NYSAFLT Annual Conference 2024

Maximizing productivity is essential, and artificial intelligence is here to help language teachers! Discover how AI-powered tools can revolutionize content creation, save valuable time, and enhance effectiveness in the language classroom. Let’s unlock the potential of certain AI tools to save time and positively impact students' language learning journeys.

In the United States, approximately 3-4% of the population identifies as Deaf or Hard of Hearing, with a significant concentration in the Rochester Metropolitan area. The current shortage of certified ASL teachers poses a challenge to existing programs in New York State K-12 schools. This session will aim to explore the existing challenges with ASL teacher education and provide a platform for collaboration to identify solutions and to bridge the gaps. Participants will have the opportunity to engage in discussions to identify barriers and move towards improving ASL teacher education in order to pave the way for a more inclusive and supportive learning environment for Deaf and Hard of Hearing individuals.

Art is a great opportunity to provide loads of authentic, comprehensible input as well as providing cultural insight. Ideas will be shared on how to use art as a vehicle for vocabulary, grammar, themes and stories. The presenter will share ways to engage students cognitively with art to deliver comprehensible input, including how to use it to introduce and analyze cultural aspects.

Language influences how we perceive the world, how we interact and respond to it, and how we feel about it. Often in language classrooms we explore cultural products and practices, but we dedicate less attention to perspectives. This presentation will explore ways to integrate exploring the cultural perspectives tied to products and practices using the Universal Design for Learning framework.

Helping students stay in the TL often is to take a step back to build them up to grow their confidence. Layered Activities do that. Layered Activities sequence similar classroom tasks in a lesson, so the format and rules of the activity remain consistent, but the content expectations become progressively more complex.. The consistent format means students can focus on content, not instructions For those who attended last year's Stacked Activities, we have are new sequences

Standards Based Grading--a phrase we have been hearing a lot in education-- but what is it and how does it work? In this workshop we will explore what Standards Based grading is, why it is important to shift our grading practices in this way, and how we can do it easily and effectively. There will be examples of assessments, rubrics and feedback tools that will help you have a smooth and easy implementation with any grading platform you may use.

Standard 4 calls for students to uncover and explore perspectives behind the products and practices of communities that use the target language. How do we help students do this at any level? This session will explore the three Ps of Culture. We will work through a cultural comparison using the three Ps and using the same resource, we will explore activities for Checkpoints A, B, and C.