on the TELL Project Website.

Expand All +

  • Presentations


  • Let's be real - planning for proficiency-focused instruction is time consuming. Finding resources, designing tasks, and providing feedback can take forever. This session models strategies to streamline planning and instruction with tips for adapting to digital or paper-based delivery.
    Learning Experience
    Planning

  • How can we ignite learner’s motivation? How can we sustain engagement throughout a lesson? Join two teachers from California as they reflect on their journey of engaging students in both face-to-face and remote learning settings.
    Environment
    Learning Experience
    Planning

  • Have you ever wondered how to incorporate debates into your language classroom? In this session participants will discover tips and tricks for teaching novice to advanced students how to engage in civil discourse. This session shares methods for helping learners express and support their viewpoints on a variety of twenty-first century topics using frameworks (both in-classroom and via remote learning) that lead students from a structured discussion to open debate.
    Learning Experience
    Planning

  • Looking back one hundred years to another time of uncertainty, this presentation shares a unit plan that focuses on German and Austrian artists' use of self-portraits in 1920s but can be expanded to other geographic or cultural contexts. Students will implement all four language skills in the unit, focusing specifically on presentational writing and reflection and culminating in the creation of their own self-portrait and artist’s statement influenced by this current time of uncertainty.

  • Identifying structures that articulate a world language program from beginning to end are key to student success. This session shares core components of the Fayette County Public Schools' K - 12 Dual Language Immersion Programs including instructional expectations, student progress monitoring, and the language continuum.
    Planning

  • How we assess and grade matters. A grade is only meaningful if it measures what learners can do with the language. Measuring what learners can do necessitates performance assessment tasks connected to real-world unit goals. Then, feedback on performance tasks must be aligned with criteria that address growth in proficiency. This session will highlight the steps involved in determining a grade that is indicative of performance while highlighting areas of strength and areas for growth.
    Performance & Feedback

  • Have ever you noticed that the work your students submit online is very different from the work they do in the classroom or with you? That student homework only makes sense when it is translated back into English? As both teachers and students explore how the learning process interacts with a digital world, part of the solution might be to give students support so that they can work at their proficiency level in the target language. In this session, participants explore effective strategies to support and build confidence in students using level-appropriate language in communicative tasks.
    Planning

  • It's not homework, it's student-selected independent practice! This session shares methods that result in increased exposure to and use of the target language by students. Included are ways to work around limited classroom time, lack of internet access, and lack of interactions with native speakers.
    Learning Experience
    Planning

  • Welcome to a session about innovative practices that support proficiency development. Scaffolding and tiering texts/tasks through the use of authentic materials sets the stage for successful student performances and builds college and career readiness. Examples showcase growth at multiple levels of language development.
    Learning Experience
    Planning

  • As proficiency-focused teaching becomes more popular, the question still remains: What do I do with grammar? This session explores different communicative strategies to teach grammar as a concept and provides real examples of grammar in context that can be used in your own classrooms. Participants will unpack the PACE Model as one of the many ways to “teach” grammar in a meaningful and less explicit way.
    Planning

  • One of the hallmarks of proficiency-focused performance-based classroom is that assessment is focused on what students can do with what they know. In this kind of instructional environment, many teachers have found that single point rubrics allow them to give feedback that is more meaningful to learners; specifically, feedback on what steps they should focus on to improve their next performances. This session details characteristics of single point rubrics and how they can be used for peer, self-, and teacher assessment.
    Performance & Feedback

  • Come and see a brief demonstration of teaching language using comprehensible input and story-listening. This session shares what has and hasn't worked while teaching during this online spring term.

  • This session explores ideas to create “connectedness” in the classroom in whatever form that may take for the upcoming academic year! This session shares ways to create space for students to reflect on their own personal experiences and cultures and explores strategies to blend language and culture. Included is a brief overview on how to implement Bryam’s Interculturality and Geneva Gay’s Culturally Responsive Teaching into practice.
    Environment

  • Do you wish your students would use the target language more in the classroom? Then this session is for you! Come learn some techniques for fun ways to introduce, encourage, and implement extensive student use of the target language.
    Learning Experience
    Planning

  • Building an effective and successful online world language classroom requires an understanding of the principles of effective face-to-face and online teaching and planning a successful interactive learning plan. This session explores the resources developed as a result of the Occidental College 2018 STARTALK Infrastructure grant, “Interacting with Authentic Texts and Tasks." After a quick exploration of these resources, a demonstration follows, including how to adapt learning plans to distance learning and rationales behind choosing technology programs that facilitate student engagement and achieve the learning goals of the lesson.
    Learning Tools
    Planning

  • How do we keep our focus on what really matters in a time of change? Revisit your curriculum goals and identify those that truly have the potential to engage learners and grow proficiency. Join the 2020 ACTFL National Language Teacher of the Year LIVE on YouTube for an inspirational message to kick of the 2020 NFLC Virtual Summit.



  • Feedback guides learners' next steps in the path to proficiency. This session shares the key feedback areas that promote proficiency growth and ways to provide impactful interpersonal and presentational feedback based on rubrics influenced by Implementing Integrated Performance Assessment. Explore how to empower learners to take ownership of their proficiency path through reflection and self-assessment.
    Performance & Feedback

  • In this session participants work through five steps to efficient and effective planning with a virtual PLC. Content of this session includes guidelines to create a virtual PLC, how to plan and organize the time spent, and helpful tips for content creation, division of labor, and sharing of the work with each other, students, and administrators.
    Collaboration
    Professionalism

  • How can we develop and assess language proficiency to support learners to reach their goals? Proficiency is “independent use of language” with the NCSSFL-ACTFL Can-Do Statements providing a clear blueprint of the building blocks needed to move along the proficiency continuum. This session explores ways to empower learners by focusing on what they can do with what they learn.
    Performance & Feedback
    Planning

  • Language learners use language to engage with the world at a personal level. This session focuses on a design and implementation process in interdisciplinary learning activities to create personal experiences and make foreign language learning an integrated part in students’ lives. Participants will explore the collaborative work process in curriculum/project design and how to implement featured projects.

