Hey guys Hope you’re having a great year! Just an update of how things are going here in Oregon. Starting last year, I got my colleagues to show an authentic Spanish soap opera in some of our classes. I was movie talking the show and my students loved it but as the semester went on […]
The school’s president, the Upper School principal and three parents who work at the school and have kids in my French class have given me positive feedback since January, when I started teaching – doing CI for half a period as Ben suggested. It was a great suggestion. One of the parents who is an
The thing about the OPI is how it is “old school” like the IB/AP exams are for the kids – they measure how much vocabulary you have, etc. and they don’t really bring into consideration that, even if your abilities in the language are low, intermediate or whatever, the thing that really counts in a
The thing about the OPI – the stupid and elitist Oral Proficiency Interview – is how it is “old school” like the IB/AP exams are for the kids – they measure how much vocabulary you have, etc. and they don’t really bring into consideration that, even if your abilities in the language are low, intermediate
Alisa wrote here about a week ago the following insights. It should be posted here as required reading once a week for the next ten years: No-one wants to be forced to change to something new and many in that situation push back…. though I have seen those who are led to the well actually
Hi everyone, I recently had a situation with some parents where they kind of called me out for the no homework thing and not knowing what their child can do at home. I created the following document about homework in my classroom. I think you all will enjoy it as it is a great CYA
Steven reports: Hi Ben, I wanted to let the PLC know that I am taking on the most important group needing buy-in for the work we do–students. In the spirit of mental health, I am doing a week long unit on SLA. It is long overdue for my population of gifted students. Also, this year
A repost from 2012. There was a hurricane: Dear Lord, Please protect all the people on the East Coast as they go through this big storm. Keep them in safety. Watch over Carol and Jennifer in New Jersey, and Brigitte in Long Island, and our brothers and sisters in the Maine group and everywhere else
It may be too complex an undertaking, but could we perhaps suggest in the comment fields below ideas that would allow us to define together what the term “progress” means in a comprehensible input classroom? Our definition should of course align with what the research suggests, and so of course it would not reflect the
Tina reports from a class today: “OK, so I have this new rubric I made for the new book called the Speaking Rubric. It basically has the kids working in partnerships and speaking to each other to respond to questions and it has them score their partner’s utterances on a 1-5 scale, with 1 being
