Unreal.

Today was an unreal day.  It was unreal because everything went so well.  I tried a couple new things today.  They're from Ben Slavic's site, and boy did I have great success.  In my third year class, we finished our ask a story with the subjunctive then started a dictation with the story.  The students were really engaged and said that they understood almost 100% of the story.  Success! 
During my first year class, I switched up the format in which we are reading Pobre Ana.  It's been going painfully slow (actually with the third year novel too!), so I tried having them read to the end of the chapter themselves.  We then translated the rest of the chapter together and had a great class discussion.  One boy in my fourth period said his mother stole clothes for him from his dad.  Another boy in my sixth period was like Robin Hood and stole clothes from the mall and gave them to people without clothes.  It was a great discussion.  Then I read the passage again while students followed along or sub-vocalized.  I think that was a really powerful portion of class because the students were able to feel completely relaxed but were completely focused. 
I'm going to use these methods again!  Thanks to Ben Slavic!