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 Reeboot, World Language Teacher Summit and the Florida Foregin Language Assosiation.

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 CI.

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

Claudia Elliott is a Spanish teacher in Jacksonville, Florida. Claudia has been teaching Spanish since 2005. She is currently teaching Spanish 1, Spanish 3 IB, and AP Spanish Language and Culture. In recent years she has implemented dramatic changes to her teaching practices to make her class more comprehensible, communicative, and community driven. Claudia has been sharing her ideas and experiences with world language educators in different forums such as FLENEF (Foreign Language Educators of Northeast Florida), SCOLT (Southern Conference on Language Teaching), GWATFL Conference, FFLA (Florida Foreign Language Association), and others. She is also the FFLA TOY for 2021-2022. In addition, Claudia is the founder of the Growing Spanish Teacher Academy, a membership where Claudia supports Spanish teachers to build a strong comprehensible input based classroom.

How To Plan For A CI Driven Classroom

You love to create lesson plans that provide comprehensible-input to your students and support their proficiency journey but you don’t want to spend countless hours doing that. In this session, I will share with you how to craft an impactful lesson plans that provide a ton of CI to your learners while cultivating cultural competence.

Scott Benedict has been teaching with comprehensible input since 2001. He has taught high school for 12 years and has taught at an IB middle school for the past 9 years outside of Sacramento, CA. He has been presenting both in-person and online since 2008 having given hundreds of webinars, and presented dozens of workshops and conferences including Agen, NTPRS, iFLT, The Multicultural Conference, Comprehensible Online, among others. He has also presented for a variety of school districts across the US. He is the creator of the first completely online CI conference Comprehensible Online for 3 years and has started the COMPREHENDED! Conference.

In his free time, he likes spending time with family, hanging with his 3 dogs, traveling, and doing photography.

Proficiency vs Performance Assessments

There are two types of assessments we can do in our classroom outside of simple pencil and paper quizzes and exams: proficiency-based and performance-based. What’s the difference? And why is one so much better than the other for both teachers and students? You’ll find out in this session!

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 she 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!! And Mosca en leche. Visit her at margaritaperezgarcia.com

Teaching level 1 novels through parallel stories

This session is for those teachers who work with beginners language learners that they see once or twice a week and who want to use level 1 novels but don’t know where to start. With concrete examples, we will look at how to teach a novel easily while creating more reading materials with our students using a combination of StoryListening with parallel stories.

Haiyun 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.

Adriana Ramírez is a Spanish teacher, author and teacher trainer. She teaches all levels of Spanish, from beginners to IB students, using comprehensible input methodologies. She is constantly coaching other teachers and presenting workshops 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. She has a big passion for sharing with the world the beauty of her country and her people, and 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 at @veganadri (Twitter and Instagram), adrianaramirez.ca, and her YouTube channel: ‘Teaching Spanish with Comprehensible Input.’

Decolonizing our Language Classrooms – First Steps in the Process

Education is a political act. We are either in favour of the status quo or against it. What are we doing as world language educators to disrupt those practices that perpetuate inequalities? How can we make our language classes more inclusive while respecting interculturality?

In this workshop we will talk about what decolonizing means and how this could look like in our language classes. We will talk about history, colonization, today’s ways of colonization, and ways to start a decolonizing process in our language classes.

Dr. Karen Lichtman is Associate Professor of Spanish Linguistics and Director of Educator Licensure in the Department of World Languages & Cultures at Northern Illinois University. 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. She also contributed the research compilation to Fluency Through TPR Storytelling, by Blaine Ray and Contee Seely.

Research soundbites to motivate your students

Ten years of research on TPRS, distilled into slides you can actually share with your students to motivate them to trust comprehension-based learning… or use to advocate for your curriculum with administrators and colleagues!

Martina Bex is the Founder of The Comprehensible Classroom, whose curricula and training materials have been helping language teachers implement proficiency oriented, comprehension based language programs with confidence since 2010. Martina is internationally recognized for her leadership and expertise in the world language teaching profession as a teacher trainer and curriculum developer. A Spanish teacher by trade with experience in public and private schools and at the university level, Martina balances her work for The Comprehensible Classroom with homeschooling her five children.

