Embrace the good news that you don’t have to be a TPRS desperado anymore. You no longer have to skate around on the thin ice of the internet to build your proficiency program, looking for things that “work”. Instead,, you should be offered something that is not in the form of little pieces here and
Q. We have to submit a syllabus for each class, with supplies needed, district tardy and behavior policies, grading policy and classroom behavioral policy, what do you suggest as a possible syllabus using your approach? A. One answer and perhaps the best one is to hand in the same syllabus as your CI colleagues and
Julia reports on a student reaction to Claymation: “One of the students working with Invisibles and claymation is giddy because she gets to be crafty for the first time in a really long time. She’s applying for art school and has to do serious artwork for her portfolio. She asked to be kidnapped today so
Julia’s students have extended the idea of making clay figures out of their individually created characters to do claymation. Below is their first project. When thinking about the end-of-year celebration, I can just imagine the joy in a class as the kids, the parents, staff, admins, and any other invited dignitaries including the news media
Ben, I can hardly believe how well the Ultimate CI program works. Here are a few highlights I want to share with the group: I walked into class yesterday morning without doing any prep for this. Before CI I spent significant time and effort on lessons that worked ok but I would have to be
More from Julia: I am going to buy clay for the kids today. One of my favorite things about this CI experience has been seeing kids blossom…those I never knew before. Ironically, my formerly least favorite students are charming now that they have the chance to be. I am really thinking a lot about how
Q. Hey Ben! I am presenting a PD to teachers of my school on Monday about literacy strategies. I am going to model and have them practice some strategies that I feel are high leverage with ELLs and struggling readers. I was looking for your input… A. I personally feel that there is no such
Here is another review of the two new Ultimate CI books, this one by Marko Sanden of Fluency Fox: The StarChart™ Is The Modern Foreign Language Teacher’s Dream Come True And It Is Nothing Less Than A Paradigm Shift In Our Field. “Ben’s methodology has taken SLA research and distilled it down into a practical
Here is a review of my two latest books. I am very happy: Review of The Ultimate CI Book 1 and Book 2 by Ben Slavic During my recent long-awaited professional development for teaching using Comprehensible Input, I realized that one of the reasons I had been drawn to the Spatial Curriculum by Ben Slavic
The old idea of “spare the rod and spoil the child” is out of date everywhere and that includes in our profession. It doesn’t align with the paradigm shift we are in. What shift? Basically, in my view, the shift is about learning to love one another – an ancient idea that we seem to
Julia’s kids have been doing claymation w their characters as per this 2019 report from the field: Hey Ben –Today was way exhilarating. Allowing the kids to be creative, as you say, and giving them purposeful jobs engenders so much goodwill, even among the formerly disengaged punks. There is so much buzz in the halls
The slow shift from real adult leadership to adult children being in charge of our schools and much of our government is underway. There seems to be no mechanism in place to prevent this takeover of confusing and divisive leadership. The result is that our schools are now more than ever being led by unqualified
