Jenniffer Karilyn Saldaña Whyte was born in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic and migrated to New York City where she became a U.S. citizen at 2 months old. Jenniffer graduated from the Center for the Teaching Profession at Miami Senior High School. She has a B.A. in Spanish education and a Masters degree in Teaching and Learning English. She and her husband have five children, three biological and two adopted, pastor a church together in Anniston, Alabama, and are both Afro-Latinos representing their nations. She is the president and founder of a non-profit 501 (c )(3) organization called Bilingual Kids, Inc., which promotes language learning, culture, and education for children and their families.

She organizes international trips for students to be fully immersed in the Spanish language through medical missions and teaches ESL to adults in her community. A high school Spanish teacher and the past chair of the African American Student Special Interest Group at ACTFL, she is also the very first Zumba instructor to teach a master class at ACTFL. She advocates for unity and the inclusion of Afro-Latinos and other world language learners of African descent in world language classes. Follow her on Facebook: Afro-Latina Teacher or join her groups: Incorporating Afro-Latino Culture in Spanish Classrooms, Incorporating the African Culture in World Language Classrooms. Also, follow her non-profit, Bilingual Kids, Inc. on Facebook.

Toolbox of Goodies: Everything you need to Incorporate Afro-Latino Culture into Your Curriculum

Bringing in the Afro-Latino culture into your curriculum can take some adjustments and planning. Use this practical toolbox of essentials needed in order to incorporate the Afro-Latino culture into your classroom. Participants will receive a guide of units to use in your classroom that will help you be more culturally inclusive.

Dr. Liam Printer is the Leader of Pedagogical Innovation and Approaches to Learning at the International School of Lausanne in Switzerland where he also teaches Spanish in the middle and high school. He hosts The Motivated Classroom podcast, which focuses on raising motivation in the language classroom through comprehensible methods of instruction. The podcast has now reached over 200,000 downloads after 100 episodes and is listened to every week in over 95 countries. His Doctorate in Education focussed on motivation and teaching languages through co-created storytelling and his research has been published in two peer reviewed journals. Liam has been invited as the keynote speaker at a number of high profile international language teaching conferences, including the Dynamic Language Learning Conference in the Netherlands, the Irish Association of Spanish Teachers national conference and The Goethe Institute Annual Conference in London. He has worked as an educational consultant focussing on teaching languages with compelling, comprehensible input with schools in Australia, Finland, China, The US, Luxembourg, Belgium, Denmark and Switzerland.

Donna Tatum-Johns’s passion is twofold: teaching French using CI strategies and supporting teachers in these same techniques. Donna has been teaching French at all levels for 35 years and has been training teachers in acquisition-driven approaches for over 19 years. In addition to teaching full-time in Kentucky, she regularly presents at national, regional and start conferences.

Got Game?: Inserting Play into CI Lessons

Heavy lessons and topics can turn off even the most serious and motivated student. Try breaking up your lessons with a bit of light-hearted play that won’t skimp on the input and might even help students forget that they are learning. In this interactive session, experience various game-like activities suited for virtual, hybrid, or in-person classes that get students up and out of their seats, yelling for more.

Jason Fritze’s classes are one part stand-up comedy, one part drama class. In story after story, Jason entertains his students while at the same time bringing a vast knowledge of methods that guarantee successful language acquisition. It’s hard to believe you’re in a class at all. Jason has lived in Spain and traveled extensively. He brings culture and language to life when he teaches. His personality and immense knowledge of how languages are acquired and how reading contributes to increasing proficiency make him a valuable asset.

Jason is a National Board Certified Teacher in World Languages Other Than English. He is originally from Oklahoma, where he taught Spanish and French for seven years in Norman Public Schools and was named teacher of the year. He has also taught in New Jersey and Tennessee, and his teaching experience spans from early elementary to adult. He regularly presents at state, regional and national language conferences and conducts workshops/in-services for language teachers throughout the United States on Comprehension-Based Methods and Reading Strategies in the WL classroom. Jason has collected hundreds of children’s books in both Spanish and French that he uses to provide additional reading for students. Jason began teaching Spanish and French for Fluency Fast in 2005.

Jason presents in-services for school districts throughout the year on reading as well as Comprehension-Based Methods and is frequently invited to present at state and national conferences as a keynote speaker and workshop presenter. Contact karen@fluencyfast for availability.

Jason Fritze is the Spirit of Laguna Award Recipient . The award recognizes a District staff member who exemplifies extraordinary service to others.

“I laugh every day with my students. When you tap into the joy that students bring, every day is special.”, says Jason.

What is Comprehension-Based Teaching?

How are languages acquired and what is necessary to foster that acquisition? External noise can distract us from the core of how we can optimize our limited contact time with students to get the biggest bang for our class time minute. This introduction to CI Teaching is meant for beginners and experienced teachers alike.