Martina has been published in The Language Educator and presents regularly at state, regional and national conferences in addition to consulting with individual districts and organizations. Her newest project for supporting teachers is the Garbanzo App, an interactive library of stories in Spanish designed specifically with language classes in mind.

Assessment for Acquisition

As teachers transition to a Comprehension-Based, Proficiency-Oriented model for teaching language, they need assessments that accurately reflect what their students can do. In this workshop, the presenter will share easily adaptable assessment formats for Reading, Writing, Speaking, and Listening.

Backward Planning Song Lyrics / Using Current Events As Story Starters / Afro-Latin Americans and the Harlem Renaissance

Compelling Culture: How to make most culture topics understandable to novice learners by simplifying the language.

John Bracey has been a Latin teacher in Massachusetts since 2010. He currently teaches at Belmont High School in Belmont MA. He has a BA in Classics from University of Massachusetts Amherst and an MA from Boston College. He has taught Latin exclusively using Comprehensible Input methodology 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. He has become widely known in the Classics profession through several publications in Eidolon dealing with race and teaching Latin. He was a contributor to the recent Diversity and Inclusion in the Latin Classroom online series from Cambridge University Press. He is also working with the Comprehensible Classroom on creating the Latin curriculum SUMUS.

CI in Survival Mode: Strategies for the most difficult years

Last was hard. This year was even harder. I can show you practical strategies for making next year much easier. In the session, participants will learn how to provide input in a way that matches the challenges of the current moment. You can do this, I can help you.

Abdel Kader Khila is a native of Morocco. He holds a bachelor degree in Hospitality management from l’Institut Supérieur International du Tourisme, in Tangier, Morocco. Abdel Kader was hired by the Walt Disney World company in 1997 as a Cultural Representative. He then moved to Pittsburgh in 1999, and subsequently embarked on a career as a chef. Abdel Kader worked as a chef for many years in various ethnic restaurants around Pittsburgh. He ultimately decided to switch careers in 2005 and pursue his dream of becoming a teacher. Abdel Kader 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, Middle School Mathematics, and ESL. Abdel Kader 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. Abdel Kader 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. Abdel Kader loves to spend time with his kids, Maria 14 and Adam 12. He also enjoys cooking, cycling, bikepacking, playing soccer, traveling, and exploring other cultures. His passion for cooking led him to opening the first of his two Moroccan restaurants while teaching full time. He opened his second restaurant in 2018. Abdel Kader no longer owns any restaurants and does not plan on opening another restaurant anytime soon 🙂

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.”

Double Polls—My Absolute Favorite Way to Guide Conversations with Any Level of Learners

Maybe you already poll your students on their preferences as a way to get conversation going. But do you Double Poll them? Come learn this tweak of class surveys that can make any topic more interesting and lead to many more—and more compelling—conversations.

As a Black male teacher of 13 years and a Black male lifelong student, Ben Tinsley has dedicated his professional and personal life to the pursuit of substantive diversity, equity, and inclusion. In the classroom, he has had the opportunity to work with teachers around the world to develop curriculum that centers Black and Brown voices in the Francophone world.

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

Leveraging History & Geography to Center Black and Brown Identities Through Comprehensible & Compelling Input

Attendees will take away concrete practices to foster student intercultural proficiency using CI methods. Teachers will be able to center the voices of the African diaspora, as well as indigenous peoples and other historically marginalized identities in ways that are accessible at any level.

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 Communities Transformation Through Acquisition Driven Instruction & Jamboard for World Language Teachers. 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.

Making Magic with Songs as Authentic Resources in the CI Classroom

Songs are powerful authentic resources in our CI classroom! Find a song and transform it to an engaging acquisition experience for your students. Discover new ways to connect your learners to the target culture through leading students to discover new artists, making lyrics comprehensible, and providing interactive acquisition driven activities.

Participants will examine three engaging strategies to facilitate a meaningful connection with music in the target language from the target culture.

John Sifert has been a Spanish teacher in Iowa and Texas for the past 24 years. His focus in the classroom is to provide comprehensible input through stories, novels, and song. He is also passionate about teaching students about life-long skills such as perseverance, respect, and kindness.

