Christa Holland-Anderson is a 6th grade Spanish immersion teacher at Holland Language Academy. In this teacher feature, addalingua’s Stephanie Irizarry asks Maestra Holland-Anderson to describe her journey to Holland Language Academy, the strategies she uses to grow her proficiency in the Spanish language, and how she works to motivate her students and encourage correct use of the Spanish language.

Maestra Holland-Anderson has some great instructional ideas for dual language
immersion teachers. We won’t give all her ideas away in this post (listen to the podcast!), but here area  few ideas worth trying:

making mornings meaningful with questions

Start the day with a pair of questions and then have the students bring you the answer. Some of her favorite questions include:

• “Today I’m going to learn ______.”
• “I want my teacher to know______.”
• “My goal for today is_____.”

keep building your language proficiency

Maestra Holland-Anderson’s go-to podcast to help build her language proficiency, and (when appropriate) share with her students: Radio Ambulante.

if you want to be an immersion teacher someday…

1. get into immersion classrooms, see what model resonates with your values and beliefs
2. develop your Spanish language proficiency to work/function and flourish in an immersion setting
3. work to make sure students understand the impact of knowing two languages because their teacher understands the impact as well

February 28, 2017