Stacy Witkowski
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stacywitkowski.bsky.social
Stacy Witkowski
@stacywitkowski.bsky.social
700 followers 510 following 940 posts
Middle school Spanish teacher. Life long learner. She/her. 🏳️‍🌈 Looking for #langchat community.
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Reposted by Stacy Witkowski
languageboard.bsky.social
On the way to #ACTFL25! Come see us on Friday at 4:30pm in room 213 for “Cutting It Out: Curating Diverse Classroom Libraries.”
A photo of a bookshelf in a Spanish classroom shows a mixture of leveled readers and children’s books
November 20, 2025 at 7:33 PM
stacywitkowski.bsky.social
On p 256 is a rubric to assess ourselves. One of my glowing points is "I can identify patterns of errors and patterns of strength in student work in order to provide growth-oriented written corrective feedback." In fact, I did that today as I graded letters students had written.
#SLAyyy #LangChat
November 20, 2025 at 4:37 AM
stacywitkowski.bsky.social
On page 226, the authors write "You may have also noticed that this feedback is in English." WHAT? After admonishing us to teach grammar in the target language, now we're giving feedback in English? I mean, yeah, that's how *I* do it with my novices in levels 1 and 2.
#SLAyyy #LangChat
November 20, 2025 at 4:35 AM
stacywitkowski.bsky.social
If you're heading to #ACTFL25, I hope to see you there! In the podcast, I give the wrong time for my ACTFL presentation. I'll be presenting with Esme Mora and Kristi Lentz of @languageboard.bsky.social on Friday at 4:30 in room 213. Our topic: Curating Diverse and Inclusive Classroom Libraries.
November 20, 2025 at 4:34 AM
stacywitkowski.bsky.social
What an honor to be invited to the SLAyyy podcast with Ben and Bill. We had a lot to say about the book Teaching Grammar for Proficiency. It was fun hanging out and chatting with friends about something we are all passionate about -- becoming the best language teachers we can be.
November 20, 2025 at 4:30 AM
stacywitkowski.bsky.social
i am familiar with the idea of a 'glow and grow' comment bank for use by teachers. I have even used one occasionally. What i haven't done is put this in the hands of students to use for peer feedback. I will use it this week as students finish their letters to their pen pals.
#SLAyyy #LangChat
November 11, 2025 at 9:44 PM
stacywitkowski.bsky.social
Ooh this is brilliant!
November 11, 2025 at 8:51 PM
stacywitkowski.bsky.social
I’m a fan of Duolingo. I think it’s a good tool for language learners. I’ve spent 90% of my time on this app learning Korean, except for a few weeks spent learning Catalan and Hawaiian.
Graphic from Duolingo shows the iconic green owl transformed into an orange phoenix. Text says I’m on a 1500 day learning streak.
November 11, 2025 at 11:28 AM
stacywitkowski.bsky.social
This episode inspired me to use more TL than usual with my students today. It was good for them. It was good for me. It was only partially effective. 😅 But I got better at it as the day went on. 3rd hour stared at me blankly, but I gave 4th hour better scaffolding and we managed to communicate. 🙌
November 11, 2025 at 1:31 AM
stacywitkowski.bsky.social
My biggest TA is that I need to give students more structured opportunities to talk in Spanish. I HATED the information gap speaking activities that my textbook required, and they were one of the first things I dropped. But I hadn't found a way to replace them. Until now.

#SLAyyy #LangChat
November 10, 2025 at 2:36 AM
stacywitkowski.bsky.social
They say we shouldn't tell students our goal is to use certain grammar. I get that "Write a letter and ask 5Q in the preterite" is a bad task. But I think it's appropriate to say that one of our goals this unit is to be able to express things that happened in the past. Am I wrong?
#SLAyyy #LangChat
November 10, 2025 at 2:31 AM
stacywitkowski.bsky.social
I'm still struggling with the SCRAP and SPEAKING models of setting the stage for communication. "You are a student leader / traveler / camp counselor / etc." feel so FAKE to me. Didn't BVP talk about authentic contexts for communication? Do any of my mutuals remember?

