This is a must read post from Nathaniel Hardt on reading: Three years ago I had a class in which we did SSR (Sustained Silent Reading*) using Blaine’s readers. Students started with Pobre Ana and progressed at their own rate through the books. One student’s experience is noteworthy. In the fall, she regularly groaned when […]
Eric Spindler: …we meet monthly in Western Illinois. Our next meeting is December 1st at 6:30 at Galesburg High School….
Zach Al Moreno just shared an insight with me: “Once you get into this stuff, there is no correct order to it. You can do anything at any time.” He went on to provide an example: PQA doesn’t have to be done as a Step 1 procedure. You can start with a story and then get
We are getting really busy here. Lots of posts are in the queue, held back because I don’t want them to get lost in a sea of too many posts and comments per day, which seems to have happened this year more than in previous years. Are we doing that? Is the amount of ideas
Eric advises: MANDATORY READING FOR THE PLC AND ALL FL/SL TEACHERS: http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED135245.pdf This article is incredible! It could have been written today and be just as relevant as it was when it was written 40 YEARS AGO!!! (Savignon, 1976). This could have been written by a TPRS teacher! I couldn’t even begin to give the
We had started to post about regional meetings and then we haven’t for awhile. If your group is meeting, let me know and we’ll post it. From Emeka Debyser: If anyone is in the west Michigan area (Kalamazoo, Grand Rapids, Holland…) and would like to meet with our group to work on CI, please contact
We have, by now after all these years, so many strategies to use that it’s ridiculous. Most of us have settled into a diet that we prefer and all is well. We’re not overeating. I personally am enjoying a steady healthy diet of stories and readings using Reading Option A, which right there can require
Here is a nice way to teach some serious grammar on “if” clauses as per: Si clause in present/result clause in future Si clause in imperfect/result clause in conditional Si clause in pluperfect/result clause in past conditional I circled this sentence yesterday for 85 minutes and it didn’t get boring because of the nature of
I’m just not into giving classroom instructions in the TL. I know many of us do that. It just seems artificial to me. My focus is on the CI I am preparing to do in that class and I don’t want those weird confused looks on my kids’ faces when I set it all up.
Look what these Americans (clip below) have done in the Golden Age of our culture. I watched it again with the sound way up, my heart filled with love for those people who uplifted so many, much of it in time of war and darkness. I made a connection and it isn’t too “California”: The same
When we write something new or that they are weak on on the board in the form of Point and Pause, most of us write the TL word next to the English and connect them with a dash or an equal sign. I’ve been leaving out the TL word lately. It builds better accents and
When I give a y/n quick quiz, now I leave the reading up. The students, in order to check their answer, pore over the text with intense attention to detail. It’s a way to make sure that the test has pedagogical value while at the same time guaranteeing the kids success on the test. A
