Friday – The plant grows even further as we synthesize and evaluate what we have learned by looking at music or paintings relevant to the ideas that grew via the creation of the story and the reading earlier in the

Tuesday – the story is so much easier for the kids to understand because of the extensive PQA done the day before. If Monday provides the seed and root of the plant, then Tuesday, the story, is the growth of

An entire week of comprehensible input can grow organically from just three words. When the week is organized in this way, if the “plant” that is the week’s instruction starts with and is limited to just those three structures on

I'm off to SF for a few days so will be gone sans computer access. However, starting tomorrow there will be a new series of posts coming up here describing the new way that I schedule my week. I highly

Ben, I am still alive and teaching. Just a handful of students came to school in the last 10 days. My heart went out to them in their time of loss. We are 200 km from the real mess but the effects

Got this from Martha for those who want news from our colleagues and friends in Japan: Hey Ben, The tone that you are hearing is Japan. It's how we could become a group so fast in one day with Susie. It

The teacher who pays full attention to the absolute importance of sufficiently repeating the structures [rebar] and limiting the amount of new words [concrete rocks] to create tight, personalized CI with strong rebar but not too many rods will definitely experience

Kailey Dellinger at GW moved a very very difficult last period class on a Friday into a space of fun and happy participation. She did this by paying attention to all the kids, playing to their strengths, praising them, including

The fewer the new words, the greater will our students be able to focus on the meaning of the story (the overall concrete) rather than being forced to worry about a bunch of new sounds, the individual words/rocks that make