You know, we’ve been talking to each other for ten years and some of us don’t even know what each other looks like. Sean and I were talking and we decided to share pics here at the holidays so here is one from Sean to start things off:
This is from Sean: I currently teach at one of three high schools managed by a large charter school district called UNO Charter School Network in Chicago. (I know. Charter schools can be awful. But rest assured, our teachers are unionized! That’s right, we are unionizing charter schools in Chicago!) Every student in all three
Jeanette Borich has launched her website and it’s a refreshingly honest statement in favor of comprehensible input. It’s just getting off the ground but I wanted to make sure we all know about it. One thing about Jeanette’s point of view is that she shares with many of us a wish to go deeper into
Tina gives a personal slant on what administrators must be going through: My sincere hope is that my own administrator could see her way into working with me to trust my professional judgement and somehow fit my vision into the rubric. My sincere hope is that she can begin to see the rubric for what
I know we are busy but if anyone has time to do only a few of these, I would be grateful. I am currently writing about how to use Director’s Cues for actors to do during Readers’ Theatre (probably the most used poster in my classroom next to the Classroom Rules) and need the following
We’re moving in on 50,000 comments here. Right now there are 48,949. To the person who makes the 50,000th comment I’ll send all of my books electronically and Anne Matava’s three volumes of story scripts as well as provide lifetime membership to the blog, plus you get an ecopy of my newest book due out
Does anyone in the group have any examples of moments such as what I describe below? I need one for something I am writing: Insights that create higher-quality action in a story can come at any time from a student or the teacher. Such moments can make good stories great. Since we cannot predict them,
This is about the time when a lot of level 1 classes start reading, so what chapter books does anyone recommend for lower levels, mainly Spanish 1?
All lack of comprehension in our classes by our students is entirely our responsibility. If we ask too many questions, the sounds overwhelm them and they bog down. If we speak too fast, the speed overwhelms them. We are the only ones in the classroom who can control these things. A few fast-processing kids will
More from Tina: Why am I so interested in NT work? Because I think it takes stress off of teachers. It has taken considerable stress off of me. Using TPRS to get students to buy into a story based on targets requires a level of emotional trust that is not always easy to build even
In my opinion Tina is on target in these points about targets. She shares: Problems I have seen/experienced with targets are: Teachers find it difficult/draining to provide repetitions on targets. They have classroom management issues and give up on CI. Teachers are inclined to think, “I said it 75 times and I have the baseball
My new updated classroom rules. As per recent points made by Krista Kovalchick, I have removed the one about suggesting cute answers: Classroom Rules Listen with the intent to understand. One person speaks and the others listen. Sit up…Squared shoulders….Clear eyes. Support the flow of language. If the teacher is not clear, tell him/her. Do