  • We have just emerged from the 2019 – 20 school year as emergency online teachers, having made swift pivots to teaching foreign languages online. While we have no crystal ball to see what foreign language classes will look like this coming fall and beyond, we can take stock of the good practices we have implemented in online learning and consider how we can continue them in blended learning environments. This session explores online tools and demonstrates how they can be used to augment foreign language learning opportunities in blended formats.
    Learning Tools

  • Are you looking for authentic activities to improve student engagement? Do these activities promote speaking in the target language? This session shares strategies and games to implement in your classroom, and describes how these strategies align with the ACTFL standards.
    Learning Experience
    Planning

  • Cultivate a classroom culture where students are inspired to take their language learning beyond the classroom as well as building proficiency, growing community, and making meaningful connections. This session shares a tried-and-true language life kit with routines, activities, and strategies that create space and opportunity for students to personalize their own learning.
    Environment
    Learning Experience
    Planning

  • When students get stuck or reach a lull in proficiency, the frustration can often be overwhelming for both teachers and students. Growth mindsets and feedback designed to build growth mindsets are excellent ways to break through and build student motivation and confidence. Come learn how to celebrate the struggle and encourage your students to do the same!
    Environment
    Performance & Feedback

  • This session walks participants through a planning process for novels taught in class. Specific examples of lesson plans, student work samples, videos, and assessments will be shared with attendees. Participants will reflect on steps to plan a lesson or cultural unit using the novel of their choice.

  • In U.S. higher education, the ACTFL guidelines have influenced many foreign language curricula in proficiency-based programs that define students’ language capacity at various stages in the learning process. Relevant professional development opportunities for in-service instructors in post-secondary education are scarce, and the extent to which instructors apply their new learning about assessment and student proficiency is often overlooked. This session explores the influences of online orientation and face-to-face MOPI workshop on teaching and learning in higher education.
    Performance & Feedback

  • Whether we teach from home, school, or both, teachers are flexible and creative. We are well-suited to face and overcome the challenges of blended learning while still focusing on engaging students in communication through social justice topics. This session shares ideas and resources to create tasks using the Interpretive, Interpersonal, and Presentational Modes to focus on social justice issues. These strategies are best suited for teachers of intermediate students who are already familiar with the capabilities of their online learning management systems.
    Learning Experience

  • Speaking activities support comprehension of interpretive listening and reading tasks. In this session, participants explore the Interactive Model, which provides a clear framework for guiding students to interpret authentic materials at all proficiency levels while maintaining the target language. Rather than viewing the Interpretive Mode as isolated from speaking, engaging students in speaking activities support their interpretation of texts.
    Planning

  • Explicitly teaching core values opens the door for students to examine the perspectives behind them and share their own cultural products and practices. Focusing on core values can help build the classroom community in interpersonal speaking tasks: Novice level students can talk about the perspectives that lie beneath products and practices at the word level; Intermediate level student discussions can deepen to include sentence-level elaboration. Interpersonal speaking gains new meaning when the students and teachers learn about each other’s points of view.
    Learning Experience
    Planning

  • Interested in growing your collection of interactive language games? While collaborating and competing, learners interact in the target language developing their L2 communication skills. This session offers a series of lively, low-prep games that will energize your language classroom and shares strategies and tips for implementation in a variety of contexts and topics across multiple levels.
    Learning Tools
    Planning

  • How do we get students talking in class and promote natural flow and ease of conversation with students leading the way? When students feel confident to speak and are OK with making mistakes, this can happen! This session explores strategies one teacher uses both face-to-face and online to encourage natural, large or small group conversations in the target language on a variety of topics.
    Learning Experience

  • This presentation unpacks a year-long course in German art for grades 10 - 12, Levels II-IV. Topics such as visual art, music and film are taught in the target language, strengthening language skills in other German classes. Emphasizing comprehensible input and student choice, this session shares the syllabus, rubric, objectives, units, and activities for this course.
    Planning

  • Although COVID-19 has turned our society upside down, we can still rely on a solid foundation of communicative tasks to maintain — or even build — students’ language proficiency during remote learning. This session focuses on adapting the interpretive and interpersonal tasks already in teacher toolboxes to suit both synchronous and asynchronous teaching settings. Creating successful learning progressions to guide students from input to output and using a variety of authentic resources, non-verbal processing tasks, and scaffolds can bring students into real-world communication with confidence and success.
    Learning Tools
    Planning

  • Ever feel like you have taught your students a lot of vocabulary, but they still aren't speaking? Wondering what you need to do to motivate students to voluntarily talk to each other in the target language at all times and at all levels? This session shares a step-by-step process to empower students to take control of their own learning. Participants will take away a greater understanding of what it takes to cultivate oral proficiency in the classroom.
    Learning Experience
    Planning

  • Leveraging the Interpretive Mode is a key way to prepare our students for the AP Language and Culture exam starting as early as Level 1. This session shares practical strategies to use in all levels through in-person and remote instruction that will build Interpretive Mode proficiency and lay a foundation for AP Exam success.
    Planning

  • Do you incorporate music into your world language classroom? Join this session and explore engaging strategies and activities that we use to incorporate music into our classes. Examples will be in English, but sample activities will be provided in Spanish, French, and German.
    Learning Experience
    Learning Tools
    Planning

  • As the population of heritage language learners increases in schools, instructional practices need to adjust to new environments, and differentiation becomes an absolute must in order to reach all students. This session shares practical strategies and templates that can be used to successfully meet the needs of learners in increasingly diverse linguistic classrooms.
    Environment
    Planning

  • Interpersonal communication is essential to language acquisition; however, it can be difficult to design and execute in a classroom setting. The challenge is designing learning activities and assessment tools that encourage and assist learners to acquire the necessary language skills for successful interpersonal communication while energizing and boosting learners’ confidence in their language learning. This session shares several practical classroom-tested strategies for all levels and all languages, and it models what needs to be emphasized in order to empower learners to prepare, interact, and engage in meaningful and spontaneous communication.
    Learning Experience
    Planning

  • It is more important than ever for students to take feedback from teachers and for teachers to take feedback from students in real time. The combination of teacher-student and student-teacher feedback loops will create a vibrant classroom, helping students flourish whether in a physical classroom or virtually. This session discusses how to encourage students to advocate for themselves and create a virtual community as language learners.
    Collaboration
    Learning Experience

  • Teachers are probably not puzzled by the importance of vocabulary but may still ponder how to use the communicative approach to build vocabulary. This low-tech session will explore how one teacher evolved in teaching vocabulary to better connect the interpretive and interpersonal pieces of language building to take students beyond novice high.
    Learning Experience
    Planning

  • Impediments to ongoing professional development include lack of time, lack of resources, and even isolated working conditions. Podcasts can fill the gap and help teachers stay informed and continue growing throughout the year. However, podcasts can also be overwhelming due to their sheer number and the solitary experience of listening alone. This session introduces teachers to podcasts, where to find them, and ways podcasts can be useful for teachers at every level. Included are strategies to effectively incorporate change after listening to an episode, to reflect on new ideas, and to connect with other listeners using social media.
    Collaboration
    Professionalism

  • This session will provide an abbreviated version of the online course Technology-Enhanced Language Learning. Participants will be introduced to the main concepts of the class and will learn the three key ”golden rules” for transitioning to teaching languages in a post-COVID world. This practical and hopeful session will help assuage any anxieties about the start of school in fall 2020.
    Environment
    Learning Tools

