Practical Proficiency Podcast
Where world language teachers gather to transition to proficiency oriented instruction through comprehensible input. All through practical, real-life, teacher-friendly ideas that make teaching language more joyful! Hosted by Devon of La Libre Language Learning.
Practical Proficiency Podcast
Why a Simple “Password” Can Transform Your World Language Class
What if a 10-second ritual at your classroom door could boost target-language use, cut awkward silence, and build community—all at once? We walk through the “student password” routine step-by-step, from the first day you model it to the moment it becomes second nature. You’ll hear why this low-stress habit works for novice learners, how to adapt it for big classes and tight hallways, and the best ways to scaffold with sentence starters, visuals, and posted prompts so every student can succeed.
We also share how to choose the right password for your goals. Want more interpersonal practice? Use simple questions tied to can-do statements like What’s in your backpack? or What’s your name? Meeting only once or twice a week? Lean on short, memorable phrases—song lines, cultural rejoinders, or idioms—that students can echo with confidence. You’ll learn why keeping a password for several days matters, when accuracy should take a back seat to fluency, and how this routine quietly reshapes behavior so students answer in the target language without freezing.
Expect practical tips, realistic workarounds, and honest talk about pitfalls: inconsistency, forgotten prompts, and how to handle late or anxious students without turning the door into a stress point. We credit Bryce Hedstrom for the strategy and point you to resources that expand the approach. By the end, you’ll have a clear plan to launch, reboot, or refine passwords so your class starts strong every day, with students speaking from the moment they arrive. If this helped you, subscribe, share it with a colleague, and leave a quick review—what password will you try first?
Find out more about Bryce Hedstrom here: https://www.brycehedstrom.com/
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What's up, cabinet world language teachers? Welcome to the practical proficiency pop on the campus, where we make the transition to proficiency-oriented instruction in your world languages. In a way that works for you, your unique context and teaching style. And doesn't sacrifice your well-being along the way. I'm your host, Devin Cunningham, the teacher of the conference host, curriculum creator, and consultant, becoming Lamba Language Teacher. This podcast is for the creative world language teacher like you, who's ready to touch the overwhelming pressure of switching to acquisition-driven instruction and CI overnight. You're ready to discover how using more target language in class can actually bring you and your students more joy instead of having to wait with strategies that don't require reinventing wheels for more training. We all work together towards the magic of a community-based target language-rich classroom, rooted in the power of community and comprehensible and public levels. Doing it in a practical way that feels like you feel great for your teaching contacts and gives you a lot of joy. So let's dive in with this topic today. Such a good one. This one's gonna help you a lot as you're moving through your classroom journey. If you have listened to any other episodes from me, then you know that I'm really big on classroom routines. So today I'm gonna tell you about my absolute favorite one that I recommend to almost every classroom context. Again, every classroom context is so unique and is so different, which is why I really believe in instructional coaching, because it's just so helpful to have somebody outside of your own setting to help you see what's going on and where you can make some simple tweaks to have a much better and less stressful experience teaching. But this is something that I recommend to every teacher that I work with as long as it makes sense for their context. And it is this try having student passwords. Let's dive in. So, what is passwords? It sounds like a bit of an exclusionary idea or context, right? If you've been hanging out in the proficiency space at all, or you've been looking in a little bit to comprehensible input, then you've probably come across this strategy before. If you're new to this idea, student and classroom passwords was invented by Bryce Headstrom. And he is the one who taught me how to do it first in a workshop where a colleague of mine and I went to go visit him doing this workshop like an hour away from our school or something. And we learned all about this strategy and how it worked for him. And then later on, when I started La Libre Language Learning, he did an interview with me and taught me even more tips and tricks for how to do it. And we've been working together ever since. He comes to Practical and Comprehensible almost every year, which is the annual conference that is free for world language teachers. So if you enjoy Bryce Headstrom's teaching approach and learning from his wealth of experience, come hang out with us during one of those conferences. It's usually in the summer, and you'll learn a lot from it. Um, this specific strategy, we want to make sure that we're giving all the props to the creator, and that is Bryce. So I'm gonna put all of his information down below in the show notes so that you can see and find out more about him. He helps teachers in so many amazing ways, and a lot of the stuff on his website is uh free things to get you started, and then a ton of instructional books as well as comprehensible novels and really great sound ideas for teaching. So make sure that you check this out. Since this is a strategy that many people are employing, he's taught it to lots and lots of different teachers. I thought it'd be helpful for you to see a day-by-day look into how I did this with multiple levels. My most successful year implementing classroom passwords was when I was personally in this situation of two preps where I had French one for half the day and French two for the other half of the day. And with my French ones and my French twos, these students, well, French twos have had had had a different teacher before me because I