Haiyun Lu has been an educator since 1993. She is also a certified Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) teacher from Brown University. She is passionate about employing storytelling in her classes and implementing mindfulness in education. She was a mindfulness coach for her school’s track and field team and the volleyball team. She has been training and coaching language teachers with “teaching with comprehensible input-based instruction” throughout North America and Asia. She is the co-founder of the Comprehensible Midwest Conference, Learn Together Academy and Ignite Chinese. She is a columnist for Intrepid Ed News. She is a blogger and writer; she has written 16 storybooks in Mandarin. When she is not teaching, she likes to hike, meditate, drink tea with friends, enjoy a good meal with family and play games with her son.

Pre-Conference, Tuesday, June 27.  Teaching with Comprehensible Input, with the Whole Picture in Mind

It is such an overwhelmingly drowning feeling for anyone new to the TCI world to see the bottom of the ocean clearly. On top of making the paradigm shift in one’s theoretical understanding, harnessing fundamental Acquisition Driven Instructional skills and delivering the classroom execution; one also needs to pivot on their existing curriculum, classroom management, assessment, and grading system. Simply, it is too much to wrap the brain around!

If you are in this boat, no worries! After more than a decade of learning, implementing, tweaking, and pondering on how to break down the fundamentals in TCI, the presenter has also developed a clear TCI framework for you to use as a map. With the map in hand, you will see every step is a benchmark on a big journey.

Justin Slocum Bailey is head over heels about helping teachers and learners succeed with less stress and more joy. A veteran language, music, and martial arts teacher raised in Vienna, Austria, he operates Indwelling Language, a treasure trove of resources and low-prep practices for joyful language education, as well as TeachHuman, a collection of courses and resources to help teachers of all subjects not just teach well but also BE well. Justin has published several articles on language teaching, creates materials for learners of both modern and classical languages, and consults for schools, districts, publishers, travel companies, and non-profits worldwide. He also speaks about mental health in educational and other settings. The many glowing testimonials of his work include “If everyone taught language like Justin Slocum Bailey, we would have a world of self-directed polyglots,” “Holy gifted batman!”, and “The kind of teacher I’d like to have a beer with.”

Welcoming Colleagues to the Table: How to Share What Works

All too often, attempts to share success or to influence other teachers—whether about a specific technique or an overall approach rich in communicative comprehensible input—fall flat or, worse, actually discourage or alienate. Geared especially toward teachers who train or mentor others, who share practices in person or online, or whose colleagues have disparate philosophies, this session will help you build trust, communicate clearly, and make a lasting positive impact. We will cover general principles of winsome communication as well as specific ways to memorably share concepts of second language acquisition CI-rich practices.

Bertha Delgadillo is a high school Spanish teacher to novice, intermediate ,and heritage Spanish learners in Savannah, Georgia. Originally from Tampico, Tamaulipas, Mexico & a National Board Certified teacher, Bertha currently shares best practices & professional development for World Language teachers through her blog & active Facebook Page & YouTube Channel “Profesora Delgadillo.” Bertha also serves as the leader of the GA HS Spanish Teacher PLC by providing actionable monthly professional development. Additionally, Bertha facilitates training & observations for new teachers at her school district. She has also presented & facilitated workshops for SCOLT, WL GADoe, Conference in the Cloud, World Language Teacher Summit and numerous districts in the country. She enjoys empowering teachers to continue to stay connected to their passion for world language teaching through sharing practical engagement & student agency strategies all while placing students at the center of the learning experience.

Music to My Ears: Infuse Joy & Inspire in Your WL Classroom with Songs

Songs are powerful authentic resources in our Spanish classroom! Find a song and transform it into an engaging acquisition experience for your students. Discover new ways to connect your learners to the target culture by leading students to discover new artists, making lyrics comprehensible, and providing interactive acquisition-driven activities. Participants will examine several engaging strategies to facilitate a meaningful connection with music in the target language from the target culture.

Bill VanPatten is a former Professor of Spanish and Second Language Acquisition at Michigan State University. He specializes in second language acquisition, which he investigates on both theoretical and practical levels, using approaches from linguistics and psycholinguistics. On the scholarly side, he has published eight books, eight edited volumes, and close to 200 articles and book chapters. Many teachers know him for his materials in Spanish and French, as well as his books for teachers such as WHILE WE’RE ON THE TOPIC, THE NATURE OF LANGUAGE, and LANGUAGE ACQUISITION IN A NUTSHELL.

In 2018, Bill left academia to pursue writing fiction full time, although he still keeps a foot in the door of language acquisition and language teaching and is a sought after speaker and presenter. His first novel, SEIDON’S TALE, received the 2019 Kops-Fetherling International Books Silver Phoenix Award for Best New Voice in Fiction.

His second novel, LOOKS ARE DECEIVING, has garnered positive reviews from Kirkus, Reedsy Discovery, Prairie Book Reviews, Writer’s Digest, Readers’ Favorite, SPB, Indie Readers, among others. It recently won the Bronze Medal for LGBTQ fiction from Readers’ Favorite International Book Awards.

His third and fourth novels, A LITTLE RAIN and SOMETIMES YOU JUST KNOW have also garnered praise. In addition he has published three collections of short stories, the most recent being THERE GO I.

