5 Practical Takeaways from ACTFL 2024

This weekend hundreds of the world’s best and brightest language educators gathered in Philadelphia. With more than 40 options per hour, and topics ranging from integrating graphic novels to AI language labs, we engaged in discussions, presentations and roundtables about the art and craft of language teaching. 

This was my first opportunity to attend ACTFL, the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages, conference with thanks to the administration of The Leffell School, who value professional development at all levels, and invest in raising the bar of Hebrew education at our school. 

Here are 5 practical insights gleaned from the sessions I attended. None are Hebrew specific, and using any of these methodologies will necessarily be a process of experimentation and reflection to make it your own.   

1. “Surveys” — Print out the names of the students in the class on cards. On a flat surface post a question with three options. Students place their name card next to their answer. Example from ACTFL presenter Paz-Soldan — my family is big, small, medium. One can easily imagine the range of possible questions - favorite sport, ice cream flavor, holiday… this is a great low tech and low prep activity that is both community building and a way to bring students into the target language upon entering the room. Recapping or summarizing the results of the survey is an opportunity to use language in a real context. 
2. “Calendar talks”. An opportunity for students to share major events in their lives this month. The students practice using the names of the month in the target language numbers, and learn how to share relevant data. Children, especially young children, love birthdays, sharing when a grandparent is coming, or talking about an upcoming vacation. The teacher models describing the events and in retrospect is able to follow up on major events, games, and celebrations. This is community building and language education.
3. “Story asking” — Through this methodology within five minutes all the participants were able to retail a story in Russian. TPRS (Teaching Proficiency through Reading and Storytelling) has been in vogue for many years. This adaptation, of structuring input in the form of questions, helps students follow the extremely patterned and consistently structured story, always consisting of one character, one goal, one problem, three locations, and a happy ending. How many of our intermediate students are able to verbally retell a story of similar length? With frequency and practice one could imagine truly complex stories and grammatical forms, all delivered in a low anxiety format, somewhat reminiscent of an improv sketch. 
4. Categorization involving matching / identifying — before students produce paragraph link texts they can associate those building blocks to various subheadings. Imagine for instance, students in the intermediate, low level, reading sentences and physically placing them under the category winter spring, summer fall, things that are done at the mall versus at home, or at a lower level items found at home vs. school. Before students are able to compose beautiful and complex sentences, they can create interesting and relevant lists. Associating sentences with subheadings is a similar task. They don’t need to create, they only need to identify the gist. 
5. Make writing purposeful again. If students are writing a journal about what they did on the weekend someone other than the teacher should read it and respond to it. For in asking which mall they went to if they mentioned going to a mall or asking if they are good at skiing if they mention skiing. 

The net effect of implementing these elements into your classroom is more comprehensible, relevant, and interesting language comprehension and production. 

Thank you for reading, and good luck!

Respectfully,

Rabbi Mick Fine

Director of Hebrew and Judaic Studies

The Leffell School