  • Are you looking for ways to promote creativity and student voice in the world language classroom? In this session, participants will explore various ways that students can share their understanding of the content in creative ways using technology. Participants will leave this session with ideas for both spoken and written communication in the target language for all levels.
    Learning Experience
    Learning Tools
    Planning

  • A major goal of all world language instruction is to prepare students to be able to use knowledge and skills in real world situations in the target culture and when interacting with native speakers. This session focuses on questioning strategies, protocols, and learning tasks that promote deeper learning and transfer of learning. Participants will explore how questions, protocols, and strategies can impact student language growth.
    Learning Experience
    Planning

  • This session provides teachers with a clear insight into how directed comprehensible reading can evolve into clear and powerful writing. Participants will see a variety of examples in English that can be used and adapted for their own students. The ideas and examples will work for in-class work as well as within a remote environment.
    Planning

  • Google Maps is an online tool that teachers can use as a source of authentic resources. Activities stemming from Google Maps simulate a real-world experience in another country and culture and give learners experience with the skills they will need in order to visit that country. This session shares activities that students can perform using Street View on Google Maps, including comprehensible input activities, vocabulary and cognate activities, and scavenger hunts.
    Learning Tools
    Planning

  • Whether in class or online, there has never been enough time to do all that we believe needs to done. A changing environment gives educators a chance to revisit what really matters while making gradual shifts in what we do. Using learning experiences as formative assessments ensures that learners meet lesson goals while making continual progress toward unit goals. This session highlights the benefits of working deeply with fewer resources in order to establish purpose, create focus and ensure relevance for learners. Step back and allow learners to do more of the work.
    Planning

  • Getting ready for next fall will require most teachers to continue to adapt classroom activities for an online or blended learning environment. This session shares ten comprehensible input-inspired activities that require minimum preparation. They are adapted from actual activities used by a middle and high school instructor and can be done during remote learning.
    Learning Experience

  • Drawing on a mix of classroom and research experiences in world language education, this adaptation of the CSCTFL 2020 keynote address will explore the realities and potential of world language classrooms as sites of inclusive educational practice. Along the way, participants will be invited to reflect on their own classrooms and teaching practices.
    Environment

  • Interested in resources to improve some aspect of teaching and student learning as we look ahead to the fall? The NFLC’s FREE resource catalog includes multi-media professional development tools; backward designed unit and lesson plan templates, samples, and models; a collection of learner-centered high-engagement classroom activities; and a detailed framework for teachers to reflect and set goals to improve their effectiveness in and out of the classroom. This session highlights the most popular resources and demonstrates applications to online and in-person world language classroom teaching.
    Planning
    Professionalism

  • Learning stations are an effective way to promote differentiation and proficiency in a world language classroom. They provide multiple avenues to engage students at different proficiency levels and connect with their varied interests. This session shares goals, materials, meaningful tasks, station types, and student accountability. In addition, the discussion will re-imagine using best practices to develop stations for online learning.
    Planning

  • Current research indicates the positive effects of sustained silent reading (SSR) in second language acquisition. This session leads participants through a teacher’s real-life experiences implementing an SSR program with different levels of accountability in novice level Spanish classrooms over a period of three months. Key questions regarding accountability, timing, and student perceptions will be addressed, along with implementation suggestions and examples.
    Learning Experience
    Planning

  • This session shares interpretive reading strategies and activities designed to help develop the skills novice language learners need as a foundation for interpreting authentic texts. Also included are example activities that can be used in-person or in an online setting.
    Learning Experience
    Planning

  • Whether teaching in a hybrid, fully online, or regular classroom, discover ways to flood these environments with engaging comprehensible input to provide constant opportunities for students to make meaning and communicate. This session will include examples to add variety and novelty and routines that create community anywhere, as well as techniques to refine personalization and encourage intercultural competence by making even authentic cultural content comprehensible.

  • Would you like learners to interact more with the authentic texts they experience? What if they could do so in a way that allowed them to share their thinking first and then see their peers’ ideas and respond to them? Come experience a hands-on opportunity to work with Edji, a smart tool that allows you to see what catches student attention when they read and fosters collaboration and communication through a robust, collaborative, threaded annotation platform. Edji even allows for users to record audio annotations on authentic texts and images, to which other students can reply.
    Learning Tools

  • A calming environment with a focus on mindfulness, self-awareness, and intentional movement provides students with a safe space to learn and grow, and it supports students with a variety of needs and challenges. This session shares specific strategies and activities geared for all grade levels, with an emphasis on establishing them as part of one's toolkit from the beginning of the school year, whether in a physical or virtual classroom.
    Environment

  • This session highlights the importance and necessity of teaching history and culture in a foreign language classroom. Included are examples of teaching strategies using authentic resources from German history to highlight cultural practices and perspectives.
    Learning Experience
    Planning

  • Learn how to create an entire thematic unit around a cinematic masterpiece instead of relegating the movie to an afterthought or substitute teacher plan. Come away from this session with an interactive and unique film unit using all modes of communication
    Planning

  • Examine virtual learning through an organized lens. This session explores ideas to create and sustain strong relationships with students online and examines how to select and integrate tools appropriate for the lesson stage that also motivate and reach all students.
    Environment
    Learning Tools

  • Have you ever struggled to find video materials that provide comprehensible input using language forms that don’t occur often in the context of classroom activities? Increase student exposure to specific forms of the target language using video. This session demonstrates how to make teacher-created videos using PhotoBooth, QuickTime, and other video tools, and how to use these videos as a springboard for listening and speaking practice. These strategies are good for blended learning and flipped classes as well.
    Learning Experience
    Planning

  • This session shares easy and fun steps to build student presentational speaking, listening and writing proficiency with Quizlet, Google Applications, and Flipgrid. Participants will take away instructions, examples, and templates to engage students in meaningful self-expression, build literacy, scaffold academic language, and differentiate so that all students are challenged and engaged in an online format.
    Learning Experience
    Learning Tools

  • For students with anxiety or other social, emotional, and behavioral challenges, the world language classroom can be an extremely intimidating place. In this session the presenter will provide an overview of community building strategies and comprehensible input techniques that cultivate an empowering community for all types of learners.
    Environment
    Learning Experience

  • Introduce your students to the world through virtual reality and 360 imaging. Teach your students to use virtual reality headsets and/or web-based 360 images to discover travel adventures that are accessible and memorable. This session will demonstrate how to locate and lead expeditions and encourage writing through student travel logs, with examples adapted for both classroom and distance learning.
    Learning Experience
    Learning Tools

