It’s normal to feel some anxiety around the idea of starting out with a new group of students in a virtual classroom. Whether you’re teaching a synchronous, asynchronous or hybrid class this Fall, it’s important to set the tone and create a positive learning environment even if that environment is completely online. Many of our practices that encourage success and empathy in the classroom can be slightly tweaked or adjusted to have the same effect in the virtual classroom.

In the context of teaching a second language, input refers to what a learner hears and processes in the target language. The importance of input in the language classroom and as an important part of language acquisition was developed and popularized by a linguist called Stephen Krashen. Krashen’s input hypothesis is a key part of a theory of second language acquisition that also includes five other hypotheses. According to Krashen, input is a necessary part of second language acquisition, but only if used correctly.

Type of activity: Communicative task Time: 10-15 min. Resources: 1 chart per student (pdf below) Person BINGO is a quick activity to get students talking to each other, forming questions, and practicing descriptive adjectives. Make sure that in a previous lesson or homework students have gone over the definitions of all the vocab words used and have learned the conjugations of “to be” verb (SER). Everyone will have a sheet of paper with different adjectives on it in a chart.