Scope and Sequence
Our PLC member Frank James Johnson has said this about the Star Sequence: Scope: "Whole Language Instruction" Sequence: "Spiraling Expansive Recurrence of Comprehensible Input". Of course, these blanket terms would freak out any admin who is not familiar with the Star. But then,
Middle School vs. High School – 6
Here is the letter that Danielle and I crafted, which you are of course welcome to copy and paste and rewrite if you are finding yourself in this kind of situation in your own teaching: Good evening (name of parent), Happy New Year!
Middle School vs. High School – 5
One of our PLC members received this email from a parent the other day. I asked and received permission to share it with the group. Hello Senora (name of teacher) - Hopefully things are going well for you during these crazy times. My
Middle School vs. High School – 4
Far too often, we CI teachers get challenges from our peers - teachers with whom we are supposed to be working on toward common assessments, high frequency verb lists, thematic and semantic units, etc. We also get challenges from helicopter parents,
Middle School vs. High School – 3
So the reversal of instructional priorities is moving now in favor of middle school teachers who use CI in their teaching. The high school teachers are being "outed". It's got a lot to do with Covid but we won't get
Middle School vs. High School – 2
When I arrived in 2015 to use CI to teach middle school French at the American Embassy School in New Delhi, India, I was met with choruses of "Can we just do worksheets?" or "We learn better with worksheets!" Hmmm
Middle School vs. High School – 1
High school language departments usually anoint themselves as judge and jury of the middle school teachers who feed them their students. Their message is and always has been that if rising ninth graders show up at their doors "unprepared" to
NBA
I was watching "Inside the NBA" with Shaqille O'Neal and the "Round Mound of Rebound" Charles Barkley. On their Christmas show they gave away about 40 bicycles - placed on the set - to disadvantaged kids in the Baltimore area. The
Chris Farley
Let's do a good job of being language teachers, because we certainly don't want our kids to end up living in a van "down by the river"
It’s Cracking – The Traditional Textbook Teachers are Cracking.
OK. Everybody knows that for at least a decade and more like two decades here there has been a kind of cold war between us (CI teachers) and a new breed of CI teacher who tries to mix traditional instruction