  • In the context of large diverse classes, this session shares the ACTFL Six Core Practice hacks that make can-do and proficiency-based language teaching enjoyable and effective, specifically looking at technology, lesson planning, and assessment. Participants will reflect on the structure, routines, and high-leverage habits that can make class a memorable experience for students rather than just memorized content. All files will be shared so teachers can create their own versions to fit their needs.
    Planning

  • Teaching culture can be challenging. How can teachers cultivate global and intercultural competencies while maintaining the target language and incorporating research-based strategies and practices for second language acquisition? Jam-packed with ideas for personalization, accessing local and global community resources, and more effectively utilizing tech tools, this session addresses teaching intercultural competencies in a classroom and through blended, distance, or remote learning. Educating students to be linguistically and culturally prepared to function as world citizens is messy, fluid, and transformative, but it is an essential part of the world language classroom.
    Learning Tools
    Planning

  • The NFLC’s eLearning Portal houses over 14,000 items in over 100 languages and dialects and is a digital resource for individuals and groups. Take a tour of the portal and see how its materials and assessments can be used with Intermediate and Advanced Level learners and language classes. Discover ways in which the eLearning Portal can be used to help teachers maintain and sharpen their own language skills.

    Connect, collaborate, and reflect with other summit participants on this session: Google Doc


  • This panel discussion facilitated by Laura Terrill was recorded live on July 21. The discussion focused on the Planning domain of the Teacher Effectiveness for Language Learning (TELL) Framework. Panelist responded to the essential question: How do teachers plan learning experiences to prepare for student learning? as well as questions from the audience.

    Panelists include:
    Nea Baker, Lindale Middle School (MD)
    Greg Duncan, Interprep (GA)
    Thomas Soth, Chapel Hill High School (NC)
    Heidi Trude, Loudoun Valley High School (VA)


  • This panel discussion facilitated by Thomas Sauer was recorded live on July 21. The discussion focused on the Learning Tools domain of the Teacher Effectiveness for Language Learning (TELL) Framework. Panelists responded to the essential question: How do teachers capitalize on a variety of learning tools to advance student learning? as well as questions from the audience.

    Panelists include:
    Anita Gandhi, Mountain Ridge Middle School (CO)
    Nicole Naditz, San Juan Unified School District (CA)
    Adam Ross, Chinese American International School (CA)
    Toni Theisen, Thompson School District (CO)



  • How can we forge a strong community regardless of what the fall may bring? Consider how to create a sense of belonging in the classroom and beyond while benefitting from lessons learned in my journey.


    Environment

  • With the shift to remote learning and increasing uncertainties about what the fall may bring, educators are more concerned about creating and maintaining strong communities of learners and peer collaborators. Depending on whether the classroom is synchronous, asynchronous, or blended, how will collaboration and social interaction be integrated into curriculum design to encourage deep processing and powerful learning experiences? This session shares a step-by-step guide on how to build a sense of belonging through engaging activities and projects that foster safe and inclusive spaces.
    Learning Experience

  • Engage in a conversations with panelists, presenters and attendees. This livestream panel discussion will focus on the Planning domain of the Teacher Effectiveness for Language Learning (TELL) Framework and respond to the essential question: How do teachers plan learning experiences to prepare for student learning? Join in via chat to share your thoughts and questions.

    Panelists include:
    Helena Curtain, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (WI)
    Na Li, Columbus Academy (OH)
    Rita Oleksak, Glastonbury Public Schools (CT)
    Daphne Warren, Plano Senior High School (TX)

    This panel discussion is hosted in a zoom webinar to allow participants to submit questions to panelists. Participation is limited to 1,000 people. If you are not able to access this panel via zoom link below, you will be able to view the discussion livestreamed on the NFLC's YouTube Channel.

    Join Zoom Webinar: https://umd.zoom.us/j/96672725930?pwd=eU0vVHRzRFdxMmkydjhhUmgzUDEzdz09
    Meeting ID: (966 7272 5930)
    Password: nflc2020


  • This panel discussion facilitated by Thomas Sauer was recorded live on July 21. The discussion focused on the Learning Experience domain of the Teacher Effectiveness for Language Learning (TELL) Framework. Panelists responded to the essential question: How do teachers facilitate meaningful learning experiences that advance learning?? as well as questions from the audience.

    Panelists include:
    Georges Chahwan, Choate Rosemary Hall (CT)
    Carrie Toth, Salem Community High School (IL)
    Elizabeth Matchett, Gunn High School (CA)
    Betsy Sandstrom, Thomas Jefferson High School (VA)


  • Intrigued by authentic language posts on platforms such as Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat, but need purposeful and authentic communicative tasks? Explore and interact with research-based curriculum design and instructional strategies and activities for all three modes that support proficiency-based thematic units and World-Readiness Standards.

    Connect, collaborate, and reflect with other summit participants on this session: Google Doc

    Learning Tools

  • The recent unexpected move to remote instruction highlighted the importance of providing access, promoting literacy and nurturing more autonomous learners. Literacy is a big road-blocking tiger in efforts to help Chinese language learners achieve higher levels of proficiency. This session explores the NOVA STARTALK eTower and how its use promotes access, literacy and learner autonomy.

    Connect, collaborate, and reflect with other summit participants on this session: Google Doc

    Learning Tools

  • This session shares several quick, engaging, and motivating activities that are easily implemented in K – 12 and college-level language classes. These strategies are good for all teaching environments; however, the emphasis will be on using new technologies to create a community of learners and to support online learning. Resources include access to a Google Classroom containing links, materials, and explanations.

    Connect, collaborate, and reflect with other summit participants on this session: Google Doc

    Learning Tools

  • Looking for exciting tools to engage students in digital learning? This session shares ways to use tools to positively impact students during virtual learning and beyond Join in to explore various technology platforms that motivate students to use the target language. A focus is on using Padlet, Flipgrid, and Screencastify, among other tools, to help foster communication, collaboration and critical thinking in language learners.

    Connect, collaborate, and reflect with other summit participants on this session: Google Doc

    Learning Tools

  • Grab a relaxing beverage and join this live conversation. Reflect with NFLC hosts Laura Terrill, Greta Lundgaard, and Thomas Sauer on lessons learned and questions raised throughout the day. Consider how various NFLC resources may be of use to you and your students.

    This chat is hosted in a zoom webinar to allow participants to submit questions to the hosts. Participation is limited to 1,000 people. If you are not able to access this panel via zoom link below, you will be able to view the discussion livestreamed on the NFLC's YouTube Channel.

    Join Zoom Webinar: https://umd.zoom.us/j/91208851769?pwd=SEtjZkJ4RnRTYkZUTm1kWWQ0elBxdz09
    Meeting ID: (912 0885 1769)
    Password: nflc2020


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.

