The author continues: These last 3 years I have been beaten down pretty badly by these few kids. I have had to give up many other things to make my transition to CI. They have ruined much in their tenure with me. Now, I don’t even try to speak Latin with them too much. They […]
Here, in two parts, is an anonymous response to the story about that Latin teacher published here a few days ago. The responder is also a Latin teacher. This is part 1: I wanted to respond here to this post as it resonates so clearly with me. While I don’t know who this teacher is,
Andrew Snider sent this: Hi Ben, I was reading John Medina’s book Brain Rules and I had an idea to give students a brain break but stay in the target language. I call it ¿Vida o muerte? — Life or death? After a 10-15 minute stretch in the TL, I give the students a life
Note: I apologize but can’t remember who sent this in: I am testing an idea to see if I can use finger gestures to establish meaning of more than just the third person, and also to gesture verb tenses at the same time. We’ll see how it works out. I am trying to get a video
We discuss blurting out issues all the time. It’s been a major topic, like SLOW, for many years here. Do we control blurting in our classrooms? Up until now, I have thought that the posted Classroom Rules and jGR were enough to control blurting. I have a new take on it. Those two things are
I have a question for the group. Should brain breaks always be in the TL? That is, the kids may be batting a ball around the room but should they be allowed English during that time? I think the answer should be no, because if we do not establish a clear culture of only using
A teacher in our PLC has endured repeated attacks all year – her first year in the school – for doing CI in her Latin classes. I won’t mention the teacher’s name because it isn’t important. The story is important, because in my view it is unprecedented. The attacks have come from parents who want
Those aware of what Paul is going through out there in Utah may not have read this from last February. Just so we know it’s not just unreasonable class size and load that is hampering his professional life right now. Those who may remember this may want to reread it just out of respect: Hi
I know that more than a few people in the PLC are going to be making copies of this for ammo in discussions with administrators this year. Robert has graciously provided the full article to some of us here even though he is not back yet, and I found a way to load it into his message: Hi everyone, Skip
Robert's Full Scope and Sequence Article in One Place Read More »
This morning Robert sent in a coda to his Scope and Sequence articles: Since writing my response to my administrator, I have thought of another reason that some students do not speak: the impatience of the teacher. We as teachers do not give students sufficient time to process before we either supply an answer or go
This last article in this series is Robert’s reply to his colleague’s last e-mail in which he mentions pushing lazy students: Hi again, Thanks for continuing the conversation. I agree that sometimes some kids need some “nudging”. However, the truly lazy student is, in my experience, a rarity. Once you get through the veneer of
