Reading
Ben Fisher – a member of our PLC – asked this question about reading and my response is below. There is no intent to be contrary in my answer – it’s just the way I think, which always has some
Based on Images
Here is a passage from the introduction to my new book, which is entitled The Invisibles - Towards a New Curriculum in Language Instruction. I post it here to let the group know that after all these years I have finally decided that a language curriculum should be based on images, and not on words and ideas. The difference in starting points
Report from the Field – Annemarie Orth
Hi Ben - I have a girl in my Spanish 1 class who is getting RTI'ed for issue with attention and attendance. Apparently she is one of the most difficult students that teachers are dealing with in her other classes. Yesterday
New Book
I do apologize for not writing more here recently. I am in the very final stages of working on a new book that is the third in a trilogy, a sequel to A Natural Approach to Stories (ANATS) and A
A Personal Bill of Rights
About twenty years ago when teaching high school French in South Carolina, being at that point roughly half way through my teaching career, I was struggling very deeply emotionally. I was not happy in my job. The only fun I was having was
Creating a Problem in a Story
Some people still think that the degree to which they can get a good problem going and then coming up with a cute and neatly wrapped solution is an indication of their talent as a CI teacher. Nothing could be further
The Matava Scripts Can Be Used to Find Problems
Hey Carly and Alisa look what I figured out: I spent fifteen years thinking that I wasn’t good enough at TPRS, innocently going to national conferences and spinning stories with a big smile on my face like I was in complete control of the
The Problem of the “Problem”
Another thing about the problem of creating a problem in a story is that it depends on what our starting point is. If we start from a student card in Card Talk, we have less information than if we are
Tasting the Word
Let’s say when starting to build a one word image with your class that you accepted, from the objects called out, a grape. The first thing we have to do with any new vocabulary is “walk before we talk”, so
Places
I'd forgotten that I had made some "places" posters for my walls back 15 years ago when I was still doing TPRS. Back then I thought it was all about the posters. Now I use about three. Anyway, maybe someone