Ben Slavic

Greg has kindly shared this link with us in case any of us want to use it at Parent’s Night: http://tinyurl.com/acquireSpanish

Sean, Laura, Leigh Anne and any other upper level teachers exploring the use of CI at those levels please read and give me feedback even though this post is long. Leigh Anne I know you were in MN and I would esp. like to know how your experience there relates to what I wrote below.

If someone asked me what I thought two major factors are that drive good classroom management, I would answer: 1. an immediate response to every single inappropriate behavior when it happens in class.  2. completely understandable instruction that allows each student to become intrinsically motivated in the class.  instead of being forced to do so. 

This was written today on the ACTFL list by Paul Sandrock, ACTFL Director of Education: … ACTFL has been asked directly to respond: we do not find disagreement in the discussion around the various points being discussed…. I interpret this to be an endorsement of TCI/TPRS. But instead of trying to isolate pieces of Paul

I’m writing something here on upper levels on the PLC since some of us have been thinking about upper levels lately. The way I think about levelS 3 and 4 is lots of reading, and I don’t worry about making it CI so much. Writing is done far too much at the upper levels. They

This group had an online war with ACTFL four or five years ago and since it came up in recent discussion here I am reposting what the director of ACTFL said in response to everything we were saying back then, which were strong points that needed to be rebutted by ACTFL but weren’t. Instead, all

An important repost at this time of year: I keep thinking about what Krista said about the 5-7 extrovert kids: ..shy students who are brave enough to volunteer a suggestion but then don’t have their suggestion chosen, are, in my experience, quite reluctant to ever volunteer again. The stories then revolve around the 5-7 most talkative

Sean reports from Chicago: Hey wonderful people on Ben’s PLC!  The hardest part of our jobs, I think many will agree, is validating our instructional approach to our administrators. Here is a little exchange I had this week with my principal, the only person in the building that asks me about students speaking more. My

As I look back, I can identify three segments to my career as a language teacher. Below, I rate each one in terms of the personal fulfillment and misery they each brought me: 1. 1977-2000 – Traditional AP French Language and Literature instructor in three South Carolina high schools. Level of Fulfillment: 0/10 Misery Level:

I wrote this in 2015 after visiting a TPRS classroom in Denver Public Schools: It’s been 24 hours since I left Julie’s classroom and during that time I have, even in sleep, been besieged by the word ruido and a bunch of other Spanish words. The din is happening. It happens in the target country

The tough teenage years don’t have to be so tough. They can be easier. What happens is that when kids move into middle school and even before, they are met with most teachers asking them to start memorizing stuff. Does this even make them “teachers” in the real sense of the word? I think not.