Ben Slavic

One way to teach prepositions (sorry, this might only work for French) is with a song sung to the tune of London Bridge: sur sous dans (devant, derriere 3X) sur sous dans (devant, derriere 3X) a cote de… pres de loin de (devant, derriere 3X) pres de loin de (devant, derriere 3X) a cote de…

Here is an overview of the StarChart™ by our group members Jesse and Elahe. Jesse calls it “a summary of his experience and understanding of our Zoom CI classes.” It’s a great description of the Star and I suggest that anyone currently reading the Ultimate CI books and/or are currently taking the Ultimate CI Zoom

Normally, I focus only on content here, but I would like to register something else here in this post today. I am feeling, for the first time in 20 years of slogging through the TPRS/CI wars, real and authentic hope. What does this mean? I’m trying to say here that I finally feel, as I

The difference between doing tableaux vs. stories using the StarChart™ is that stories involve creating a problem and a solution and they also involve people talking, which doesn’t happen in tableaux vivants. This means that in stories there is action in the form of movement of the actors from one point to another, and dialogue,

The old idea of “spare the rod and spoil the child” is out of date. 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 never get each time that it’s delivered

I know that in the law there are various levels of, for example, murder, premeditated being the worst. But do murderers avoid imprisonment when their crime was unintentional? No. Ignorance of the law is no excuse. Similarly, in the last post here I tried to make the point that teachers who hurt children through ignorance

FACT: People learn languages effortlessly, using a part of their brain – the unconscious mind – that cannot be taught to, cannot be reached with traditional language instruction. FACT: Most language teachers do not know this, with the result that they teach to the rational, linear, conscious mind. This is idiotic. FACT: In 50 years

Live in your classroom in full confidence that the next moment will manifest safely, creatively, just as the next note manifests in a piece of jazz, naturally. The next note is the next word or word group. Language is not predictable and controlled, but by its very nature free. This is called teaching from faith

One of the biggest things that we miss in class, perhaps because we are teachers, is what the kids are seeing and experiencing as we focus on providing them with good comprehensible input. We have to be in control, yes, but we can’t be bullies about it. We can’t control everything and thus ruin it.

We should not quit a job because we have been given too much to do and we can’t handle it. We keep our jobs by simply doing less. We don’t coach that team. We don’t volunteer for that activity. We protect our balance and our mental health. We don’t stress so much about kids who