As an #OwnVoices author, gay and Latino characters are central in his fiction.

Bill lives in the Central Valley of California. Visit him at www.billvanpatten.net

The Centrality of Implicit Learning

Over the years, researchers and theorists have converged on the following: implicit learning and implicit knowledge are at the heart of acquisition. In this presentation, I will review why implicit learning–and not explicit learning–is central to what learners do. I will then provide implications for acquisition-based communicative language teaching, many of which teachers may have already heard, but may have been reluctant to adopt.

Haiyun Lu has been an educator since 1993. She is also a certified Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) teacher from Brown University. She is passionate about employing storytelling in her classes and implementing mindfulness in education. She was a mindfulness coach for her school’s track and field team and the volleyball team. She has been training and coaching language teachers with “teaching with comprehensible input-based instruction” throughout North America and Asia. She is the co-founder of the Comprehensible Midwest Conference, Learn Together Academy and Ignite Chinese. She is a columnist for Intrepid Ed News. She is a blogger and writer; she has written 16 storybooks in Mandarin. When she is not teaching, she likes to hike, meditate, drink tea with friends, enjoy a good meal with family and play games with her son.

CIREBOOT,  Monday, July 11:  Beyond the “Good Intention”, Beyond the Single Stories

When little Johnny makes a racist remark, instead of helping little Johnny to learn his lesson and develop his anti-racist skills, often some well-intended people quickly come to little Johnny’s rescue. “He is a good person; he doesn’t mean it.” So, as it happens, little Johnny’s feelings can get protected, but that kind of line of defense also keeps microaggression, implicit biases and racism intact. How can we breakout the barriers of good intention, callout the single stories we tell ourselves about others, and equip everyone to become an antiracist?

Adriana Ramírez is a Spanish teacher, author, and teacher trainer. She shares her knowledge and experience of more than 20 years in the classroom, by constantly training other teachers on how to teach with CI methodologies as well as how to incorporate anti-bias and anti-racist work in the language classroom. Adriana has trained teachers in Canada, the US and Europe. She also holds a double major in Psychology, a degree in Clinical Psychology and a Master’s degree in Education. Adriana has a big passion for sharing with the world the beauty of her country and her people. You can see this love through all her published novels. A big advocate of the #OwnVoices movement, Adriana strongly believes that those who come from traditionally oppressed and colonized countries and territories, must reclaim their right to tell their own stories and build their own narratives. Originally from Colombia, she actively works on recuperating the stories and the narrative that are part of her roots and her heritage. You can find her on IG at @veganadri, her website is adrianaramirez.ca, and her YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@learningthroughreading

Picture Talk: From Community Building to Developing Fluency

Can we really teach culture?

The teaching of the TC and its assessment are part of the requirements of teaching a language. But how can we teach culture without objectifying the other? How can we teach culture without perpetuating stereotypes? How can we teach culture without externalizing it? And most importantly, how can we evaluate this process?

In this workshop we will explore the concepts of multiculturalism and interculturalism, as well as respectful ways to approach a more honest assessment of this topic.

Assessing With the Proficiency Scale In The Language Classroom

The proficiency scale is not one more way of assigning grades. In fact, I would say, is more like a philosophy that tries to make grading and assessing more equitable. For this to translate into reality, we must go beyond the traditional ways of grading and collecting marks and have a mental shift.

How can we use the proficiency scale in our language classes? What is the philosophy behind it? How does it help my students be better learners? What are some changes I need to make as a teacher?

Rachel Lucas is a Spanish teacher and Ed Tech Coach with over 17 years experience. She is passionate about helping language teachers learn how to use technology to save time and engage their students. Rachel is the founder of the Tech for World Language Teachers community. In addition, she is the founder of the World Language Teacher Tech Academy. Rachel regularly hosts online professional development workshops designed specifically for World Language teachers.

Rachel also regularly presents in workshops and conferences such as, the CI Reboot, World Language Teacher Summit and the Florida Foreign Language Association.

You can follow her Facebook page Tech for World Language Teachers. Join the Tech for World Language Teachers Facebook group. The group has over 15,000 language teachers who love to collaborate and share ideas and resources.

Looking for more resources for language teachers, check out the Tech for World Language Teachers blog.

For On-Demand workshops and No-Prep resources visit the World Language Teacher Tech Academy.

Must-Have Tech Tools for Teaching with Comprehensibly

This session will cover the latest tech tools for teaching using CI strategies.

Janique lives in Ghent, the Dutch-speaking part of Belgium. She started teaching Dutch to illiterate adults in 1985. Now, almost 37 years later, she is still teaching Dutch, but a lot has changed since the early years. Her big discovery was (first) TPR, then TPRS and then so many other CI methodologies. In the beginning it was not easy to use these methods to teach the language to her target audience, but gradually she started to use them more and more (with the necessary adjustments) and started to appreciate them.

At the moment, she cannot imagine teaching in any other way. Her students love coming to class and they really make progress. It is also very satisfying for Janique to be able to work in this way.