John creates a variety of classroom materials and is the author of La isla más peligrosa, La decisión más peligrosa, Seis nombres, L’isola più pericolosa del mondo, with several other novels in the works.

Nothing is more important than family, so when not focused on language acquisition, John spends all his free time with his wife and 5 children in the tiny, (but amazing) town of Belmond, Iowa.

“World language teachers teach the world more than language.”

Using Readlang.com for Presenting Music in the Classroom

This will be a demonstration on how to use the website readlang.com to help present music and music videos as comprehensible input. Discussion can expand on other methods of using music in the classroom. Presentation will be in English with examples in Spanish, but useful for any language.

Bryce Hedstrom has taught at the K-College levels for more than 30 years. He now trains teachers full time. He loves teaching.

You Can Develop and Maintain a Successful FVR Program

Avoid false starts with your free voluntary reading program, and even if it has flopped, you can get it back on track with these fast and effective techniques. Bryce will steer you to practices and products that will make it work. He’s had his students reading avidly for years and now he observes and coaches teachers. He knows a lot because he’s seen a lot. You’ll get the help you need here.

Carla Tarini lived in Nice, France for several years after college and has been teaching French to students of various ages ever since. She discovered teaching with Comprehensible Input 10 years ago and became a CI presenter, coach, and trainer. Carla has written hundreds of short, engaging, comprehensible stories for her students. Her first published series, Qui Parle Français?, introduces readers to French speakers from across the globe. She is currently working on another non-fiction series, À Quoi je pense? which will also be available in Spanish, En Qué estoy pensando?

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

In this session, Dahiana Castro and Carla Tarini will show you how they 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 forthcoming series, À Quoi je pense? / En Qué estoy pensando? however, teachers can easily follow the format in class based on our demo. In English with examples in Spanish and French.

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 she 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!! And Mosca en leche. Visit her at margaritaperezgarcia.com

Celebrating indigenous voices in the language classroom

This session is for teachers who want to celebrate indigenous voices by using indigenous narratives and legends as sources of accessible reading material and mentor texts in narrative writing.

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 Communities Transformation Through Acquisition Driven Instruction & Jamboard for World Language Teachers. 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.

Sustainable Feedback in the CI Classroom

Feedback is a gift that leads to growth and student agency. Such gift in the language classroom must be given in an empowering way and received with appreciation. Feedback can also be daunting to the instructor, but it does’t have to be. By empowering learners to effectively self-reflect & provide peer feedback, feedback becomes more meaningful to learners, but learners must be taught to provide quality feedback as well as to receive it with appreciation. In this session, participants will be invited to challenge their perspectives on feedback by exploring highly three practical strategies to introduce feedback & to facilitate effective and engaging self reflection & peer feedback classroom experiences.

John Sifert has been a Spanish teacher in Iowa and Texas for the past 24 years. His focus in the classroom is to provide comprehensible input through stories, novels, and song. He is also passionate about teaching students about life-long skills such as perseverance, respect, and kindness.

John creates a variety of classroom materials and is the author of La isla más peligrosa, La decisión más peligrosa, Seis nombres, L’isola più pericolosa del mondo, with several other novels in the works.

Nothing is more important than family, so when not focused on language acquisition, John spends all his free time with his wife and 5 children in the tiny, (but amazing) town of Belmond, Iowa.

“World language teachers teach the world more than language.”

Making a Song Last a Week

This presentation will show how to use activities to make a single song last for an entire week of input. Since it is only a 15 minute session, it will not discuss the justification of why songs are an important addition to CI instruction, but will get straight to how to add songs into your curriculum. Presentation will be in English with examples in Spanish, but useful for any language.

Bryce Hedstrom has taught at the K-College levels for more than 30 years. He now trains teachers full time. He loves teaching.

What?! C.I. and Grammar?

Why, how, and when to teach grammar in a C.I. classroom is always in the back of your mind. Years of experimentation, observation, discussion and coaching of teachers have given Bryce insight into what works and why when it comes to grammar instruction. You’ll find out his secrets in this fast-paced session. Hold on tight, we’re going to move quickly! It’s Ok, though because you can re-watch it and get those tidbits you might miss.

