2019 Alaska Cross Content Conference

A hands-on session where teachers will need to actually complete the escape room activity. I have created escape rooms for my German classes this year, and teachers will learn by doing in this session. The escape room model builds community and team work, and makes students think and use all of their intelligences. It is fun and keeps interest in your language high.  

We explore how the use of the Manie Musicale, a song-based competition modeled after March Madness in basketball, creates opportunities for students to connect with the language and culture. There are a variety of ways in which this competition can be integrated into the World Language classroom. We will share the types of activities we have used and ideas for establishing your own competition for your students. 

How can teachers start speaking in the target language with students from the very first day? With the Special Person Interview, students are immersed in language and can start learning about one another right away.  We will cover the basics of the Special Person Interview, share videos from the university and possibly elementary classrooms, and offer a demo in Russian. 

Join for a variety of activities to use to include authentic commercials and music videos from your own target language. I will share the resources that stemmed from my Werbmeisterschaft week, in which I pitted five years of commercials from a German grocery store against its Swiss counterpart inspired by the March Madness Musical challenge.  I will share different ideas of how to incorporate the commercials and different activities I devised, as well as the tricks/format I used for different styles. I will also extend this to use with music videos to incorporate more music in the classroom. This is very much a "Grab & Go" variety show of different activities, some basic, others novel. The idea is to get them all in one place to draw on when creating activities.
Presentation via Google Docs at: https://drive.google.com/file/d/198Q8sDBMDVpo65bNjIuBpHyi9gQU7ZUx/view?usp=sharing

This presentation highlights the last several years of work of an indigenous language revitalization movement in Anchorage, with the development and implementation of a Yup’ik dual language immersion program, starting with kindergarten, within the Anchorage School District. The session examines how a 3-year U.S. Department of Education federal grant has allowed for the establishment of a Yup’ik immersion program in a K-12 public school setting, one of the first indigenous language immersion program in an urban U.S. public school system. This work showcases the rights of Indigenous peoples of Alaska while revitalizing an Alaska Native language in a public school system. With no guarantee of ongoing funding beyond the grant, this research looks at how local entities perceive the development and implementation of the program, and its language revitalization efforts, specifically researching overall community impact and sustainability. With 21 official indigenous languages in Alaska, this project is the first and only Alaska Native language immersion program within the Anchorage School District, the only true urban setting within Alaska. We are two years into a 3-year federal grant and have important updates and “lessons learned” to share since the initial grant application.

Join facilitators Svetlana Nuss and Christina Nuss for a roundtable symposium style meeting about the use of TPRS in the World Language Classroom. Conducted in English with Russian handouts. Everyone working with TPRS (all languages) welcome to attend.  This session will not be a demonstration, but will be held in a discussion format. 

Open to all AFLA registrants. Join us at Gallo's Mexican restaurant for dinner (on us) and drinks (on you)! Rachel Williams, Program Director of the Alaska World Affairs Council, will speak briefly.  Silent auction items will also be set out for bidding.  Come enjoy some good food and social time with your World Language colleagues.

Breakfast & Coffee (8:30-9:15)
Welcome & Announcements (9:15)
Keynote (9:30-10:30)

In the current educational climate, when world language programs are among the first to be eliminated amid growing budget crises, it is imperative, more than ever before, to retain students in the K-16 curriculum. Key to student retention is a clear path from the early days of language exploration and play to the demanding preparation for the AP curriculum and exam. Throughout this multi-year process, the role of the world language educator and the strategies for building proficiency and measuring success play a key role in student retention. If students see a clear path from elementary and middle-school programs, through high school to college language study, we, as a body of language and culture education professionals, are more likely to ensure the safety of our programs as well as the success of our students in the future.

In this talk, I will examine the role that articulation plays in program-building and student retention as well as how assessment figures into ensuring clear and transparent program articulation. By looking at our programs in terms of the broad K-16 spectrum and focusing our efforts on attracting, maintaining, and transitioning students from one level to the next, we can build programs that are viewed as crucial to the acquisition of 21st-century skills and the creation of global citizens

We both work in the German Immersion program at the Rilke Schule. Elizabeth works with 3rd and 4th grade students whose proficiency target ranges from Novice High to Intermediate Low. Sasha works with 6th grade students whose proficiency target ranges from Intermediate Mid to Intermediate High. We will focus on sharing strategies and techniques that we use for teaching Social Studies content, particularly history, in the target language. We both employ drama techniques and partner activities to enable students to imagine themselves as historical characters, and to promote proficiency across all four skills: listening, speaking, reading and writing. 

