Ben Slavic

I Was Just Thinking

I was just thinking that teachers who use CI are some day going to be in huge demand. It’s already starting to happen judging from the last two Reports from the Field (from Mary Beth and John Bracey). So if it is true that charter and private schools survive on the quality of their program, […]

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Embedded Readings

From John Piazza: Hi Ben, This summer I’m going to be putting together and adapting a lot of readings using embedded reading strategies (ER). One big question is over whether to use ER’s to bring all students up to a high level reading, or rather to take a mixed level approach, with students reading at

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First Day Notes

Whether we begin our first day with a story or with the CWB cards doesn’t matter. And it is possible to take just one card and work with one student exclusively for the first two or three days to create a story from the card by asking the questions where and with whom. It’s not

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First Day

Chris mentioned in a comment here recently that he starts the year out on the first day with a story. It’s a good idea. I often turn the CWB card information into a story with the springboard words of where and with whom. I just want to make it clear, as we start to hammer

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Importance of TPR

We notice that in bike lanes there are images of bikes to convey their intended use. They don’t write the word BIKE LANE there – they draw a dude on a bike. Why? Probably because we process images faster than words. That tells us something about the importance of gesturing. Over the past year we

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An Observation

Connie Navarro is the DPS LEAP observer for WL teachers (LEAP is the district mandated professional evaluation program in DPS for all subject areas). Diana and Connie were observing a class yesterday and Connie sent the following comments to two other (Learning Lab) observing teachers, both who have been struggling with CI quite a bit

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