Expand All +

  • Presentations


  • Let's be real - planning for proficiency-focused instruction is time consuming. Finding resources, designing tasks, and providing feedback can take forever. This session models strategies to streamline planning and instruction with tips for adapting to digital or paper-based delivery.
    Learning Experience
    Planning

  • How can we ignite learner’s motivation? How can we sustain engagement throughout a lesson? Join two teachers from California as they reflect on their journey of engaging students in both face-to-face and remote learning settings.
    Environment
    Learning Experience
    Planning

  • Have you ever wondered how to incorporate debates into your language classroom? In this session participants will discover tips and tricks for teaching novice to advanced students how to engage in civil discourse. This session shares methods for helping learners express and support their viewpoints on a variety of twenty-first century topics using frameworks (both in-classroom and via remote learning) that lead students from a structured discussion to open debate.
    Learning Experience
    Planning

  • Looking back one hundred years to another time of uncertainty, this presentation shares a unit plan that focuses on German and Austrian artists' use of self-portraits in 1920s but can be expanded to other geographic or cultural contexts. Students will implement all four language skills in the unit, focusing specifically on presentational writing and reflection and culminating in the creation of their own self-portrait and artist’s statement influenced by this current time of uncertainty.

  • Identifying structures that articulate a world language program from beginning to end are key to student success. This session shares core components of the Fayette County Public Schools' K - 12 Dual Language Immersion Programs including instructional expectations, student progress monitoring, and the language continuum.
    Planning

  • How we assess and grade matters. A grade is only meaningful if it measures what learners can do with the language. Measuring what learners can do necessitates performance assessment tasks connected to real-world unit goals. Then, feedback on performance tasks must be aligned with criteria that address growth in proficiency. This session will highlight the steps involved in determining a grade that is indicative of performance while highlighting areas of strength and areas for growth.
    Performance & Feedback

  • Have ever you noticed that the work your students submit online is very different from the work they do in the classroom or with you? That student homework only makes sense when it is translated back into English? As both teachers and students explore how the learning process interacts with a digital world, part of the solution might be to give students support so that they can work at their proficiency level in the target language. In this session, participants explore effective strategies to support and build confidence in students using level-appropriate language in communicative tasks.
    Planning

  • It's not homework, it's student-selected independent practice! This session shares methods that result in increased exposure to and use of the target language by students. Included are ways to work around limited classroom time, lack of internet access, and lack of interactions with native speakers.
    Learning Experience
    Planning

  • Welcome to a session about innovative practices that support proficiency development. Scaffolding and tiering texts/tasks through the use of authentic materials sets the stage for successful student performances and builds college and career readiness. Examples showcase growth at multiple levels of language development.
    Learning Experience
    Planning

  • As proficiency-focused teaching becomes more popular, the question still remains: What do I do with grammar? This session explores different communicative strategies to teach grammar as a concept and provides real examples of grammar in context that can be used in your own classrooms. Participants will unpack the PACE Model as one of the many ways to “teach” grammar in a meaningful and less explicit way.
    Planning

  • One of the hallmarks of proficiency-focused performance-based classroom is that assessment is focused on what students can do with what they know. In this kind of instructional environment, many teachers have found that single point rubrics allow them to give feedback that is more meaningful to learners; specifically, feedback on what steps they should focus on to improve their next performances. This session details characteristics of single point rubrics and how they can be used for peer, self-, and teacher assessment.
    Performance & Feedback

  • Come and see a brief demonstration of teaching language using comprehensible input and story-listening. This session shares what has and hasn't worked while teaching during this online spring term.

  • This session explores ideas to create “connectedness” in the classroom in whatever form that may take for the upcoming academic year! This session shares ways to create space for students to reflect on their own personal experiences and cultures and explores strategies to blend language and culture. Included is a brief overview on how to implement Bryam’s Interculturality and Geneva Gay’s Culturally Responsive Teaching into practice.
    Environment

  • Do you wish your students would use the target language more in the classroom? Then this session is for you! Come learn some techniques for fun ways to introduce, encourage, and implement extensive student use of the target language.
    Learning Experience
    Planning

  • Building an effective and successful online world language classroom requires an understanding of the principles of effective face-to-face and online teaching and planning a successful interactive learning plan. This session explores the resources developed as a result of the Occidental College 2018 STARTALK Infrastructure grant, “Interacting with Authentic Texts and Tasks." After a quick exploration of these resources, a demonstration follows, including how to adapt learning plans to distance learning and rationales behind choosing technology programs that facilitate student engagement and achieve the learning goals of the lesson.
    Learning Tools
    Planning

  • How do we keep our focus on what really matters in a time of change? Revisit your curriculum goals and identify those that truly have the potential to engage learners and grow proficiency. Join the 2020 ACTFL National Language Teacher of the Year LIVE on YouTube for an inspirational message to kick of the 2020 NFLC Virtual Summit.



  • Feedback guides learners' next steps in the path to proficiency. This session shares the key feedback areas that promote proficiency growth and ways to provide impactful interpersonal and presentational feedback based on rubrics influenced by Implementing Integrated Performance Assessment. Explore how to empower learners to take ownership of their proficiency path through reflection and self-assessment.
    Performance & Feedback

  • In this session participants work through five steps to efficient and effective planning with a virtual PLC. Content of this session includes guidelines to create a virtual PLC, how to plan and organize the time spent, and helpful tips for content creation, division of labor, and sharing of the work with each other, students, and administrators.
    Collaboration
    Professionalism

  • How can we develop and assess language proficiency to support learners to reach their goals? Proficiency is “independent use of language” with the NCSSFL-ACTFL Can-Do Statements providing a clear blueprint of the building blocks needed to move along the proficiency continuum. This session explores ways to empower learners by focusing on what they can do with what they learn.
    Performance & Feedback
    Planning

  • Language learners use language to engage with the world at a personal level. This session focuses on a design and implementation process in interdisciplinary learning activities to create personal experiences and make foreign language learning an integrated part in students’ lives. Participants will explore the collaborative work process in curriculum/project design and how to implement featured projects.

