Cute Idea #4: The Window Box Person This idea is best for levels 3 and above: A little window can be built out of a cardboard box. It can be spray-painted and kept in the classroom. The student chosen for the job of window box person grabs the box during class at any appropriate time […]
No more TPR for me. It has an artificial feeling to it and, like circling, brings up that engagement of the conscious faculty of the learner in the moments of comprehension, which conscious engagement interrupts the flow of the learner’s focus only on meaning, which is a colossal mistake in this work, if I understand
Cute Idea #3: The En Route Event This is different from a whacky transportation scene. When an actor is transitioning from one location to another, funny events can happen: Class, Becky is going through the forest. Does she go by automatic toilet or by toad, class? That’s right, class, she goes by toad (that is
Idea #2: The T-Shirt Phrase Anne Matava’s students in Maine have a classmate named Biddley Flurgenjurgen. Biddley is imaginary. He goes to school with Anne’s students in the class’s imagination for all four years of high school, and appears and reappears in major and minor roles in stories all year, serving a lot of purposes.
We all invent cute little things that reflect our own teaching personalities, little ways to reach the kids in the middle of a story, for example, that make the story more pleasant, that only take a minute or two to do and so can’t be categorized as part of a curriculum in the way that,
For ten years now we have been faithfully enjoying our summer “breather”. It is so important! Teachers as a rule in my opinion have in the past worked too hard for very sparse results. We are changing that now and learning in the process that the best teaching is the simplest and easiest (non-targeted) and
Anyone watching World Cup action these days (I’m watching France and Belgium right now) has seen a variety of soccer styles from the best players on the best national teams in the world. In soccer – or as we will be calling it after the demise of the NFL in the next thirty years, football
I won’t be writing much here over the summer – maybe an occasional report from the field – Â but there are ten years of posts here, so no lack of stuff to read, plus the valuable Primers articles above.
Over the summer I recommend that PLC members study this chart by Marianne Van Klaveren, which is an expanded version of the original Star Sequence I developed last summer (2017). It is not linear in nature, but describes a curriculum in spatial terms. This is needed because of the spatial/unconscious way humans learn languages. Teacher’s
We need to like our work. I didn’t like my work for 37 years. Then I found the Invisibles/non-targeted. Now I like it. If we can’t blend vocation and avocation, as Robert Frost says in “Two Tramps at Mudtime”, then what are even doing? …but yield who will to their separation, My object in living
Sometimes you never know how you affect others. This makes all the craziness of the past decade worth it: Hey Ben – Your blog saved my career about 10-12 years ago, and your compassionate insights on the PLC continue to motivate me and remind me of what really matters in our work. I can’t thank
Julia has been giving us regular reports on how great the storybook project from A Natural Approach to the Year has been working for her. Here is the latest update: Good morning Ben! See attached. One example of several…