Chad Rice and Aaron Mitchell teach Spanish at Colony High School.  They have had a lot of fun over the years playing guitars and singing in class.  They use music teach basic skills, introduce cultural elements, and memorize declamation poems without being accomplished singers or players.  All of the songs are simple 2 or 3 chords that anyone, with a little practice, could learn.  Guitar playing is not the backbone of their curriculum or presentation style.  It is a tool that they and their students really enjoy.  The goal isn't to give people a song book (which only exists in their heads) or teach people to play the guitar. They hope this presentation can be the motivation someone needs to learn a new skill that can be a fun part of a world language classroom.

Travel offers unique opportunities for our students. Whether going through a travel company or establishing an an exchange, there is potential to offer students a way to connect to the language and culture beyond the confines of the classroom.  This session examines the benefits from different types of student travel along with what current research says about the actual impact of these experiences.

AFLA registrants have several options:
1. Alaska Chapter American Association of Teachers of German (AATG) business meeting. Room 3
2. Gather in Rooms 1 and 2 to eat your lunch with other World Language Teachers
3. Go explore a lunch option off campus!

Culturally connecting to students through Indigenous stories is powerful and urgent.  Indigenous as well as original, non-Indigenous stories, are combined with diversity positive language strategies in this workshop that shows teachers a way to access stories of relevance to students’ own histories and lived experiences. C.I. methods are the vehicle to deliver this content.  We use English (and some Japanese for modeling).  No language restrictions. This workshop focuses on a decolonized storytelling approach that is centered on compelling input.

Want to get students excited about reading, while improving their fluency? Join the Embedded Reading session for a quick review of the technique, a demonstration and tips for success.  Prepare to participate (and maybe even surprise yourself with newfound abilities). Demo language will be Russian.

This session will be an exploration of methods that I use at each language level to ensure that students are talking 30-50% of the time in every class period. It will be about setting up the environment, actual activities built into my German program, and exploring the progression of memorized sayings and songs, to debate and discussion. 

Reading is a key component of communicative competence and important to student success throughout the K-16 curriculum. But how can teachers best help their students develop good skills? Moving beyond the identification of facts, this session describes different strategies for working with reading texts by focusing on skills like summarizing, inference, and identifying tone and audience.

We will examine two main strategies for developing learners' abilities in reading. First, we will focus on identifying and formulating inference and tone questions, and second, we will use the "VISION" approach (Vocabulary, Identification, Summarizing, Interpretation, Organization, Nuances) for comprehending reading texts of all difficulty levels. Vocabulary activities help students recognize important terms and transition words and move them into working with the new lexical items. The identification of the content helps students recognize the main ideas of the text with supporting details. Summarizing activities require students to understand the content and relate it in their own words. Interpretation tasks move students beyond detail questions to examine the deeper message of the text, the audience, and tone. Organizing activities require students to describe how a text is constructed and why, while nuances tasks require students to use inference skills to identify points the author makes but does not explicitly state.

The acronym "VISION" helps teachers remember important phases in working with reading and provides students with an easy strategy for approaching unfamiliar texts. The model will help teachers prepare their students for Integrated Performance Assessments (IPAs) as well as the World Language AP exam, and they will receive tips on finding suitable authentic texts.

Sponsored by Avant Assessment and Vista Higher Learning.  AFLA's annual business meeting, organization elections, and awards.  Silent auction items out for final bidding!

1. Brunch 9:00-10:00
2. Round Table #1 10:00-10:45
3. Round Table #2 11:00-11:45

Join us for brunch followed by two roundtable sessions covering topics such as games in the WL classroom, travel abroad, tech tools, and more.  If you are inspired by one of the sessions you've attended and have a topic you'd like to discuss further during this time talk with AFLA president Elizabeth Dick.  We will have one 'open' session in each round available for this.