Ben Slavic

Robert Harrell Retires

Those in the group who have been here since the beginning, when it was just a blog, about fifteen years ago, know the impact Robert Harrell has had on our professional development over the years. One need only visit the primers above to see his influence on our thinking. His leadership has helped us through […]

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Hart Crane

Back in 2008 Robert found a wonderful line from poet Hart Crane and shared it with us here. It deeply supports Krashen in the most beautiful way: “One must be drenched in words, literally soaked in them, to have the right ones form themselves into the proper pattern at the right moment.” Robert went on:

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The Myth of Average

Dana reports from India: Hi Ben, We had some inclusion consultants come to our school this week as we are moving towards being a more inclusive international school. They played this video, “The Myth of Average” – https://youtu.be/4eBmyttcfU4 When he talks about designing our curriculum so we teach to the edges, I think what you

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Question on the Invisibles

A question from Sean in Chicago: I would love to hear how teachers inspire their students to create meaningful and colorful (figuratively speaking) invisible characters. I’m finding the need to help my students with this. Perhaps I could have them sketch three characters, share, get feedback from their peers, then choose one of the three

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Question

Q. If we don’t use stories to help teach grammar, then how will students be able to express themselves without these “tools” to communicate their own thoughts? They only hear us (teachers) speaking Spanish for 80 minutes/day, 5 days/week for a few semesters. How will students know how to compose high level essays for the

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Summer Institutes

A lot of us have great ideas, but because we are lower down on the pecking order in the school system, what we really think and do is rarely heard by those around us, above us, in spite of all the pointless meetings. The assumption is that the department chair, the district coordinator, the principal

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Fun Skills – Chants

From TPRS in a Year! – Skill #20: Chants The repetition of chants can burn new language into the kids’ minds better than practically anything else! If you can just get the words into the kids’ bodies via a good gut-based chant, it will, via the repetition, work wonders for retention. In my view, chants are

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