Carla Tarini lived in Nice, France for several years after college and has been teaching French to students of various ages ever since. She discovered teaching with Comprehensible Input 10 years ago and became a CI presenter, coach, and trainer. Carla has written hundreds of short, engaging, comprehensible stories for her students. Her first published series, Qui Parle Français?, introduces readers to French speakers from across the globe. She is currently working on another non-fiction series, À Quoi je pense? which will also be available in Spanish, En Qué estoy pensando?

Qui Parle français? — Incorporating the series in your lower level classes

In this session, Carla Tarini, will share some dynamic yet low-prep ways of including the figures of the Qui Parle français? series into your lower level curriculum. Activities described include twists on several CI favorites, such as 3-ring circus, passwords, and listen & draw. If time, she will also share a template that can be used first for scaffolded writing which then can be turned into a dynamic listening/reading/grabbing/rejoinder game! In French and English.

Karen Rowan is a published author and speaker on teaching and learning languages.

She began teaching Spanish using Comprehension-Based Methods in 1996 while teaching high school Spanish.   For more than 20 years she has trained teachers all over the world, including three years training English teachers in the Turkish military.

​She has taught students in elementary school, middle school, high school and college as well as adults using methods like TPR Storytelling, Total Physical Response and Reader’s Theater.

​She is the author of Las aventuras de Isabela, a short novel for language learners set in Guanajuato, Mexico. It has been translated into English, Spanish, Russian and Italian.

​The second book in the series, Isabela captura un congo, expands on the basic vocabulary in the first book and is set in Playa Hermosa, Costa Rica. The story explores the problems facing howler monkeys as more and more people move to Costa Rica. It has been translated into French and English.

​Carl no quiere ir a México is also set in Guanajuato, Mexico. It tells the story of a young boy whose mother decides they are moving to México for a year.

​Don Quijote: El último caballero is a simplified version of The Quixote. Half in past tense and half in present, it tells entertaining, well-known tales like Don Quijote and Sancho Panza attacking the windmills. It has been translated into English, French and Latin.

​Her newest reader, El callejón del beso, is based on a legend from Mexico. It uses more complex grammatical structures and vocabulary.

Her book for teachers The Fluency Fast Guide to Self-Coaching is available as a download on this site.  In July of 2019 Reader’s Theater for the World Language Classroom was published through Teacher’s Discovery.

​Karen has been the editor of IJFLT, The International Journal of Foreign Language Teaching, since 2004. She is also the author of the TPR Storytelling ancillaries for Pearson/Prentice Hall’s Paso a paso and Realidades textbooks.

Karen serves on the founding board of the ACTFL Special Interest Group Comprehension-based Communicative Language Teaching, the largest SIG in ACTFL, with Dr. Bill VanPatten, Diane Neubauer and Jason Fritze.  She is also the founder and administrator of the IFLT / NTPRS / CI Teaching Facebook Professional Learning Community of 11,000 teachers.  She is the recipient of the 40 under 40 Business Award for the State of Colorado and the Colorado Congress of Foreign Language Teachers Lynn Sandstedt Program Leadership Award in 2018.

​Her presentations and teaching are based on the work of Dr. Stephen Krashen and Blaine Ray, inventors of TPRS.  She created the original Coaching workshops within the National TPRS Conference (2000-present) and was the director of NTPRS for 5 years.   In 2008 he was one of the founding members of the International Forum on Language Teaching, IFLT, (2009-present).    In July 2019 she was the keynote speaker at the Agen Conference in Agen, France.  She presents inservices on TPR Storytelling, Comprehension-Based Methods, Reader’s Theater, Self-Coaching for teachers, Storytelling and Personalization.  Her school district inservices range from one day through two semesters of training, curriculum development and -in class demonstrations and coaching.

Online webinars at Fluency Fast include:

• How to Write a CI Novel, Personalization, Self-Coaching and Reader’s Theater
• Beginning and Intermediate Spanish Classes for Adults

To hire Karen to teach a language class or present a school district inservice or present at a state, national or international conference, email mailtp:[email protected] for prices and availability or call 719-633-6000