Providing a rich diet of non-targeted language is the most effcient way to propel students to develop long-lasting proficiency in our languages. Non-targeted stories bring many other benefits to our classes besides just language gains: more trust, more engagement, less planning and far less nervousness for us, not to mention more interesting stories. What if […]
This new and exciting work that many of us in our group are doing with non-targeted instruction allows us to reach kids much better in class. It shortens the emotional distance between everybody in the room. This then allows us to get to the real problem in WL education, the incredible falseness of it all,
Working with Tina and I, Abbey Thole in Portland has written the first part of a new reader, working with the Louisville-based illustrator Derek Ashby. Why is this a big deal? Because it will be the first books to fly off the FCR table during Free Choice Reading time. Why? Because it will deal with
Krashen has said: “I think that many teachers simply can’t do non-targeted input because they are required to follow a grammatical syllabus.” However, the grammatical syllabus is at odds with Krashen’s hugely important Natural Order Hypothesis — the concept that we acquire language structures in a fixed order that we do not know, and that
Ben, I am reaching a new level of appreciation for what you do on your PLC. I am moving into my new role and it involves communicating with and encouraging educators across the state. I am amazed at how much time it takes to do well! You are so quick and in depth in your
The heritage speaker “problem” is not a problem at all in a nontargeted CI/Invisibles classroom. Why? It is because the students have something to do in class that interests them. Scenario 1: Few Heritage Speakers in the Class. When there are just a few heritage speakers, or only one, in a non-targeted class, it is
Many of us are doing the storybook projects now (among others) as a way to get to the end of the year in a calm manner. We can therefore now start slowly turning our attention to next year*, when Card Talk is how many of us start out our first classes. Just a suggestion –
Tina’s best friend in Portland runs a high school graphic design slash print shop in Portland and they’re working on T shirts for our fundraiser for our CI Posse booth at ACTFL. We wish we could use it on a tee shirt but we think Disney might get us for it. But it’s a cool
The sequence described in the poster below starts with the creation of an image, and as we know there are two ways to create an image, one with the class (class created image – CCI – or one word image), the other by individuals (individually created image – ICC). I was asked which of the
Tina and I simplified the star sequence poster. Those using it will be happy with how simple it is:
I got this question today, and provided a makeshift answer, since the problem won’t be resolved until our Alisa writes her book: Daniel Salinero wrote: I’m really enjoying your book. On page 32 you mentioned that most of us only have three or four hours per week with our students. This book is probably geared
If you have the new book, there is an addition to the first chapter. It was requested by Teacher’s Discovery*. Here is the addition. It’s the new page 11: Meeting the Students Where They Actually Are There has been a lot of recent discussion in the World Language teaching community about performance assessments that ask