Janique gives trainings (also on CI) at the university of Antwerp on regular basis.In the past she presented in the Netherlands and in Sweden. She also gave presentations on previous conferences of Agen (France) and on online conferences “Comprehended!” and “Conference in the Clouds”. ​

Dutch Language Tasting

Kia London is a passionate educator, writer, and advocate for equity by way of representation in the world language curriculum. She earned a B.A. in Spanish, an M.A. in Linguistics, specializing in language and identity, and is now currently pursuing her M.A. in Spanish. Kia carries seventeen years of experience in the classroom, and has taught Spanish to second language learners, native, and heritage speakers, for all grade levels K-12. She currently teaches Spanish to 5th and 6th grade students, and works in an additional capacity as a DEI Coordinator in her school community.

As an active board member of ICTFL (Illinois Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages), she co-developed and co-leads the Affinity Groups for ICTFL. Kia works to provide fluid, consistent, and equitable professional development opportunities in her region, as well as informal gatherings for teachers. She is also a recipient of the 2022 ICTFL Distinguished Service Award to Foreign Language Learning, for exemplary teaching of language and culture and providing inspiration to students in teacher training and education programs.

Through her brand, Trailblaze Into Language Learning, Kia has provided workshops and webinars focused on student representation, the African Diaspora, and intercultural competence. She has presented at local, state, and regional conferences, as well as the ACTFL conference. As a writer of comprehensible short stories and articles, she successfully designs a rich curriculum filled with victories and stories of African identities, DEI, and student representation.

She enjoys teaching and learning with her students! Her hope and goal for world language education is that every teacher is confident to provide consistent, equitable, and inclusive instruction so that our current and future students can see themselves in the curriculum.

Rubrics and Assessing Students for Success!

The vital necessity in any classroom community is setting your students up for success! Our students need to feel confident that they can grow and progress in their journey of acquiring the language. In In this session, the presenter will discuss strategies, and show examples of how to assess students that have been receiving comprehensible input. Furthermore, the presenter will elaborate on when and how to use specific rubrics, that will support students in their growth of proficiency in the culture and language.

MC Fasheh is currently working at Orange County School of the Arts teaching lower and upper level Spanish courses. She has been a teacher and instructional coach for five years. She learned about using CI in the classroom in her credential program at CSULB and it has been the only methodology she has ever used. She is a member and current president of COACH, a non-profit organization that organizes professional development for teachers specifying in the use of CI and CI strategies, located in Southern California. She loves helping other teachers realize the full potential of using CI in the classroom and believes that with the right supports, every teacher can feel empowered and confident using CI in their classrooms.

Backwards Planning from a Text – Lower Levels

In this session, participants will learn how to backwards plan from a text from how to pick the target structures to giving the input that prepares them to read to follow-up activities to increase exposure to the text.

Explaining the WHY of CI to Students

How do you explain language acquisition to your students? How do you help them understand that it’s not all madness, but carefully thought and planned out instruction? Learn how to explain language acquisition and what CI looks like in the classroom on day 1.

Elicia Cárdenas is a former middle school Spanish teacher with extensive experience teaching a variety of levels, ages, and subjects. Her experience includes working with preservice teachers at Westminster College and teaching assistant for MIT Teaching Systems Lab and writes for the Education Ethics program at Harvard. Although she was trained as an elementary teacher, she shifted her focus to understanding of second language acquisition and its application to classroom instruction in a world language classroom. She presents regularly at national, regional, and state conferences and is proud to be a member of the IFLT coaching staff. Her areas of expertise include assessment with an equity lens and working to make sure all students are successful at acquiring another language. She is the Director of Training for The Comprehensible Classroom, and is the founder of the Deskless Classroom.

What you didn’t learn in your “methods” class: How languages are acquired

Methods classes are known for focusing on what to do in world language classes, often without providing a foundational understanding of the nature of language acquisition. This session will introduce teachers to some fundamentals about language acquisition, so that teachers can make informed instructional decisions that support all learners.

Sabrina Sebban-Janczak was born and raised in Paris, France and moved to the United States in her late twenties. She currently teaches high school French as well as adults at large. Sabrina has written and translated readers and teacher guides for French learners. She regularly presents at national and international conferences on matters related to best practices in language teaching and acquisition. She regularly does consulting and trains teachers. Sabrina is a passionate language teacher and learner.

Writing Personalized Stories to Use As Readings

In this session, we will dive into the creation process that leads to a reading based on any story or narrative done in class. The primary objective is to show how this process becomes a reading written on the spot as the story unfolds or, equally valid, after the class ends. Often teachers find it difficult to address variances in a multi-level classroom. Our talk will delve into this concern and equip you with tools to meet that challenge. Here is a short description of each step of our process:

a.) Keeping the language comprehensible
b.) Making the experience fun and compelling
c.) Eliciting student input within the multi-level proficiencies of the learners
d.) Creating a data-base of texts that can be retrofitted and adapted to different classes
e.) If time permits, we will discuss our interpretation of how these co-constructed texts represent authentic material

Donna Tatum-Johns’s passion is twofold: teaching French using CI strategies and supporting teachers in these same techniques. Donna has been teaching French at all levels for 35 years and has been training teachers in acquisition-driven approaches for over 19 years. In addition to teaching full-time in Kentucky, she regularly presents at national, regional and start conferences.