  • We have just emerged from the 2019 – 20 school year as emergency online teachers, having made swift pivots to teaching foreign languages online. While we have no crystal ball to see what foreign language classes will look like this coming fall and beyond, we can take stock of the good practices we have implemented in online learning and consider how we can continue them in blended learning environments. This session explores online tools and demonstrates how they can be used to augment foreign language learning opportunities in blended formats.
    Learning Tools

  • Are you looking for authentic activities to improve student engagement? Do these activities promote speaking in the target language? This session shares strategies and games to implement in your classroom, and describes how these strategies align with the ACTFL standards.
    Learning Experience
    Planning

  • Cultivate a classroom culture where students are inspired to take their language learning beyond the classroom as well as building proficiency, growing community, and making meaningful connections. This session shares a tried-and-true language life kit with routines, activities, and strategies that create space and opportunity for students to personalize their own learning.
    Environment
    Learning Experience
    Planning

  • When students get stuck or reach a lull in proficiency, the frustration can often be overwhelming for both teachers and students. Growth mindsets and feedback designed to build growth mindsets are excellent ways to break through and build student motivation and confidence. Come learn how to celebrate the struggle and encourage your students to do the same!
    Environment
    Performance & Feedback

  • This session walks participants through a planning process for novels taught in class. Specific examples of lesson plans, student work samples, videos, and assessments will be shared with attendees. Participants will reflect on steps to plan a lesson or cultural unit using the novel of their choice.

  • In U.S. higher education, the ACTFL guidelines have influenced many foreign language curricula in proficiency-based programs that define students’ language capacity at various stages in the learning process. Relevant professional development opportunities for in-service instructors in post-secondary education are scarce, and the extent to which instructors apply their new learning about assessment and student proficiency is often overlooked. This session explores the influences of online orientation and face-to-face MOPI workshop on teaching and learning in higher education.
    Performance & Feedback

  • Whether we teach from home, school, or both, teachers are flexible and creative. We are well-suited to face and overcome the challenges of blended learning while still focusing on engaging students in communication through social justice topics. This session shares ideas and resources to create tasks using the Interpretive, Interpersonal, and Presentational Modes to focus on social justice issues. These strategies are best suited for teachers of intermediate students who are already familiar with the capabilities of their online learning management systems.
    Learning Experience

  • Speaking activities support comprehension of interpretive listening and reading tasks. In this session, participants explore the Interactive Model, which provides a clear framework for guiding students to interpret authentic materials at all proficiency levels while maintaining the target language. Rather than viewing the Interpretive Mode as isolated from speaking, engaging students in speaking activities support their interpretation of texts.
    Planning

  • Explicitly teaching core values opens the door for students to examine the perspectives behind them and share their own cultural products and practices. Focusing on core values can help build the classroom community in interpersonal speaking tasks: Novice level students can talk about the perspectives that lie beneath products and practices at the word level; Intermediate level student discussions can deepen to include sentence-level elaboration. Interpersonal speaking gains new meaning when the students and teachers learn about each other’s points of view.
    Learning Experience
    Planning

  • Interested in growing your collection of interactive language games? While collaborating and competing, learners interact in the target language developing their L2 communication skills. This session offers a series of lively, low-prep games that will energize your language classroom and shares strategies and tips for implementation in a variety of contexts and topics across multiple levels.
    Learning Tools
    Planning

  • How do we get students talking in class and promote natural flow and ease of conversation with students leading the way? When students feel confident to speak and are OK with making mistakes, this can happen! This session explores strategies one teacher uses both face-to-face and online to encourage natural, large or small group conversations in the target language on a variety of topics.
    Learning Experience

  • This presentation unpacks a year-long course in German art for grades 10 - 12, Levels II-IV. Topics such as visual art, music and film are taught in the target language, strengthening language skills in other German classes. Emphasizing comprehensible input and student choice, this session shares the syllabus, rubric, objectives, units, and activities for this course.
    Planning

  • Although COVID-19 has turned our society upside down, we can still rely on a solid foundation of communicative tasks to maintain — or even build — students’ language proficiency during remote learning. This session focuses on adapting the interpretive and interpersonal tasks already in teacher toolboxes to suit both synchronous and asynchronous teaching settings. Creating successful learning progressions to guide students from input to output and using a variety of authentic resources, non-verbal processing tasks, and scaffolds can bring students into real-world communication with confidence and success.
    Learning Tools
    Planning

  • Ever feel like you have taught your students a lot of vocabulary, but they still aren't speaking? Wondering what you need to do to motivate students to voluntarily talk to each other in the target language at all times and at all levels? This session shares a step-by-step process to empower students to take control of their own learning. Participants will take away a greater understanding of what it takes to cultivate oral proficiency in the classroom.
    Learning Experience
    Planning

  • Leveraging the Interpretive Mode is a key way to prepare our students for the AP Language and Culture exam starting as early as Level 1. This session shares practical strategies to use in all levels through in-person and remote instruction that will build Interpretive Mode proficiency and lay a foundation for AP Exam success.
    Planning

  • Do you incorporate music into your world language classroom? Join this session and explore engaging strategies and activities that we use to incorporate music into our classes. Examples will be in English, but sample activities will be provided in Spanish, French, and German.
    Learning Experience
    Learning Tools
    Planning

  • As the population of heritage language learners increases in schools, instructional practices need to adjust to new environments, and differentiation becomes an absolute must in order to reach all students. This session shares practical strategies and templates that can be used to successfully meet the needs of learners in increasingly diverse linguistic classrooms.
    Environment
    Planning

  • Interpersonal communication is essential to language acquisition; however, it can be difficult to design and execute in a classroom setting. The challenge is designing learning activities and assessment tools that encourage and assist learners to acquire the necessary language skills for successful interpersonal communication while energizing and boosting learners’ confidence in their language learning. This session shares several practical classroom-tested strategies for all levels and all languages, and it models what needs to be emphasized in order to empower learners to prepare, interact, and engage in meaningful and spontaneous communication.
    Learning Experience
    Planning

  • It is more important than ever for students to take feedback from teachers and for teachers to take feedback from students in real time. The combination of teacher-student and student-teacher feedback loops will create a vibrant classroom, helping students flourish whether in a physical classroom or virtually. This session discusses how to encourage students to advocate for themselves and create a virtual community as language learners.
    Collaboration
    Learning Experience

  • Teachers are probably not puzzled by the importance of vocabulary but may still ponder how to use the communicative approach to build vocabulary. This low-tech session will explore how one teacher evolved in teaching vocabulary to better connect the interpretive and interpersonal pieces of language building to take students beyond novice high.
    Learning Experience
    Planning

  • Impediments to ongoing professional development include lack of time, lack of resources, and even isolated working conditions. Podcasts can fill the gap and help teachers stay informed and continue growing throughout the year. However, podcasts can also be overwhelming due to their sheer number and the solitary experience of listening alone. This session introduces teachers to podcasts, where to find them, and ways podcasts can be useful for teachers at every level. Included are strategies to effectively incorporate change after listening to an episode, to reflect on new ideas, and to connect with other listeners using social media.
    Collaboration
    Professionalism

  • This session will provide an abbreviated version of the online course Technology-Enhanced Language Learning. Participants will be introduced to the main concepts of the class and will learn the three key ”golden rules” for transitioning to teaching languages in a post-COVID world. This practical and hopeful session will help assuage any anxieties about the start of school in fall 2020.
    Environment
    Learning Tools

