I spent my day brushing up on my French and Spanish alongside the students in Zaya DeNardo's classes.

 Zaya, fluent in both French and Spanish, taught her classes in the BGenius lab to demonstrate some of the vocabulary strategies she presented at our Institute Day.  In turn, this gave staff members the opportunity to see those strategies in action--it is this ongoing stream of targeted professional development that truly excites us here in the BGenius lab.

But I learned more than just the various ways to ask for a hotel room when in Paris.  Because whenever I watch world language teachers, I am reminded of what masters they are at formative assessment.   Zaya prompts paired off students to translate  a sentence on the screen, circulating the room as they do so, correcting when necessary.  With only ten seconds to respond, students get right to work, stopping when Zaya shakes a maraca.  If a common error presents itself, she stops the class and works through the issue with them.  They spend the whole period speaking, listening, reading and writing, with Zaya asking students to justify their responses to practice multiple choice responses.  There isn't a moment of class wasted; students are engaged throughout the period.



Looking back at my own days  as a  student, I remember that I was never more tired than when I left two classes:  dance and Spanish.  In both cases, my brain had been stretched, my synapses firing on all cylinders.  Now working so closely with the World Language teachers, I'm convinced it's because they have their hands in the skills at all times--like a dance class, the class revolves around supervised rigorous practice.   What's more, when it comes time to perform, students are more than ready.  No doubt, it's because Zaya  and her colleagues have set the stage for success.