Got Game?: Inserting Play into CI Lessons

Heavy lessons and topics can turn off even the most serious and motivated student. Try breaking up your lessons with a bit of light-hearted play that won’t skimp on the input and might even help students forget that they are learning. In this interactive session, experience various game-like activities suited for virtual, hybrid, or in-person classes that get students up and out of their seats, yelling for more.

Crafting units from end to beginning

French teachers, do you have a favorite song, commercial or theme you want to build a lesson around but don’t know where to start? This interactive session showcases a unit and walks participants through the process step by step. With a start-to-finish demonstration, attendees will learn about various activities that meet the needs of virtual or in-person learners, along with desired outcomes and ideas for assessing student progress.

AbdelKader Khila currently teaches French and English Language Development at Boyce Middle School in the Upper Saint Clair School District, a suburb of Pittsburgh. He is very passionate about his students and the teaching of languages. Abdelkader is a native of Morocco where he completed his college studies and holds a bachelor degree in Hospitality management from l’Institut Supérieur International du Tourisme, in Tangier, Morocco. AbdelKader immigrated to the U.S in 1997 and was hired by the Walt Disney World company as a Cultural Representative at Epcot. He then moved to Pittsburgh in 1999, and subsequently embarked on a long career as a chef, but ultimately decided to switch careers in 2005 and pursue his dream of becoming a teacher.

AbdelKader holds an MAT (Masters of Arts in Teaching) from the University of Pittsburgh. He also holds an English as a Second Language Program Specialist certification and teaching certifications in French, Arabic, and Middle School Mathematics.

After he was introduced to TPRS by a colleague in 2007, he was instantly hooked and as a result attended various conferences and professional developments in subsequent years. AbdelKader Khila loves to spend time with his kids, Maria 16 and Adam 14. He also enjoys cooking, cycling, bikepacking, playing soccer, traveling, and exploring other cultures.

Teaching CI through Current Events: Le Maroc, grande surprise de la Coupe du Monde

Teaching comprehensible language and culture through the use of current events. The session will include a short background on the recent World Cup in Qatar and on the French speaking country of Morocco who shocked the world by being the first African country to reach the semi finals of the World Cup.

Dahiana Castro teaches high school Spanish and French in Long Beach, California. She has a Masters degree in Multi-cultural Education and Second Language Acquisition. She was born in the Dominican Republic and grew up in Puerto Rico. She moved to California in 2005. She has been teaching Spanish and French for Fluency Fast since 2019 and training teachers in Comprehension-Based Methods since 2017. She is a member of the COACH Foreign Language Project in Southern California and in her spare time she crochets, dances Salsa, travels, runs and grades papers.

Session1: Get Moving! TPR Techniques for Active Classroom Instruction

This session will focus on Total Physical Response (TPR) and is designed to guide you through the basic steps of TPR. Participants will have the opportunity to learn how to select vocabulary for TPR, the basic steps of TPR and other TPR related activities. Additionally participants will learn how to adapt these steps to their language, grade level and curriculum.

Session 2: From Words to Pages: Building Reading Skills in World Language Classes

This session is designed to equip teachers with practical strategies to encourage and improve second language reading comprehension among students. The session will be divided into pre-reading, reading, and post-reading strategies. Teachers will learn how to help students activate their prior knowledge, preview the text, and set a purpose for reading. Teachers will also learn how to engage students in reflection activities and facilitate discussions about the text to deepen their understanding. Overall, the session will provide teachers with practical and easy-to-implement strategies to help their students become confident and proficient readers in a second language.

A.C. Quintero is a Spanish teacher in Chicago, IL with 17 years of experience as an International Baccalaureate middle school teacher, high school teacher, and adjunct instructor. She holds a Master’s in Latin American Literature and Cultures coupled with a Master’s in Educational Leadership. These dual degrees have afforded her a vantage point from both ends of the educational spectrum. A.C. has been sharing her unique perspective on pedagogy and language acquisition for more than ten years at national, regional, and state conferences. She was recently the recipient of the AATSP inaugural DEI award. She currently teaches a course on AfroLatinx curriculum integration for Idioma consulting, which has enabled her to help fellow educators thrive in their journey to diversity their curriculum. A.C. is equally passionate about writing curriculum, and comprehensible novels for students. She’s written over 10 novels, which teachers continue to use in their curricula. Novels such as: La clase de confesiones (series)

• El escape
• Las apariencias engañan (series)

These novels provide students with compelling storylines, accessible language, diversity, and most importantly, valuable life lessons.

Myths About Diversifying the Curriculum

This session will challenge the myths that educators believe around diversifying the curriculum, narratives that prevent them rising to their full potential. These myths have paralyzed some teachers to even throw in the towel, because they don’t want to misstep. This session will not only debunk such conspiracies, but also offer teachers strategies for making their curriculum more diverse, student-centered, rich, and robust.

