Assembly Bill 185, Section 56 makes available funds for World Languages instructional materials, professional development, and multilingual books. For more information, please see the following information regarding the Arts, Music, and Instructional Materials Discretionary Block Grant.

Arts, Music, & Instructional Materials Discretionary Block Grant

Guidance to assist local educational agencies (LEAs) regarding Section 56 of Assembly Bill 185 (AB 185): The Arts, Music, and Instructional Materials Discretionary Block Grant.

Funding for local educational agencies to obtain standards-aligned professional development and instructional materials in specified areas, improve school culture, develop diverse and culturally relevant book collections, and other specified uses.

Make sure you're supported and let your admin know at your site that there's money!

CIEE is looking for a few teachers that can help coordinate for them across the world! Being a coordinator can be a great side hustle for teachers to earn some extra cash, travel the world, and help to connect their local community with cultures from across the world.

Coordinators typically:

• Are curious about other cultures

• Enjoy spending time encouraging and working with teenagers

• Want to share their community with other cultures

• Love to travel!

Coordinators are paid for their help and go on some pretty amazing trips! In the next 12 months CIEE will be going on trips to Costa Rica, Mexico, Iceland, and Italy!

This short video gives more information.

It isn’t much a time commitment, is really rewarding, and I bet you’d love the trips we go on! If you have any interest, please let me know. I’d love to hop on a call and tell you about it and answer questions!

How about some quick, fun games to play with your students in the target language! Let’s start with...

Who's telling the truth?

Have them fill out a survey telling something strange they did as a child. Choose several of those answers and display them on your board or presentation.

Call on 4 people in the class, including the person who wrote the sentence. You put the sentence in the chat.

They each read the sentence, acting as if they wrote it. You ask each person two questions, and they answer, acting as if they wrote it. Then the students type in the chat who they think is telling the truth, but the students wait to send until you say, "Send".

After they send, you ask each actor if they wrote the sentence to reveal the truth-teller. The actor with the most votes gets extra credit. The students who got it right get extra credit.

This is a great game to play with your upper levels, especially now with the fun Among Us game, students have to try to figure out who the imposter is! Here’s an example:

Example: When I was little, I used to hide in the kitchen cupboards.

Questions: Why did you hide in the cupboards? (asked to all actors)

How old were you when you hid in the cupboards? (asked to all actors)

Who knows you best?

Choose a volunteer and have them select a question to answer (#1-12).

The teacher asks the question, then all of the other students guess what the interviewee's answer is.

They type it in the chat but don't send it. When the teacher says "send", they send it.

The teacher then asks the interviewee to send their answer. Everyone who gets it right gets a point.

Here are some sample questions. You can adapt them to any level, any unit:

• What are you afraid of?

• Where do you like to go on vacation?

• What is it that makes you angry?

• What are you laughing at?

• Do you prefer to cycle, ride a horse, or drive?

• What do you prefer: doing the dishes, mowing the lawn, cleaning the bathroom, or vacuuming?

• At night, do you prefer to play a game, visit a relative, watch a movie, or read?

• Who would you like to be lost with on a desert island?

• Approximately how many pairs of shoes do you have?

• Which public transport do you prefer (plane, boat, train, bus, metro, etc.)?

• What is your favorite zoo animal?

• What is your favorite holiday: Christmas, Thanksgiving, New Year's Eve, Valentine's Day, Halloween, Easter, July 4th

Scavenger Hunt:

If you're online, ask students to find something that makes people happy/sad/frustrated etc and show it to the camera. Ask students to find something hard/soft/wet/round/square etc and show it to the camera. Great for all levels and another great way to start some fun, personalized discussions!