#LangChat #SLAyyy
November 10, 2025 at 2:28 AM
stacywitkowski.bsky.social
Scaffolding: sentence starters, chat mats, and providing examples. I use these all regularly. I added a graphic organizer to my current unit on writing letters to pen pals. I started with it last Friday and will continue with it on Monday. It's working great!

#LangChat #SLAyyy
November 10, 2025 at 2:15 AM
stacywitkowski.bsky.social
On pages 210-211 the authors describe a Latin lesson that involves a storytelling game. My margin notes say "This is brilliant." I fully intend to use this game when I teach my storytelling unit to Spanish 2 in the third quarter of this year.

#LangChat #SLAyyy
November 10, 2025 at 2:09 AM
stacywitkowski.bsky.social
Ch. 6 describes a speaking task where students work in groups of 4 to talk, then the group chooses 1 student to share out to the whole class, and the whole class votes for the best 2 students. I could use this with Weekend Chat. Who had the most interesting/stressful/busy weekend?
#SLAyyy #LangChat
November 10, 2025 at 2:09 AM
stacywitkowski.bsky.social
I appreciated a deep dive into HOW, exactly, to format a lesson with a pre-task activity, a speaking task, and a post-task activity. I use chat mats regularly, but chapter 6 helped me see what to do before and after the turn-and-talk.

#LangChat #SLAyyy
November 10, 2025 at 2:02 AM
Reposted by Stacy Witkowski
earlymodernjohn.bsky.social
Strongly feel that adults learning a new language should be treated like babies doing the same thing. Look, I'm going through a developmental leap this week, so I'm just going to be more cranky, hungrier, cry a lot at night etc.
November 7, 2025 at 9:24 AM
Reposted by Stacy Witkowski
senoracmt.bsky.social
Will you be at ACTFL? I have so many freebies at booth 823!
November 5, 2025 at 1:10 AM
stacywitkowski.bsky.social
i haven't listened to this episode yet, but I want to give a shoutout to @senorwooly.com because as I was reading Ch.5 of the Grammar book, I got to the Interpretive Comprehension Tasks on p.139 and my notes say "Very useful. Señor Wooly is good at this."
November 4, 2025 at 12:09 AM
stacywitkowski.bsky.social
Very clear takeaways from this chapter. 1. Learners try to get meaning from content words (lexical items) before grammatical markers. 2. Learners pay more attention to what comes first in a sentence. Easy to use rules to make my input more valuable for students.
November 4, 2025 at 12:06 AM
stacywitkowski.bsky.social
On p. 142 the authors give a sample unit. The proficiency target is Intermediate Low. But the grammar focus is present tense verbs, third person singular. I was surprised because I thought that would be an early acquired structure. Shows I'm still partially back in the old days of textbook grammar.
November 4, 2025 at 12:03 AM
stacywitkowski.bsky.social
I do a good job of leading students from referential to affective questions (those are new terms to me, but the distinction is not). I.E., when I introduce a new form in Weekend Chat, I start with MY weekend, and my Qs let them show they understood. Later, I ask them to talk about THEIR weekends.
November 3, 2025 at 11:56 PM
stacywitkowski.bsky.social
"Learners pay more attention to what comes first in a sentence." This is clear and easy to implement. I can use this.
November 3, 2025 at 11:48 PM
stacywitkowski.bsky.social
I know I'm a week behind, but I've been sick. I had both a sinus infection and bronchitis. Dear teacher, please accept my homework late just this one time... 🙏

I really do enjoy reading this book, thinking about big ideas in teaching, and discussing them with you all.
November 3, 2025 at 11:45 PM
stacywitkowski.bsky.social
Creativity. I used to end each novel with a project that allowed for creativity. Kids love it, but honestly it's hard to scaffold, hard to grade, hard to keep them from using Google Translate and AI, and not great as far as language acquisition vs. time invested. But, KIDS LOVE IT. Time to revisit.
November 3, 2025 at 11:42 PM