Linda Li has been teaching Mandarin for more than 25 years at international schools in China, Thailand, India and Singapore and is now the principle at an American school in Shanghai. She also taught at North High School, an urban school in Denver, Colorado. She is originally from Shanghai, China.

Linda has been using Comprehension-Based Methods of teaching in her Chinese classrooms since the fall of 2004. She has presented at numerous national and international conferences, conducted workshops and in-service trainings for language teachers around the world, and has been teaching Fluency Fast Mandarin classes since 2006.

Linda co-authored the Beginning Mandarin Readers: Who is Good Looking? and Good-looking Is Not Enough, with Dr. Stephen Krashen. She is also the co-author of I Love Learning Chinese (Books 1, 2), containing TPRS teaching materials for beginning Mandarin students. Linda is currently writing a series of stories for beginning Mandarin learners as well as lesson plans.

Annick Chen has been actively involved as a classroom teacher, teacher mentor, teacher leader, curriculum developer, assessment writer, and teacher trainer.

Her students range from kindergarteners to retirees, public and private to heritage schools. As a dynamic presenter at professional conferences, workshops, and in service training, Annick is frequently invited to share her expertise in and outside of the United States. Before teaching Chinese at Kent Denver School, Annick had taught English as Second Language, Chinese, and French at Denver Public Schools, Colorado for 16 years. She was named the 2015-16 Teacher of the Year by the Colorado Congress of Foreign Language Teachers and has received numerous awards for her teaching leadership.

Mandarin Language Tasting

Total Physical Response in Mandarin. Cameras on! Come ready to participate and feel what it’s like to be a student. As a teacher, can we speak in the target language from day 1? How much? With TPR, maybe more than you think!

Claudia Elliott is a Spanish teacher in Jacksonville, Florida. She has been teaching Spanish since 2005 and is currently teaching Spanish 1, Spanish 3 IB, and AP Spanish Language and Culture. Claudia is very passionate to implement acquisition-driven instruction in her class while building a strong community with her students. Claudia is the 2021-2022 FFL TOY, and 2022 SCOLT TOY. Claudia also is the host of Growing With Proficiency The Podcast.

How To Engage Students With Comprehensible and Compelling Input?

How can I keep my students engaged? That’s the million-dollar question. The reality is that a good game or activity can help momentarily to boost engagement, but it will not solve the problem. In this session, participants will discover how we can make our classes engaging authentically with content that is not only comprehensible but also compelling. The best part is that most of the strategies shared in this session are low prep so you can reclaim your time while keeping students willingly listening to you.

Karen Lichtman recently left Northern Illinois University, where she taught Spanish linguistics, methods courses, and directed the Educator Licensure program for ten years. She does research on instructed second language acquisition and TPRS, including her book Teaching Proficiency through Reading and Storytelling (TPRS): An Input-Based Approach to Second Language Instruction.

Research on machine translation and AI in the language classroom

Google Translate and ChatBot: friends, or foes? I will present briefly on the research on machine translation use by language students, and highlight a recent study I did with Angela Gardner where she used a surprisingly simple questioning technique to reduce student temptation to use translators.

John Bracey has been a Latin teacher in Massachusetts since 2010. He has a B.A. in Classics from UMass Amherst and an MA from Boston College. He has taught Latin exclusively using Comprehensible Input for the past several years. He leads workshops around the country for language teachers of all kinds. He was also the 2016 Massachusetts Latin teacher of the year!

Sustainable CI for the Working Teacher

School years are long and tiring. In this session, attendees will learn easy to implement practices that will make it possible to consistently deliver comprehensible input without burning out.

Bill Langley is a Spanish teacher in Indianapolis, Indiana. He is the past-chair for the Comprehension-Based Communicative Language Teaching Special Interest Group for ACTFL. Bill organizes the Indiana TCI group, a monthly world language and CCLT support and training group. He is especially interested in supporting classroom practices with current SLA research, and how to get research into the hands of teachers.

Pop-up Grammar in Comprehension-Based Teaching

Have you ever gotten pushback from a colleague or administrator because your students don’t “know” grammar? This session is for you! In this session we will explore how Comprehension-Based teachers approach grammar in the classroom, get examples on how to teach “tough” grammar, and learn ways to help students succeed in if they end up in a traditional textbook class without giving up your beliefs about language aquisition.

Benjamin M. Tinsley – A teacher of 14 years and a lifelong student, Ben has dedicated his professional and personal life to the pursuit of substantive diversity, equity, and belonging in education. In the classroom, he has had the opportunity to work with teachers and schools around the world to develop curricula that center Black Indigenous Communities of Color and other historically marginalized peoples.

Ben’s recent work has focused primarily on leveraging language acquisition and language education toward developing global literacy and 21st-Century competencies.

Storytelling In The Real World

In this session, attendees will take away concrete practices to leverage geography & history in storytelling to foster intercultural proficiency growth.

