Sunday night is homework night, right? Not for you. You’ve used recording devices to answer a prompt. You’ve started using Extempore to gather students’ opinions on a video, or poem, or story. What you probably have not thought of is how you can get your students to practice an entire conversation from home while you[…]
A big part of what makes us effective teachers is staying up to date on what’s going on in our profession. We do this for many reasons: to help our students learn better, to build a supportive network of colleagues, to get that minuscule pay raise at review time… But there is another, better reason[…]
Time. Time is a teacher’s most precious commodity. We literally never have enough of it and are always, ALWAYS asking for more. We need time to plan lessons, collaborate with staff, grade homework, and even observe students practice and utilize the skills and strategies we teach. As a previous elementary classroom teacher, I can tell[…]
If your students were dropped into the target language environment by themselves right at this second, what could they do? Could they survive with more than just primitive hand signals? “Freewrite” and “freetalk” assignments give you those answers. These tasks allow students to show what they can do in the target language with no (okay,[...]
Posted on 2021-01-04 by Grant Castner
So simple yet often overlooked, reading out loud (‘oral reading’ in academic parlance) carries countless benefits for learners of second languages.
Posted on 2020-12-14 by Grant Castner
Part I – Overview Extempore, The Speaking Practice App, that’s us. On Extempore, flexible features can help you craft immaculate assessments and extra speaking opportunities for your students. It’s also a solution for a plethora of needs in the language class, including real-world tasks, simple end of class exit tickets, as well as graded summative[...]
Posted on 2020-12-04 by Grant Castner