  • Are you looking for ways to promote creativity and student voice in the world language classroom? In this session, participants will explore various ways that students can share their understanding of the content in creative ways using technology. Participants will leave this session with ideas for both spoken and written communication in the target language for all levels.
    Learning Experience
    Learning Tools
    Planning

  • A major goal of all world language instruction is to prepare students to be able to use knowledge and skills in real world situations in the target culture and when interacting with native speakers. This session focuses on questioning strategies, protocols, and learning tasks that promote deeper learning and transfer of learning. Participants will explore how questions, protocols, and strategies can impact student language growth.
    Learning Experience
    Planning

  • This session provides teachers with a clear insight into how directed comprehensible reading can evolve into clear and powerful writing. Participants will see a variety of examples in English that can be used and adapted for their own students. The ideas and examples will work for in-class work as well as within a remote environment.
    Planning

  • Google Maps is an online tool that teachers can use as a source of authentic resources. Activities stemming from Google Maps simulate a real-world experience in another country and culture and give learners experience with the skills they will need in order to visit that country. This session shares activities that students can perform using Street View on Google Maps, including comprehensible input activities, vocabulary and cognate activities, and scavenger hunts.
    Learning Tools
    Planning

  • Whether in class or online, there has never been enough time to do all that we believe needs to done. A changing environment gives educators a chance to revisit what really matters while making gradual shifts in what we do. Using learning experiences as formative assessments ensures that learners meet lesson goals while making continual progress toward unit goals. This session highlights the benefits of working deeply with fewer resources in order to establish purpose, create focus and ensure relevance for learners. Step back and allow learners to do more of the work.
    Planning

  • Getting ready for next fall will require most teachers to continue to adapt classroom activities for an online or blended learning environment. This session shares ten comprehensible input-inspired activities that require minimum preparation. They are adapted from actual activities used by a middle and high school instructor and can be done during remote learning.
    Learning Experience

  • Drawing on a mix of classroom and research experiences in world language education, this adaptation of the CSCTFL 2020 keynote address will explore the realities and potential of world language classrooms as sites of inclusive educational practice. Along the way, participants will be invited to reflect on their own classrooms and teaching practices.
    Environment

  • Interested in resources to improve some aspect of teaching and student learning as we look ahead to the fall? The NFLC’s FREE resource catalog includes multi-media professional development tools; backward designed unit and lesson plan templates, samples, and models; a collection of learner-centered high-engagement classroom activities; and a detailed framework for teachers to reflect and set goals to improve their effectiveness in and out of the classroom. This session highlights the most popular resources and demonstrates applications to online and in-person world language classroom teaching.
    Planning
    Professionalism

  • Learning stations are an effective way to promote differentiation and proficiency in a world language classroom. They provide multiple avenues to engage students at different proficiency levels and connect with their varied interests. This session shares goals, materials, meaningful tasks, station types, and student accountability. In addition, the discussion will re-imagine using best practices to develop stations for online learning.
    Planning

  • Current research indicates the positive effects of sustained silent reading (SSR) in second language acquisition. This session leads participants through a teacher’s real-life experiences implementing an SSR program with different levels of accountability in novice level Spanish classrooms over a period of three months. Key questions regarding accountability, timing, and student perceptions will be addressed, along with implementation suggestions and examples.
    Learning Experience
    Planning

  • This session shares interpretive reading strategies and activities designed to help develop the skills novice language learners need as a foundation for interpreting authentic texts. Also included are example activities that can be used in-person or in an online setting.
    Learning Experience
    Planning

  • Whether teaching in a hybrid, fully online, or regular classroom, discover ways to flood these environments with engaging comprehensible input to provide constant opportunities for students to make meaning and communicate. This session will include examples to add variety and novelty and routines that create community anywhere, as well as techniques to refine personalization and encourage intercultural competence by making even authentic cultural content comprehensible.

  • Would you like learners to interact more with the authentic texts they experience? What if they could do so in a way that allowed them to share their thinking first and then see their peers’ ideas and respond to them? Come experience a hands-on opportunity to work with Edji, a smart tool that allows you to see what catches student attention when they read and fosters collaboration and communication through a robust, collaborative, threaded annotation platform. Edji even allows for users to record audio annotations on authentic texts and images, to which other students can reply.
    Learning Tools

  • A calming environment with a focus on mindfulness, self-awareness, and intentional movement provides students with a safe space to learn and grow, and it supports students with a variety of needs and challenges. This session shares specific strategies and activities geared for all grade levels, with an emphasis on establishing them as part of one's toolkit from the beginning of the school year, whether in a physical or virtual classroom.
    Environment

  • This session highlights the importance and necessity of teaching history and culture in a foreign language classroom. Included are examples of teaching strategies using authentic resources from German history to highlight cultural practices and perspectives.
    Learning Experience
    Planning

  • Learn how to create an entire thematic unit around a cinematic masterpiece instead of relegating the movie to an afterthought or substitute teacher plan. Come away from this session with an interactive and unique film unit using all modes of communication
    Planning

  • Examine virtual learning through an organized lens. This session explores ideas to create and sustain strong relationships with students online and examines how to select and integrate tools appropriate for the lesson stage that also motivate and reach all students.
    Environment
    Learning Tools

  • Have you ever struggled to find video materials that provide comprehensible input using language forms that don’t occur often in the context of classroom activities? Increase student exposure to specific forms of the target language using video. This session demonstrates how to make teacher-created videos using PhotoBooth, QuickTime, and other video tools, and how to use these videos as a springboard for listening and speaking practice. These strategies are good for blended learning and flipped classes as well.
    Learning Experience
    Planning

  • This session shares easy and fun steps to build student presentational speaking, listening and writing proficiency with Quizlet, Google Applications, and Flipgrid. Participants will take away instructions, examples, and templates to engage students in meaningful self-expression, build literacy, scaffold academic language, and differentiate so that all students are challenged and engaged in an online format.
    Learning Experience
    Learning Tools

  • For students with anxiety or other social, emotional, and behavioral challenges, the world language classroom can be an extremely intimidating place. In this session the presenter will provide an overview of community building strategies and comprehensible input techniques that cultivate an empowering community for all types of learners.
    Environment
    Learning Experience

  • Introduce your students to the world through virtual reality and 360 imaging. Teach your students to use virtual reality headsets and/or web-based 360 images to discover travel adventures that are accessible and memorable. This session will demonstrate how to locate and lead expeditions and encourage writing through student travel logs, with examples adapted for both classroom and distance learning.
    Learning Experience
    Learning Tools