Margarita Pérez García is a Venezuelan author of Easy-to-Read literature in Spanish for beginning language learners. With over 25 years of experience as a Spanish and French teacher, Margarita writes high-interest stories about Venezuela’s natural beauty and diverse wildlife, natural disasters and the human impact on the environment combining conservation themes with myths and legends of indigenous cultures. Margarita specialises in supporting struggling readers and learners with reading difficulties and has become a leading author of Easy-to-Read literature. Margarita is a founding member of Acento Latino Libros™, a collective of independent Latin American authors who write easy readers for Spanish language learners. She has authored several books under 100 unique words ideal for level 1 students such as: Juliana, Itipurú y el monstruo del océano, Mosca, ¡¡Mosca!!, Mosca en leche, Mosca, ¿Estás en la Luna? And Arroz con cosas.
Visit her at margaritaperezgarcia.com

Widening perspectives: incorporating indigenous culture in the language classroom

See the rich depth of knowledge held by Indigenous people being embraced, shared and celebrated in your classroom, and broaden your students’ horizons through 10 concrete comprehension-based practices connecting students to kinship, land, law, language and ceremony.

Bertha Delgadillo is a high school Spanish teacher to novice, intermediate ,and heritage Spanish learners in Savannah, Georgia. Originally from Tampico, Tamaulipas, Mexico & a National Board Certified teacher, Bertha currently shares best practices & professional development for World Language teachers through her blog & active Facebook Page & YouTube Channel “Profesora Delgadillo.” Bertha also serves as the leader of the GA HS Spanish Teacher PLC by providing actionable monthly professional development. Additionally, Bertha facilitates training & observations for new teachers at her school district. She has also presented & facilitated workshops for SCOLT, WL GADoe, Conference in the Cloud, World Language Teacher Summit and numerous districts in the country. She enjoys empowering teachers to continue to stay connected to their passion for world language teaching through sharing practical engagement & student agency strategies all while placing students at the center of the learning experience.

Upgrade Your Assessments & Engage with Hexagonal Thinking!

Assessments that promote discourse in the target language plus content gains are simple to create with the concept of hexagonal thinking. If you have never heard of what this is, you will want to make sure to join this sprint session. It will shift the way you choose to assess in a low-prep way that gets learners talking!!!

Estrategias que preparan a los estudiantes para AP desde el primer nivel

Puede que los estudiantes sean principiantes en la clase de Español 1 pero eso no implica que no tengan la capacidad de pensar críticamente. ¿Y qué de los niveles? No todos los estudiantes llegan al nivel 1 y 2 con el mismo manejo del idioma. ¿Cómo podemos crear experiencias de aprendizaje con input comprensible accesibles para todos? Acompáñame y te compartiré algunas de las estrategias que utilizo para promover la adquisición del idioma al igual que el pensamiento crítico requerido para la clase de AP a través de todos los niveles.

Carla Tarini attended her first CI workshop over 10 years ago and was hooked within minutes. Since then, she has spent part of almost every summer heading to conferences to learn, coach, and present. Although she just retired from teaching French to middle schoolers, she has not retired from the CI community. In fact, she is thrilled to devote more time to creating reading materials for novice and intermediate level students. She is the author of Qui parle français?, a 10-book series that introduces learners to French speakers from around the world. Her second non-fiction series, in both French and Spanish, À quoi je pense? and ¿En que estoy pensando?, is a twist on the familiar 20-questions guessing game. Carla enjoys working with teachers who are new to CI and sharing with them all the CI tips and tricks she has in her bag.

Play a game, guess a riddle, acquire the language.

In this session, we will show you how we adapted a familiar guessing game into a fully engaging, multi-purpose CI activity that will have your students listening intently, reading/building pictures in their minds, and squirming in their seats to shout out the answer. Students will beg to play it for the entire period. This game also naturally develops circumlocution skills, creates a bridge from novice to intermediate levels, and provides opportunities for writing and speaking if students are ready. We will demonstrate with examples based on the series, À Quoi je pense? / ¿En Qué estoy pensando? however, teachers can easily make up their own riddles in their classes by using ideas from our demo. In English with examples in Spanish and French.

Karen Rowan began teaching Spanish using Comprehension-Based Methods in 1996 while teaching high school Spanish. She presents inservices on TPR Storytelling, Comprehension-Based Methods, Reader’s Theater, Self-Coaching for teachers, Storytelling and Personalization, curriculum development and in-class demonstrations and coaching. Rowan has trained teachers all over the world for more than 25 years. ​

She is the author of Las aventuras de Isabela, Isabela captura un congo, ​Carl no quiere ir a México, ​Don Quijote: El último caballero, El callejón del beso, (also in French, Latin and English), The Fluency Fast Guide to Self-Coaching, Reader’s Theater for the World Language Classroom, the TPR Storytelling ancillaries for Pearson/Prentice Hall’s Paso a paso and Realidades textbooks and was the editor of The International Journal of Foreign Language Teaching (IJFLT) for 15 years. She was the director of the National TPRS Conference for 5 years and the co-founder of the International Forum on Language Teaching (IFLT) with Diana Noonan, Jason Fritze and Dr. Stephen Krashen. In 2019 when long-time publisher Contee Seely retired, she became the new owner of Command Performance Language Institute, www.commandperformancebooks.com

Her most recent book, co-authored with Joan Soriano, is Yo sé cómo hacerlo, la historia de Joan Soriano, el músico que toca bachata.

