Some teachers go to conferences and collect new activities like candy. They have big bags of activities that they lug around, with candy spilling all over the place. After ten years, the bags are too full to even pick up. It’s not about collecting activities. It’s about having a system – a process – for […]
Are there any other super important aspects of our work than the mental health/pedagogy tandem? I can’t think of any. Because when we have the right pedagogy – for me it is nontargeted comprehensible input based on images that kids create – everything else falls into place. So it has dawned on my slowly –
My highest priority in this work is the mental health piece. Second, of course, is the pedagogy piece. But they are intertwined. We all know that on some level the WAY we teach determines our mental health. It makes me tip my hat to myself and all the other grammar based textbook teachers of the
Someone asked: Hi Ben, I remember you said in your workshop that it takes 10k hours to reach an advanced proficiency in a language. What is the source for this? I ask because some is asking me on Twitter after I posted an anti-homework post. My response: I went to trainings in the summer for
I hope Beth sends in a lot of reports from the field this year. The last one we got is here: https://benslavic.com/blog/report-from-the-field-beth-sims/ Follow ups will be important because she isn’t the only person who is going in “new” with the Natural Approach to Stories and Natural Approach to the Year way of teaching for the
Cute Idea #7 – Find the Key to Unlock the Individual On the first day of class this year, I asked my kids in one class why they chose French. Brooke said that she wanted to become a fashion designer and live and work in Paris. I started calling her Fille de Versace/Daughter of Versace
Cute Idea #7: Find the Key to Unlock the Individual Read More »
Q. I have read “A Natural Approach to the Year”, and am so excited to dive right into it with my Spanish level 1s. My dilemma is that I’m starting at a new school next year, teaching Spanish 1 AND 2. I would really love to do the same with my level 2s, but I’m
Cute Idea #6: What nationality? What language? This idea is one that is easy to throw in and for some reason always commands high interest, probably in part because it is easily understood. It affords the kids’ minds a break from the hard work of turning sound into meaning, and yet it does not interrupt the
Beth Sims (Alabama) sent a poignant report that I think represents the thinking of a lot of new people. It’s lengthy but worth the read in my opinion because it comes from a practicing professional of 19 years and from the heart: Dear Ben, I have to tell you again HOW MUCH I appreciate your email
Cute Idea #5: The Retell Glove Two kinds of retells* are possible. Most commonly, the instructor or a student simply repeats the events of the story. There is another, more complex, way to retell, one that is widely used in elementary school reading classes and is very adaptable to our work. The instructor makes a
Long time PLC members know that over the ten years many of us have been together here, the gradual shift to non-targeted CI and its spiking since 2016 – and its manifestation in terms of the three books now published as featured items by Teacher’s Discovery (Natural Approach to Stories, Natural Approach to the Year/Year
I have actually been doing non targeted comprehensible input for twenty years, from the beginning. I took a real slow pathway to it, trying to do like the others who targeted, to do what I was told at conferences, to fit in, and I fake-targeted, found refuge in Anne Matava’s scripts, tried to believe in
