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Cultivating a communicative, comfortable, creative classroom
I am Kelly Blake Karstrand, a French teacher with 20+ years experience in a Chicagoland high school. Transforming my classroom to a communicative, comfortable and creative environment has totally invigorated my teaching. I hope to share here what I have done and what I continue to do so you too can reignite your passion for teaching World Languages.
What can I help you with?
Available to consult on thematic, global unit planning and to facilitate workshops in your school and district. Contact me to see how I can help you best.
Taking the path to proficiency.
Maybe it was turning 50. Maybe it was hitting the 20 year mark in my profession. Maybe it was my own children starting high school and giving me more free time. Maybe it was that I couldn’t hear one more parent tell me, “I took 4 years of French in high school and I can’t remember a thing”. Maybe it was looking at my students and knowing I could do better…do more…be more. Maybe it was a combination of all of the above. All I know is that something made me start this quest to make my classroom more communicative, more comfortable, more creative. I hit the reset button and I hit it hard.
I have always been a dedicated, hard-working teacher. But like so many world language teachers before me, I realized I wasn’t actually producing SPEAKERS of the language. I was producing conjugators, fill-in-the-blankers and vocabulary listers. My memorizers excelled and continued French for 4 years. My less motivated or less studious learners dropped out, even though they loved French. Something was obviously not working.
With a few of the awesome and talented colleagues in my department, we set out to learn how to better prepare our students to learn a language. We read, we researched and we discussed. And then we set fire to our old curriculum! Our new plan included emphasizing communication, downsizing vocabulary lists, using authentic resources, and above all else, guiding our students to love language learning. (Huge shout out to my fellow lead teachers-Karen, Juanita and Lori! I could not have done it without you.)
The last couple of years have been the most rewarding of my career. I have learned so much and continue to learn. My students have been wildly successful. I mean ALL of my students are succeeding- my academically talented students , my students that tend to not do well in school, my students who have no idea about parts of speech, my special needs students. And you know what they are all doing? SPEAKING FRENCH!! Really, isn’t that our goal as language teachers?
Recent Blog Posts
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Missing the 1st day of school: Guessing vocab sub plan
Salut! I can’t believe it’s almost time for school to start again! How in the world did we get to August 1st already? This year, I need to miss the…
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Play-Doh Vocabulary
I have been hard at work coming up with new ways to introduce vocabulary in the classroom. In the past, I would introduce vocabulary with a PowerPoint presentation. I would…
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PBL for AP Global Challenges
A couple of years ago, I started to do some research on how the brain learns. My two biggest take-aways were that the brain gets energized by social learning and…
Tesimonials
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Engaging, high energy presenter with applicable experience and steps to demonstrate how to move curriculum towards ideal.
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This is the best presentation I have seen in years!
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There are so many ideas to implement in the classroom! Kelly is an outstanding presenter!
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I came to your presentation yesterday. I love what you do with your students. You are an amazing teacher.