What does it mean to finish a career? I have a simple answer that may not resonate with everyone but it is to me a true statement about my career. I think that, in first choosing a career, we are not just looking for a livelihood, but rather for a way to express ourselves in […]
Just to clarify, I got behind on the Teacher of the Month awards, so Eric was for March and this one is for April. Send me nominations for May at benslavic@yahoo.com. I would rather do this as a group thing. I don’t know how many of us are aware of the arc of Greg Stout’s
Our PLC member Erica McCurry, describes a Spanish opening in Nashville: Hey Ben! I hope all is well! My husband and I have prayed and made the decision to homeschool our daughter, a decision that was easy yet hard to make. Easy because it has always been my dream to stay home and homeschool my
I heard the ultimate argument for comprehensible input the other day. I was talking with a teacher about how everything in languages is far beyond the control of the conscious mind and she told me that just that morning her daughter Genevieve had said to her: “Mom, that’s outrageous! Mom, what does outrageous mean?” In
My CI meditation of late has been on the importance of making what we say relevant and interesting, and on a good day compelling, to our students. I think that, at the end of the day, that is why I prefer stories and working from a creative script over PQA. Erin sent a poem about
In this article jen highlights an area that is new in CI instruction, one that has hardly been touched, one that may not resonate with everyone, but which I myself see as instrumental if we are to succeed in our CI practices, if not with our students, then at least by and for ourselves and
Sean in a recent comment gave a nice synopsis of where he is with reading. I think it is an excellent interpretation of the overall reading ideas found here: I’ve played around with the following when reading the novels: 1) 5… maybe 10 minutes silent sustained reading. I’m actually getting 10 minutes of silent sustained
Hi, Ben, I had shared this information with Laurie and Jody and Laurie suggested that I send my thoughts on to you given that we have so many of our members just trying to make sense of things and end our year strong and on a positive note. You may remember that I put out
Hi Ben, I just got back from our meeting and it was wonderful getting to know everyone. We (Catharina, Carly, Greg, Greg’s friend Rachel, and I) met in this great beer garden in Queens (for those of you not familiar with NY, it’s one of the five boroughs) which was perfect for shooting the breeze.
Angie has kindly sent the materials she used for her 85 min. demo/job interview last week. If you remember, the whole lesson was a comprehensible input lesson but was focused on the seasons, so she couldn’t get tagged by any traditional teachers on the interview team who might claim that she wasn’t working with thematic
We have three reports on “what worked” when having to teach classes that are not our own. Obviously, if people come into our classrooms and our kids are properly trained, most of us would do stories. But the point came up recently about what to do (probably not stories) with kids whose classrooms we must
This is from Eric Spindler: Ben, We will be having a couple of openings at Galesburg High School and I would like to see some CI/TPRS people apply. Galesburg is about 1300 students and located in western Illinois between the Quad Cities and Peoria. I am supported and the school does a good job of