She is the director of Fluency Fast Language Classes, which offers comprehension-based crash courses in Spanish and French to businesses, school districts and individuals online and in person. www.fluencyfast.com

She is the founder and admin of the IFLT / NTPRS / CI Teaching Facebook page and is the co-director of the #CIReboot with Adriana Ramírez and Dahiana Castro.

In her spare time she travels, learns French, dances Bachata and spends time with her most favorite person, her daughter and muse Kassidy.

Storyasking Map Talks and Google Walking Tours

Leslie Davison will present a session on pulling personalized google forms into Google maps. Benjamin Tinsley will demo centering black and brown people, products and places with MapTalks. Together we will pull these two approaches into Storytelling and Reading. Can we broaden the global knowledge our students possess, deeply change the content of our lessons, personalize our lessons to the students in our rooms and still tap into the long-term memory power of Comprehensible Storytelling? This session will pull all of this together ….comprehensibly. Examples in English by Spanish and French teachers.

TPR Storytelling Steps

The Basics of TPR Storytelling. Step by step with examples for teachers who are new to CI teaching in general or who are experienced in Comprehension-based teaching but not specifically with Storytelling. Storytelling is powerful and naturally engages the long-term memory. Co-creating a story requires some basic steps like pre-teaching vocabulary and Circling, to provide students with repetitions of high frequency vocabulary words. Presenters are Spanish and French teachers, but the steps apply to all languages.

Ben Fisher-Rodriguez is a high school German and Spanish teacher located in Seattle, WA. He has presented at national, regional, and local conferences on lesson planning, high-leverage teaching strategies, and inclusive teaching practices. He is a German Embassy Teacher of Excellence and the WAFLT Teacher of the Year for 2022. He is also the President of the Language Learner Literature Advisory Board. Ben can be found on Twitter @MrFisherSays, and blogs about CI practices at MrFisherSays.com.

The ACTFL Proficiency Levels in Your Classroom

How are the ACTFL Proficiency (Sub-)Levels different from one another, and how can I apply my knowledge of them to my teaching in the classroom? Learn how to differentiate proficiency sublevels in student writing and speaking, and use CI techniques to boost students up the proficiency ladder.

LGBTQ+ Life in Your Stories, Units, and Curriculum

You want to be more inclusive in your curriculum, so that students of all genders and sexualities see themselves and grow in their empathy for others. Great! But maybe you’re getting stuck on the “how?”. Let’s talk ways to include more LGBTQ+ life into your stories, units, and curricula in manageable, actionable steps.

Leslie Davison has 20+ years experience teaching Spanish to students of all ages and all levels. A Google Certified Innovator and National Board Certified Teacher, Leslie currently serves as an Instructional Coach and Spanish/English teacher at a Dual Language Immersion School in Colorado.

Passionate about providing classes full of compelling content based on her students, culture and social justice, Leslie presents at many conferences each year and helps to train teachers around the United States.

Leslie has lived and taught in both Honduras and Singapore and has authored two books: An Educator’s Guide to Dual Language Instruction and El chico global, a comprehension based reader for students learning Spanish. Leslie is currently leading a trip where adult students will learn Spanish while walking a portion of El Camino de Santiago in northern Spain.

Google Walking Tours (Part 1 of 3)

Alisa Shapiro – After a year as a second-grade bilingual teacher, Alisa helped establish her district’s elementary World Language program. She enjoys presenting with her district’s World Language team at local and national workshops & conferences.

Alisa is also a Hebrew instructional trainer. Focusing on meaning and interest, she employs comprehensible input (CI) strategies for highly scaffolded Hebrew language instruction that is understandable to the learner. Her classes are conducted almost exclusively in conversational Hebrew. “CI is engaging, effective and fun, employing collaborative ‘story spinning,’ improvisation and drama, and exploits Hebrew’s most practical, high-frequency vocab.” Blog: cmovan.edublogs.org

Hebrew Language Tasting

CI strategies including story-asking, drama, gesturing and sound effects to spin scenes in Hebrew

Daniel Kline Dubois is a French, Breton and English teacher in Lorient, France. He has taught the Breton language lab at the Agen Workshop in Agen France since the first year 10 years ago and is a Fluency Fast French teacher. He and Sabrina Sebban Janczak stumbled upon and developed Tandem Teaching, a two teacher course in which both teachers simultaneously, playfully teach and story tell conversationally between themselves, providing input and interaction. https://fluencyfast.com/tandem-teaching/  Daniel was born in Kribi, Cameroon to an American mother and Cameroonian father and considers himself a polyglot, citizen of the world and lover of coffee and chocolate.

Breton Language Tasting

A demo of Breton, the language spoken in Brittany, France, for beginners. Experience what it is like to be a day 1 student in a language you don’t know and see how Comprehensible Input can be used from the beginning.