was new that year. And my French ones were completely new to French, so it's a different experience for sure. In each class, I had an average of 15 students or so. It's a very small school. Um, not overall, actually. It's like a medium-sized school, about 700 students total. And I was working in a tech school, which means that those students were graduating with a technical skill that they could technically jump right into the workforce. Many of them were college-bound, but they also wanted some of that technical experience to get started with right away. And many were not college-bound and were going into some sort of tech career. For example, cosmetology was the most popular program at the school. I actually loved that format because I think that schools should be very real world. And it really worked in naturally to what we were doing. And that being said, as the French teacher, I'm already coming into this high school environment as the new teacher, but also with this natural skepticism from students who are used to having and learning skills that directly translate into money-making things for them, as well as things that they can use to improve their daily life. Which, when you say it out loud, shouldn't all of school be like that? Really? I'm a big fan of real-world context, and I wanted to make this French classes real world for them as well, because they are that's what they expected. They had high standards for that, and I think that they very much should. So, in order to make that happen, one of the things that I would do was make sure that even in French one, my students were speaking as much as possible for the level that they were at. With the caveat, of course, that everything that I asked my level one French students to do in the first few weeks of school was always repeating simple one or two word phrases. So that's what they were doing because that is very much appropriate for that level. And a lot of it was really memorization, but it was helping them to cultivate a lot of other skills. So that is separate from acquisition. None of the things that they said during these password things would be something that I would consider, oh yes, this is proof that they've acquired that phrase. No, not at all. We're doing this memorization for several other reasons. And we can get into that later in a separate episode. But in order to keep this one succinct, just go in with the understanding that every two weeks or so, I did do speaking quizzes with my French ones in a block class, 90-minute classes. And the speaking quizzes were things like qu'est-ce qu'il y a dans ton sac à what's in your book bag? And I would expect three simple words from them un crayon, unsiro, um feu de papier. So uh pencil, pen, a piece of paper. Those were the things that I was expecting from them, and that we would practice a lot for them in class. So that leads into why I love passwords so much. Passwords create a natural routine of interaction in your classroom. The way that Bryce also describes it is for him, he experienced that it created a lot of that classroom community aspect where students were talking about the password and making sure that they knew the password before they came to class that day, which is very cool, especially in a high school environment where kids have a reason, a positive reason to talk about your class outside of class. So it does generate a sense of community because the real deal with passwords, and I should probably back up here and start with the very beginning for those of you who passwords is a new routine for you. The idea of a classroom password is that your students have to say a phrase or sign a phrase in the target language in order to gain entry to your classroom. So it's like a little bit of a you've got a bouncer at the door and you're the bouncer. So you're gonna stand near the door and you're gonna greet every single student as they're coming through, and they're gonna respond to you with something in the target language to get them their brains juiced up and ready to acquire things as soon as they move in. So how does this work? Well, everybody does it a little bit differently. So I'm gonna share with you how I used to make it work with my students. Now, again, this worked because this is the environment I was in, not very crowded hallways, and because I was up on the second floor and it was a little bit separate from some of the other classes, and it was towards the end of the hall. So I'm not in the middle of hustle and bustle. And the school was actually larger than the student population that were currently inside it. So we didn't have very crowded hallways. It was just enough that, you know, you'd see lots of kids that you knew, but wasn't too crowded. So this is how I would do it. My students would line up at the door and they would have to say to me the password before they came into class. And I was very fortunate in that right next to the door was a very large whiteboard that everybody could see. So I would have the classroom password posted there, as well as some possible answers or a sentence starter so that they would have everything that they needed to complete the task I was asking for. Then I would stand at the door and I would say, Kilil Mudipass, what's the what's the password? And I would do something like I would ask for the the actual password or I would give them a question and they would have to respond to it. Some often questions, some questions I would often use, I mean, would be things like, what was their speaking quiz going to be? So I knew that their speaking quiz was going to be about what's in their book bag. So I would use that opportunity to practice that question all week. Que es que ya don sacado, I would ask every single kid. And on the way in, they would tell me just one thing because you want to keep the password short. So I would ask for just one thing, what's in their backpack as they came into class. And it also meant that if you have to keep the password nice and short and sweet, because there's going to be so many kids who don't remember what the password is, right? Not until you've like done it for the fifth day in a row. So you need something that's very easy to whisper down the lane, if you will, for the students who remember the password. They can