August 24, 2015

Since my classes are small, I have been adding in invisible students. They are in the actual seating chart. In one class there is a Seth and an Ella. In another a Dward Fardward, an Arnold House, and a Biddley Flurgenjurgen, whom I tell my students is an actual made up student in a classroom

For some reason, this year, I am using stories much more than in the past. I don’t know why. And much less PQA. In some cases the kids want to get to a story so badly that I just dispense with the PQA. It doesn’t seem to bother them, in fact it bothers them when

I misspoke in a comment a week ago and want to clarify. I said I didn’t use the laser at all. But I do. For distant posters like Sabrina’s “How you doing?” poster that is such an effective tool to start class. Or the colors/numbers chart. But I still try to limit the use of

(We have talked about the use of L1 in the classroom topic a LOT here over the past few years, especially last year. This is my update.) James Hosler has always been a big proponent of just hanging out in English with the kids, and I have too. It just seemed like one of the

Again, I would never try anything like this back in my big urban classes in Denver. However, since the classes are small and the students very highly motivated college bound kids, I can give homework as described below. I had previously published these homework guidelines here, a few days ago, but these have been updated.

I would never have assigned homework during those years when I had 35 students in a class, but now my classes are small (in the teens) and so I am able to do this for free write homework: Two Free Writes: Students in Foundational French are required to do at least two out-of-class five minute free