Growing With Proficiency The Podcast
Welcome to Growing With Proficiency: The Podcast! Are you a World Language teacher who is looking for ideas, strategies, activities, and inspiration to create a World Language class where you and your students enjoy using the language to learn about the world and each other? Do you want to transform your class into an acquisition-driven instruction space where you intentionally provide a ton of comprehensible input? If you are, you're in the right place. Let's start this journey together. Head over to IG, and send me a DM @claudiamelliott to let me know what topics you would like me to cover in an upcoming episode.Join my free Facebook community, Growing With C. Also, check out my blog to start discovering some of these ideas and strategies at growingwithproficiency.com
Episodes
Have you ever started a story with your students and felt like everything was going beautifully until you noticed the glazed expressions, delayed responses, and side conversations beginning?
It is easy to assume the story is boring or that students simply do not care. But a drop in engagement does not necessarily mean the story failed.
In this episode, I sit down with world language educator, author, and presenter Eri...
What if challenging student behavior is not always simply a discipline problem—but sometimes a sign of overwhelm, anxiety, or disconnection?
In Episode 202 of Growing With Proficiency: The Podcast, I’m joined by French teacher and teacher educator Hélène Colinet to explore classroom management through the lens of nervous system regulation.
This conversation is not about excusing behavior or removing bounda...
El regreso al aula viene acompañado de muchas ideas, actividades guardadas, screenshots, recursos y recomendaciones. Pero tener más actividades no siempre significa sentirnos más preparados.
En este episodio de Growing With Proficiency: The Podcast en español, comparto cuatro ideas fundamentales inspiradas en las sesiones de nuestra Conferencia de Verano dentro de Growing With Proficiency: The Spanish Teacher Academy...
We all want students to participate. We want them to raise their hands, share their ideas, react, ask questions, and bring that energy that makes a classroom feel alive.
But what happens when they don’t?
It is easy to assume that the activity is not working, that students are not motivated, or even that we are doing something wrong.
In this special 200th episode of Growing With Proficiency: The Podcast, I sit dow...
Planning the first week of school can feel overwhelming—especially when you have a phone full of saved ideas, conference notes, activities, and resources you want to try. But a successful first week is not about doing everything. It is about choosing what will help you build the classroom you want to sustain all year.
In This Episode, you will learn:
- Why more activities do not always create a better first we...
What if the reason your class feels hard to sustain is not because your activities are wrong, but because they are standing alone?
In this episode of Growing With Proficiency The Podcast, I’m talking about routines that support language acquisition—not classroom procedures like entering the room or turning in papers, but pedagogical routines that create the spaces our students need again and again.
We&rsqu...
En este episodio en español de Growing With Proficiency, converso con tres profes de nuestra comunidad de Growing With Proficiency: The Spanish Teacher Academy: Ángela Johnson, Mariem Silva y Audrey Ramírez. Aunque enseñan en contextos muy diferentes, las tres comparten cómo han transformado sus clases al entender mejor la adquisición de la lengua y al crear clases más comprensibles, comunicativas, culturales y sost...
What if some of the most common beliefs about language teaching are actually getting in the way of acquisition?
In this special episode of Growing With Proficiency, I sit down with Dr. Bill VanPatten for a powerful conversation originally livestreamed in the IFLT Facebook group as part of CI Reboot.
Dr. VanPatten helps us unpack two foundational myths about second language acquisition: the idea that learners internali...
Have you ever looked at your students and wondered:
"Why aren't they communicating in the language?"
In this special episode of Growing With Proficiency, the tables are turned as my friend and fellow educator, Bethanie Carlson Drew, steps in as host and interviews me about my journey from lawyer to language teacher, the challenges that transformed my classroom, and the lessons I've learned along the way.
Together, we e...
At the end of every school year, I ask my students one question:
What activity or strategy helped you grow the most in Spanish this year?
This year, their answers surprised me.
Some students chose Daily Personal Questions. Others selected Silent Sustained Reading. Some preferred podcasts, cultural articles, Calendar Talk, Star Student Interviews, content-based units, or creating stories.
What stood out most?
Nobody agree...
What actually helped students learn this year?
As language teachers, it's easy to spend our end-of-year reflection focused on what didn't work. In Episode 191, I shared some of the challenges I faced this year. In Episode 192, I reflected on behavior, classroom culture, relationships, expectations, and the lessons I learned from a particularly challenging freshman class.
But reflection isn't only about identifying pro...
¿Tus estudiantes conocen las expectativas de tu clase, pero aun así siguen apareciendo interrupciones, conversaciones paralelas o dificultades para mantener la atención?
En este episodio comparto tres lecciones sobre comportamiento que aprendí este año después de reflexionar sobre mis clases, analizar las encuestas de mis estudiantes y observar los desafíos que surgieron incluso en grupos donde existían buenas relaci...
As language teachers, we love sharing strategies that work. But what about the strategies that suddenly stop working? What happens when activities that worked for years begin falling apart, student engagement drops, and classroom dynamics feel different than before?
In this honest end-of-the-year reflection, I’m sharing what did NOT work in my Spanish classroom this year, and the important lessons I learned abo...
You see a 60-second classroom video on social media. Students are engaged, speaking, producing. And you go straight to: "That is not happening in my class. Something is wrong with me."
But you're missing the other 44 minutes — the class size, the school, the context behind that clip.
In this episode, Claudia sits down with world language teacher Dahiana Castro to talk about something our profession doesn't say e...
If you’ve ever wanted your students to feel genuinely excited before reading a novel or watching a movie in class, this episode is for you.
In this conversation, I sit down with Rita Barrett, an outstanding Spansih teacher, to talk about the Tea Party strategy, an engaging pre-reading activity where students become characters from the story before they even begin reading.
Students walk around the room meeting ot...
Feeling exhausted trying to keep students engaged at the end of the school year? 😅
In this re-released episode of Growing With Proficiency: The Podcast, Claudia Elliott shares three powerful low-prep strategies that help world language teachers create communicative, comprehensible, and sustainable lessons without spending hours planning.
If you need great strategies to keep students interacting and using the language...
At this point in the year, many of us are feeling it. Students are distracted, energy is low, and if we say “read,” suddenly half the class needs the bathroom.
In this episode, I’m sharing a simple sequence I use to turn any reading into an engaging station-based lesson that keeps students reading, moving, and participating without creating more work for you.
Whether you’re using a Cinco de May...
Are you looking for an interactive and engaging activity to boost your students' participation and build a strong classroom community at the end of the school year? In this episode of "Growing With Proficiency, the podcast," we explore a unique twist on the popular Card Talk activity that my students absolutely loved!
In this activity, I’ll share with you how to turn the simple drawings our students do in card ...
The end of the school year can feel chaotic: testing, low energy, and unpredictable schedules. So what do you actually do with your students during those final weeks?
In this episode of Growing With Proficiency, I sit down with Allison Wienhold (Mis Clases Locas) to share simple, low-prep end-of-year activities for world language classes that keep students engaged without burning you out.
We talk about how to ba...
Profe ¿te ha pasado esto? Haces una pregunta… y recibes respuestas de una palabra. O silencio. O miradas de “no sé qué decir”. Y tú estás ahí pensando: pero si esto debería ser comunicación… ¿por qué no se siente así?
Porque muchas veces no es que tus estudiantes no quieran hablar o que no puedan, es que no tienen una razón real para hacerlo.
En esta conversación me siento c...
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