tell it to the kids behind them or the students behind them, I should say. And it makes for an easy flow of traffic. Again, since I had an average of 14, it was like between 11 and 17 students in each class. It didn't take too long for everybody to say the password, but I still kept it short to make sure they had time to get in, get settled, asked to go to the bathroom if they needed to, all that stuff. We had about five minutes between each class period. So they had five minutes to come to the door, line up, do what they needed to do, get the password, and you know, get either settled for class or go run um personal hygiene air and all that stuff. So we did that. Um, and everybody would be in the door before the bell rang with that kind of time frame. So if you're thinking to yourself, I can't line everybody up before they come into class. That's kind of crazy for my 35 plus kids. That's fine. There's many other ways that you can do this. You can greet each student at the door and instead remind them that the password is coming. And your first thing that you do in class is you can go around the room and you can check with everybody if they know the password and even give them a little bit of time to remember it with each other. So you can, and you can also do a combination of this where you wait at the door for half your students to enter, and you know that like 20 of them, everybody comes into class like with their routine, you know, they're all coming from the same class multiple days in a row. So you know when your students are gonna come in. You're gonna have your 10 early kids because they're right next door. You're gonna have your 10 middle of the road kids, and then you're gonna have your 10 other kids who are huffing and puffing just to get to your class on time. Now, again, we don't want to use this routine to make it difficult for them to enter on time. This routine should not make any issues with that. It does make attendance easier for you, though, because you will see every student on their way into class. So I recommend that you find something that works for you. You can even do something in the middle where you're talking to most students and getting the password from most students as they come in. And then as it's like 30 seconds is the only thing that you have left before the bell rings, then you can say, just come in, just come in, and I'll get you for your password later. And you'll grow to know who those students are because everybody comes in at around the same time. And you can do like your usual class greeting and then go get the passwords from the few kids that um you want to respect the fact that they had to really hustle to get to your class. Now, here let's, those are the logistics of it. Here's another piece of logistics that I used to do that may work for you is I recommend that you keep the same password for several days because the first day it's gonna take a little bit of time for everybody to remember. Nobody's gonna remember. The second day, they'll be like, oh right, we're doing a password, and then they won't remember what the password is. Day three, oh, I think I remember the password, isn't it this? Day four, I remember the password, but what's the answer? Day five, I know the password and the answer. So give your students time to get adjusted to that. If you only see your students uh twice a week because of an A-B schedule, or maybe even once a week because you teach all the levels at school and your class is more of an exploratory or an elementary style, you can still do passwords, but you're gonna need to keep the same password for multiple weeks. So it should be something really fun that they'll have a good time answering, especially in elementary school. It could be something like your favorite animal, anything like that. Now, does your password have to be a question? Let's get into the logistics of this. No, not at all. I like doing questions because I worked exclusively with level one and level two. And the biggest skill that we are moving toward, like a huge milestone of Novice High language, is they can understand simple questions and even ask some extremely simple everyday questions. That is a huge hallmark of Novice High that helps them pass on to intermediate low. So since asking questions and answering questions is a big focus for this level, I prefer to ask questions and answer questions, all that good stuff. And it would always be the questions that were from my can-do statements for the year. I always built my curriculum around the can-do statements that I wanted them to be able to achieve with reasonable levels of success. So all of the questions were based off of those. Then I would use those can-do statements to be my speaking quiz questions. So easy password generation for me. Every two to three weeks or so, I would pick the speaking question that I thought would be maybe the most difficult for them and give them an excuse to practice it in class by doing a classroom password. Now, how do you teach the classroom password? Actually, before I get onto that, let me not get distracted and tell you first, what are your other options? Other teachers who have success with classroom passwords do things like this. They lean into the cultural element of it. And maybe if you're teaching a song that week, you can ask them to sing, well, sing if they want to, but have students repeat to you an important line from the chorus or something that's easy to remember from the chorus. Or you can give them sayings and important cultural tidbits, this, that, or the other, idioms, anything that you want to that would be fun for them to remember. This is actually a great idea if you only see your students twice a week, because instead of answering a question on the fly, they're working with a memorized phrase that they'll have an easy time spitting back out at you and having some fun with. So it can be something as simple as maybe even if you're trying to teach them a rejoinder or a brain break thing that you want to do, like with a call and response. You can use the structure of passwords to make that a part of your classroom. So you have a lot of options for how you can do this. I preferred the question and the answer because it actually reduced the amount of teaching time and review