  • In the context of large diverse classes, this session shares the ACTFL Six Core Practice hacks that make can-do and proficiency-based language teaching enjoyable and effective, specifically looking at technology, lesson planning, and assessment. Participants will reflect on the structure, routines, and high-leverage habits that can make class a memorable experience for students rather than just memorized content. All files will be shared so teachers can create their own versions to fit their needs.
    Planning

  • Teaching culture can be challenging. How can teachers cultivate global and intercultural competencies while maintaining the target language and incorporating research-based strategies and practices for second language acquisition? Jam-packed with ideas for personalization, accessing local and global community resources, and more effectively utilizing tech tools, this session addresses teaching intercultural competencies in a classroom and through blended, distance, or remote learning. Educating students to be linguistically and culturally prepared to function as world citizens is messy, fluid, and transformative, but it is an essential part of the world language classroom.
    Learning Tools
    Planning

  • The NFLC’s eLearning Portal houses over 14,000 items in over 100 languages and dialects and is a digital resource for individuals and groups. Take a tour of the portal and see how its materials and assessments can be used with Intermediate and Advanced Level learners and language classes. Discover ways in which the eLearning Portal can be used to help teachers maintain and sharpen their own language skills.

    Connect, collaborate, and reflect with other summit participants on this session: Google Doc


  • This panel discussion facilitated by Laura Terrill was recorded live on July 21. The discussion focused on the Planning domain of the Teacher Effectiveness for Language Learning (TELL) Framework. Panelist responded to the essential question: How do teachers plan learning experiences to prepare for student learning? as well as questions from the audience.

    Panelists include:
    Nea Baker, Lindale Middle School (MD)
    Greg Duncan, Interprep (GA)
    Thomas Soth, Chapel Hill High School (NC)
    Heidi Trude, Loudoun Valley High School (VA)


  • This panel discussion facilitated by Thomas Sauer was recorded live on July 21. The discussion focused on the Learning Tools domain of the Teacher Effectiveness for Language Learning (TELL) Framework. Panelists responded to the essential question: How do teachers capitalize on a variety of learning tools to advance student learning? as well as questions from the audience.

    Panelists include:
    Anita Gandhi, Mountain Ridge Middle School (CO)
    Nicole Naditz, San Juan Unified School District (CA)
    Adam Ross, Chinese American International School (CA)
    Toni Theisen, Thompson School District (CO)



  • How can we forge a strong community regardless of what the fall may bring? Consider how to create a sense of belonging in the classroom and beyond while benefitting from lessons learned in my journey.


    Environment

  • With the shift to remote learning and increasing uncertainties about what the fall may bring, educators are more concerned about creating and maintaining strong communities of learners and peer collaborators. Depending on whether the classroom is synchronous, asynchronous, or blended, how will collaboration and social interaction be integrated into curriculum design to encourage deep processing and powerful learning experiences? This session shares a step-by-step guide on how to build a sense of belonging through engaging activities and projects that foster safe and inclusive spaces.
    Learning Experience

  • Engage in a conversations with panelists, presenters and attendees. This livestream panel discussion will focus on the Planning domain of the Teacher Effectiveness for Language Learning (TELL) Framework and respond to the essential question: How do teachers plan learning experiences to prepare for student learning? Join in via chat to share your thoughts and questions.

    Panelists include:
    Helena Curtain, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (WI)
    Na Li, Columbus Academy (OH)
    Rita Oleksak, Glastonbury Public Schools (CT)
    Daphne Warren, Plano Senior High School (TX)

    This panel discussion is hosted in a zoom webinar to allow participants to submit questions to panelists. Participation is limited to 1,000 people. If you are not able to access this panel via zoom link below, you will be able to view the discussion livestreamed on the NFLC's YouTube Channel.

    Join Zoom Webinar: https://umd.zoom.us/j/96672725930?pwd=eU0vVHRzRFdxMmkydjhhUmgzUDEzdz09
    Meeting ID: (966 7272 5930)
    Password: nflc2020


  • This panel discussion facilitated by Thomas Sauer was recorded live on July 21. The discussion focused on the Learning Experience domain of the Teacher Effectiveness for Language Learning (TELL) Framework. Panelists responded to the essential question: How do teachers facilitate meaningful learning experiences that advance learning?? as well as questions from the audience.

    Panelists include:
    Georges Chahwan, Choate Rosemary Hall (CT)
    Carrie Toth, Salem Community High School (IL)
    Elizabeth Matchett, Gunn High School (CA)
    Betsy Sandstrom, Thomas Jefferson High School (VA)


  • Intrigued by authentic language posts on platforms such as Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat, but need purposeful and authentic communicative tasks? Explore and interact with research-based curriculum design and instructional strategies and activities for all three modes that support proficiency-based thematic units and World-Readiness Standards.

    Connect, collaborate, and reflect with other summit participants on this session: Google Doc

    Learning Tools

  • The recent unexpected move to remote instruction highlighted the importance of providing access, promoting literacy and nurturing more autonomous learners. Literacy is a big road-blocking tiger in efforts to help Chinese language learners achieve higher levels of proficiency. This session explores the NOVA STARTALK eTower and how its use promotes access, literacy and learner autonomy.

    Connect, collaborate, and reflect with other summit participants on this session: Google Doc

    Learning Tools

  • This session shares several quick, engaging, and motivating activities that are easily implemented in K – 12 and college-level language classes. These strategies are good for all teaching environments; however, the emphasis will be on using new technologies to create a community of learners and to support online learning. Resources include access to a Google Classroom containing links, materials, and explanations.

    Connect, collaborate, and reflect with other summit participants on this session: Google Doc

    Learning Tools

  • Looking for exciting tools to engage students in digital learning? This session shares ways to use tools to positively impact students during virtual learning and beyond Join in to explore various technology platforms that motivate students to use the target language. A focus is on using Padlet, Flipgrid, and Screencastify, among other tools, to help foster communication, collaboration and critical thinking in language learners.

    Connect, collaborate, and reflect with other summit participants on this session: Google Doc

    Learning Tools

  • Grab a relaxing beverage and join this live conversation. Reflect with NFLC hosts Laura Terrill, Greta Lundgaard, and Thomas Sauer on lessons learned and questions raised throughout the day. Consider how various NFLC resources may be of use to you and your students.

    This chat is hosted in a zoom webinar to allow participants to submit questions to the hosts. Participation is limited to 1,000 people. If you are not able to access this panel via zoom link below, you will be able to view the discussion livestreamed on the NFLC's YouTube Channel.

    Join Zoom Webinar: https://umd.zoom.us/j/91208851769?pwd=SEtjZkJ4RnRTYkZUTm1kWWQ0elBxdz09
    Meeting ID: (912 0885 1769)
    Password: nflc2020