Workshops for Language Teachers 
SUFFERING FROM TS ? (Teacher Slump)
NEED A COURSE MAKE-OVER OR TO GET RE-ENERGIZED?
SUE FENTON, an author, innovator, motivator, can help!
PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT IN-SERVICE SPEECHES CONFERENCES
"This presentation was by far the most beneficial foreign language workshop I have attended..." (continued below.)
"Contagious enthusiasm! Very inspirational! Tons of ideas...left me hungry for more, more, more!"
More endorsements and a BIO can be found below.
HOST A WORKSHOP!
FULL OF REALITY CHECKS, GREAT IDEAS, AND SPICED WITH HUMOR,THE WORKSHOPS ARE GETTING RAVE REVIEWS & GETTING TEACHERS EXCITED!
Professional Development budgets are dwindling. Host a workshop at your school or in your district and invite neighboring schools to attend. Everyone benefits and costs are kept to a minimum for everyone.
A WORKSHOP COULD PAY FOR ITSELF!
TWO OPTIONS:
1. Sponsored
The school or organization pays all fees; the participants do not pay a fee to attend.
2. Fund raising Events
Participants pay a fee and the sponsoring organization keeps the profits beyond the workshop fee any
travel expenses if applicable.
Include a copy of a book at a reduced price.
("Move Your Students to a World City," "Over 1,000 Conversation Starters," or "Power Talk.")
LENGTH:
5-hours (all-day)
3-hours (If you have less time; 2 hours mini-workshops are available if you are in driving distance of Hartford, CT.)
Current Workshop Topics for 2011-2012
• Lessons Dripping with Conversations (When your text is weak in speaking activities!)
Setting up a classroom for speaking. Strategies for maximizing communication for all students & using real world contexts. Ideas for how to create paired conversation situations to practice grammar and all language. Strategies for Individuals, pairs, or the whole class. Speaking is often the hardest skill - only because it's the least practiced one.
Students EXPECT to learn how to speak.
• Virtual Residence Language ™ 1 - Introduction and Set-up
Rationale, set-up, using the method with your text and curriculum. Making language more experiential, real, and relevant, based on speaking in real-world culture contexts.Plugging into the Internet to make language more visual and right brain.
• Virtual Residence Language ™ 2 - Setting Up Your Virtual Residence Language Course
A hands-on consulting workshop with sessions in a computer to get started. Teachers bring copies of their texts and curriculae and brainstorm with colleagues to organize chapter themes for a VRL course. In a computer lab (or they bring their notebooks) with my guidance they search the Internet for preliminary visuals to enhance their VRL courses and share them. Note: A VRL course does NOT require use of a computer lab. As long as there is a computer online in the classroom with either a SMART Board or projector,
VRL can be a reality!
• You Played a Song. Now What? (with a teachers’ song swap by language groups)
Multi-dimensional strategies to squeeze the potential out of songs. How to present songs to maximize their effectiveness. How to play a song differently in dozens of ways. Many examples of songs in French and Spanish.
IN THE WORKS!
• The Art of Brainstorming: Teaching Kids How to Get Past Obvious & Boring Ideas
Techniques and how brainstorming can get students and adults more in turn with their imaginations.
• Virtual Residence Language ™ - Paris: Internet Resources
To make your Paris residence simulation come alive. (Later for Madrid.)
• Humor in the French Classroom (Later for Spanish.)
• Songs for the French Classroom
• Speech: Speaking Gets a Promotion (& is separated from the other three skills.)
• Speech: How We Can Stop Writing Advocacy Letters
Stay tuned as the list of topics may be expanded. Suggestion on a related them? Contact Sue.
CONTACT Madame Fifi Publications for more information and fees.
ENDORSEMENTS
"This presentation was by far the most beneficial foreign language workshop I have attended. Sue Fenton gave us so many specific ways to transform the classroom and make the target language and culture real for the students. The workshop has made me excited about teaching Spanish again." Isabelle Barker, SC
"The resources are fantastic for classroom usage." James Capone, MA
I found this workshop to be excellent and very well organized. There were many spot on resources that are current and appropriate for all levels. Jeanne Arturi, Dept. Head, Pawling, NY
"Talk about energizing! Sue Fenton could probably light the whole city of New York for a year! Her ideas
will certainly power my classroom from now on." Amy E. Kuiken, MA
"Sue offers a wealth of ideas for how to bring language learning to life. The workshop promotes language acquisition instead of vocabulary memorization. Finally, a reason to learn another language - communication
vs regurgitation... The references are wonderful." Heather Barton, SC
"Contagious enthusiasm! Very inspirational! Tons of ideas...left me hungry for more, more, more!
Faith Branhall, SC
"I have so many ideas about how to engage my students without having to completely re-work the curriculum.
I am very excited about using Sue's ideas in my class." Ashley Bourne, MA
"Thanks for empowering me to be the best teacher I can be." Sally Barnes, WAFLE, NY
"Sue's workshop is the best developmental day we have had in years." Maria DiVirgilio, Wallingford, CT
"I believe all foreign language teachers should attend this workshop. I believe that these ideas will change my whole approach to my teaching of French. Thank, you, Sue." Teacher, SC (preferred to withhold name)
"Great workshop. Best at 'Reflections' in years. I am a firm believer in speaking in the classroom from day one in order not to make speaking the hardest task. Sue has given me so many ideas, and as a plus, they include culture."
Ben Coates, SC (uses "Over 1,000 Conversation Starters" in his AP workshop.)
SUE FENTON BIO NOTES
As an experienced teacher, Sue was known for her highly energized and creative classroom where her students were engaged and communicating in enjoyable ways. She taught French 1, 2, 3, and 4 AP and Spanish 1 for over 20 years. Her students placed into junior level French for majors at college, and as high as second semester. One student, as a college freshman, was chosen to be an intern at the French Embassy in Washington, D.C. Students placed 1st in the state on the National French Exam and ranked in the top 4 nationally. A former student received 800 on the French Exam, and her students received 3's to 5's on the French AP exam. But they didn't all just learn grammar. It was the daily speaking that she believed made her students comfortable with the language and motivated them.
AUTHOR-PUBLISHING
Sue's passion is getting students to talk and to make language REAL for them - not just memorizing words and endings for tests. She began writing books and materials for teaching when a colleague asked her 'How do you do it?" and because there were few materials available for speaking. She launched Madame Fifi Publications, and her materials have been sold in the major national catalogs in the US as well as in Canada for years. She has (2) language joke books published by McGraw-Hill.
SPEAKING: Sue has spoken at state, regional, and national conferences for many years and has given a conference keynote address. She has presented workshops for groups like: the New Jersey Association for Independent Schools, the TEC Consortium in MA; the University of South Carolina; FLANC of Northern CA; Education Service Center
Regional XV in San Angelo, TX and many other groups and school systems.
VIRTUAL RESIDENCE LANGUAGE ™
She has spent many summers living in Paris, and is responsible for dozens of students going to France, for teaching students how to backpack and sleep on overnight trains, and for personally coordinating many student exchanges. Wishing her course could bring students closer to Paris, Sue "moved" her students to Paris as the premise for her course. In time this was developed and trademarked as Virtual Residence Language,™ a new methodology for any language which is being used in more and more language programs around the country. All language in a teacher's current text is applied to culture contexts in the world city. (Based on "Move Your Students to a World City.")