Ben Slavic

Eric sent this interesting article: http://www.sdkrashen.com/content/articles/2006._pdf_is_first_language_use_in_the_foreign_language_classroom_good_or_bad.pdf

This story by Greg Stout is a variation on  Cutting Down a Christmas Tree: wants to light a Menorah nothing happens Jill wants to light a Menorah. She goes into the bathroom. She takes a wet sponge. She holds the wet sponge up to the candle for 3 months, but nothing happens. James wants to

A story script from Robert: Hi Ben, Here is a story script I used in my German 3-4-AP class. I got the inspiration from Anne Matava’s “I Should Have Done it Myself” script. Some things to note: – Danny and Emily are brother and sister (twins) – Danny really does love baseball – This goes

On output and grammar: See my comment Sept. 22:https://benslavic.com/blog/blowing-up-alaska/ Krashen is not anti-any grammar and anti-any output! Grammar helps under monitoring conditions, can lower affective filters, and could even help make input more comprehensible. Output, as in interaction, allows us to provide input more personalized (compelling) and comprehensible. Output makes a person feel like a

From Alisa: I was googling around some ideas to spare the kids another 30 minutes of my story spinning. I found this “How to draw a…” step-by-step website that works perfectly! The artist draws a black line figure, step by step, and a kid sitting next to him copies each step. Mute sound. Narrate, using

We need to listen to Eric Herman more carefully. He has repeatedly said here that teaching grammar is just fine as long as it supports CI. In my own CI world, since I was trained by Susan Gross, I have always thought of grammar in pop up terms where you avoid all use of grammatical terms

Jen has to figure out what to do with this by tomorrow so if you have any ideas pls. get ’em in a comment field below: http://cce.org/work/instruction-assessment/quality-performance-assessment/tools-resources We have a new teacher meeting tomorrow about “instruction and assessment” and we were told to “review” this website prior to the meeting. 1) Who has time for

This was posted a week ago, but for those who may have missed it here it is again. It is far too important to miss, as we further redefine what the word curriculum even means: This, from Michele Whaley, is part of mounting evidence that the end is near for the old guard in language

We have years of posts on the topic of being observed and a category for it as well. Many of us go through a lot of angst when it is our turn to be observed in our classrooms, where anything can happen and usually does. It never helps when the department chair from the last century

I am working with an ESL teacher, Stephen Cook, in my school. We are trying to explore areas where ESL and TPRS/CI overlap. Our main current area of focus is the affective filter. Yesterday he brought his class into mine for a big brainstorming session, to see how his class would react to a story.

We must gesture the verb when we say it during PQA, all the time. We must constantly invite the kids to do the same. We can’t gesture the verbs in stories anywhere nearly as often as we can in PQA because there is so much other stuff going on in stories. Hearing the action is

The text below by Alisa Shapiro is written about really little kids, but applies to all of us at all levels: “By ‘affective filter’ can we include such slippery states of being as, say, hungry, hot and tired? For over 20 years I’ve been teaching 1st through 4th graders. Often, I repeat the same lesson to