time that I had to do for speaking questions, which were the focal point of my class. So that was a big deal for me. But you choose your own adventure. Now, let's get into the nitty-gritty about how you're gonna help your students to be successful with this. Number one, accept any and all answers for the first few days. This is not an accuracy thing. This is a classroom competence thing. You're getting students used to using the language in a very controlled and repetitive way that's not boring, that they'll have a lot of fun with and they'll get that good repetition that they need to feel confident with that phrase. So the first few days, don't even worry about whether they get the right answer or not. And you can even instruct a little bit on the fly if you need to, with students who are like, how do you say that again? You can help them with that. But if they're struggling to come up with answers, then I would use that as a teaching opportunity as soon as you come in the door to be like, you know what, I can see you're struggling with this. Let's go over it again when you get into class. Thanks for trying. And you can just let them inside. There's this is a no-stress environment. This is a very low pressure thing that is supposed to help your students get more confidence when the stakes are a little bit higher in your class, like in assessments and when they're just talking to you in front of a lot of peers, that whole deal. So it's a great way to also check the pulse of your classroom and see what they are comfortable saying, what are the things that they're remembering, why they're not remembering? It's a very nice structured activity for that. But feel free to let that be the first lesson that you do in class is like, hey, I noticed that when we were talking about what's in your book bag, everybody's using the word papier and I'm not hearing some of the other supplies, which makes me feel like they probably need some review. So let's review them and then you can talk to them about school supplies. Really nice natural progression into your day. Great stuff. The other thing that I would suggest is that you make sure to set up these passwords with the right types of um practice and routine inside of class. So for my French ones, we started doing this after the first week or so was done. But you can honestly do it from day one or day two with something as simple as comment tu t'appelles, because that is what I recommend every French one teacher does during the first day, is teach your students how to answer comment tu t'appelles. And you can expect something as simple as Mason, Greg, China, whatever, like whatever. They it doesn't matter if they're saying their name or the whole phrase je m'appelle. You're looking for them to indicate to you that they understand the question. So como tu tapel is just fine. That being, of course, what's your name? So como te llamas in Spanish. Now, um, with that in mind, you can start this as early as day two and have it be a really fun classroom procedure that you, like any other procedure, you need to practice. So, what I did in my first week of French one is I worked on this structure quite a bit, como tu t'appelles, and then answering the question with your name. And after a few days, it's a simple repeated phrase. So I wanted it to be a simple memorized phrase that my students could just honestly, for confidence, say to their friends and family, like, I learned how to say my name in French. Like, I'm not looking for them to acquire more stuff at this point. It's more that I want them to go into my class every day feeling really confident with the simple memorized phrase. So that's what that strategy is for because that leads to acquisition. Confidence leads to acquisition. So as they're experiencing their first little bit of success and confidence in class with learning how to say their name and the phrase that goes with it. After that, the next Monday that they came to class, I said, guys, we're gonna start a new classroom procedure. And anytime you do that, you of course need to rehearse the procedure. So I taught them the phrase. I said, Remember that? Do you guys remember how to ask? What's your name? Comment tu t'appelles? What does this mean? And how do you respond? And I asked them to all go to a partner or somebody near them and say that phrase, je m'appelle. And we did like a little review session on it. Then I said, Now, class, it's really important that you recognize that this is a new routine that you're gonna do on the way into class. Let's practice it together. It's called a password. And I showed them the little box that I had dedicated on the whiteboard to the password. And I showed them this is where you can find the answer if you need help. This is where you can find the question if you're not sure what it means. And I left a little translation in there in English up there for just like the first two days or so to give them extra scaffolding with your French ones because it's all about confidence in the first two weeks of French class. And then I asked them to line up outside and to go ahead and do the procedure and just practice it. It seems simple with high schoolers, like you know that if you ask them, like, okay, just go like as you're coming in the door, just line up outside and I will accept the phrase from you. But it's mostly to reduce anxiety, to make sure that, like, okay, I've done this before and I'm ready to do it tomorrow. Because you're asking them to speak French, which is kind of a stressful thing, especially when you don't know a lot of French yet. So that is how I used to do it. Simple, nice and easy. And then we would come back into the door and I would say, you guys feel like you can do that every day coming into class from now on? And they'd be like, Yeah, yeah. But of course, you know, the next day they would forget. So I would say, and make sure if you can, like um before class starts, to be outside the door. And then as students are coming down the hall and you're saying, like, bonjour, salutes, all the all the kids as they're coming towards you, say, We're doing the password, remember? Do you remember what you need to do? And they'll be like, Oh, right, I forgot. And they start doing the password. You know, you give them those those quick