Discusses classroom assessment techniques (CATs), formative assessment tools that require knowledge of one's discipline and a clear desire to increase student learning. Examples are provided from a Spanish grammar and composition course. (Author/VWL)

Describes an activity for use in the Spanish as a foreign language classroom. The theme of the activity is focused around Paco the puppet's birthday. (Author/VWL)

Narratives of children from different Spanish-speaking backgrounds illustrate that children's atypical narrative performance may reflect individual or cultural differences. It is suggested that static assessments may not differentiate narrative differences from disorders. A dynamic assessment model to predict the child's true language learning…

Discussion of computer-based second-language learning focuses on a study of elementary school students in grades four through six who used a contextualized computer environment that was designed to provide precommunicative practice with Spanish. Highlights include student roles in small groups, cooperative learning, and the teacher's role.…

A sample of 15 eighth-grade Hispanic students in a bilingual classroom were used for a descriptive analysis of students' writing samples to compare their growth between pre- and post- writing samples in Spanish and English. This was accomplished by juxtaposing English and Spanish pre- and post-tests using the same holistic rubric developed by the…