reminders as you're seeing them. And then what will happen is as soon as the first five students go, everybody else will see what's happening and be like, oh yeah, I remember. It's password time. And they will come in line to come and see you. Here are some possible ways that you'll get tripped up with this. Number one, you will not be consistent with passwords. Nobody is the first time that you try it. So the first time that you do passwords, you might be like, oh yeah, I'm going strong for like four weeks. And then stuff gets really heavy in your curriculum. There's a lot of things you need to cover in a short amount of time, or maybe it's like the week before Thanksgiving and like the attendance is all over the place and just kind of falls to the side. That's okay. Let it fall to the side if it does, but start it back up as soon as you can. Because one of the best things that the classroom passwords really has to offer as a routine is that it will build on those skills. Like the more that you ask your students to do this, the better they really will get at it, and the more automatic it will be for these two important things that you're probably struggling with in class. Number one, when you ask a question in the target language, they are pavlog dog trained to respond to it instead of silence. There's a lot of times in class where they get that automatic, um, just experiential response of they're used to there being a little bit of quiet and confusion before anybody answers. So you are retraining their environment to expect that students respond when you ask a question in the target language. It's a really great way to reframe and to get more engagement in class just from that simple environmental shift that is subconscious in their brain. The second thing is that they're getting a lot of interpersonal one-on-one practice with you that you simply, it's a lot harder to replicate once you actually get inside the classroom environment. So it works really well. And the bonus tip that many teachers find that it really improves a sense of classroom camaraderie because they do. They start talking about the password outside of class and it makes them feel a little special to be like, ooh, I have I knew the password so I could get in. Now, another place where you will fall off is that there will be times when your students don't know the password or they don't feel like giving you the password. And those are the times when you, you know, have to put your your big girl pants on and enforce it and be like, listen, you can't get in without the password. I know. And if they don't know what the password is or they're starting to be a little bit contentious about it, you just say, hey, it's right here on the board. If you would like some more time to practice it, that's fine. Go ahead inside and get your stuff ready. Write down the mode to pass, the password, and I will come to you later in class and ask for it. That's a very easy, no stress situation to diffuse somebody who's like, I don't know the password, man, I've been absent. And like instead of having a confrontation about it, you can just say, that's fine. Go ask somebody about it. And if you're still not really feeling sure about it, just go right inside and I'll ask you the password after I do attendance. It's no big deal. There's no reason to make a big thing about the password. Now, the other thing where you might fall into a bit of disarray with passwords is that your students might not be getting enough practice or review with the question before you assign it as a password. You'll know this if every student that you ask, or almost all of them, don't feel confident with giving you a response. And that just means you should practice it a little bit more in class before assigning it. The other thing that might happen is that your students might just forget what the password is. So I would encourage you to have it posted somewhere. If you don't have a whiteboard like I did right before the door, then try putting it on just a simple sheet of paper and taping it to your door or taping it right outside the room as they're entering, you know, like right under your name or the room number. Really easy and visible, and they'll have a much easier time working with you. So, in conclusion, there are so many benefits that passwords really have. It is my favorite way to set up a target language environment as soon as they step into your room. And there are so few ways that it could go wrong that it's kind of a no-brainer for me to recommend it to almost every classroom environment. If you have been looking to work more with passwords, definitely check out what Bryce has to offer on his website about the ways that it has helped him in his classroom experience, and you'll find a lot of great ideas there too. But I hope that this episode gives you a little bit of insight on how you can make passwords work for you. It's a really simple and fun classroom routine. And I'm excited to hang out with you on the next episode. And it might even be a listener question from you. This new cool thing that we're doing with the podcast, well, that I'm doing with the podcast, is that I'm answering your real life teacher questions. So you'll see below here or in the show notes, there's a link to submit a question. Super simple. It's just one or two questions. Yo, question, what's your name? That kind of deal. Let us know what your question is, and I would love to answer it on the podcast so that we can all learn from you. All right. Thank you so much for being a listener. Share this podcast and review if it helps you, because it really helps me out. It helps support the podcast and helps other teachers who could use some help like this. It helps it show up in their feed some more. So thank you in advance for doing that. I really appreciate it. And if I haven't told you lately, then you need to hear it today. You are enough, you're doing enough, and you're an amazing instructor. And I really appreciate all the time that you've spent here with me today to have a better experience in class and to serve your students better. So thank you for that. All right, y'all. I'm out for this one, and I will see you in the next episode of the Practical Proficiency Podcast. Merci bien. Mil gracias. See you in the next one.