Ben Slavic

Article

Sabrina forwarded this to me from Nina Barber, her colleague at Thomas Jefferson High here in Denver. I’m not sure what the article wants to say. Maybe someone could ‘splain it to me: http://sraspanglish.blogspot.com/p/21st-century-wl-teacher-tips.html

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Awkward Schedule

Ruth in Vermont requests some advice/ideas: I teach beginning French to grades 6-8. (This is my first year teaching French, but I am not a young new teacher at all.) I do not see my classes every day. Foreign language in our school is a .5 class, not a priority. We have an awkward alternating

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Poetry Declamation

I used to ask my kids to do poetry declamation but it has fallen by the wayside in the “too much to do” category. But over recent months some of us have been talking about the value of speech output and how much to ask for in class, etc. I am a big proponent of

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Sample Class

Angie Dodd, whom some will remember had the Year from Hell last year, reports: Ben, I just got the call that I’m a finalist for the Spanish position and they want me to teach an 85 min. block class incorporating weather/seasons and clothing and activities in the different seasons. They are actually looking for someone

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The Classroom Rules 2

Here is a brief commentary on each of the classroom rules: 1. Listen with the intent to understand. Such an obvious thing is rarely done by students in schools. They listen with the intent to get a grade on a test, if they even do that, and there is a difference. If they do not

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Burnt Out

I hadn’t heard from Bradley Donaldson (NYC) for a long time so I checked in with him last week asking for an update. Here is his response: Hey Ben, Sorry I’ve been MIA. Started off great with CI at the beginning of the year, but I fell off the wagon into my old ways when

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The Classroom Rules 1

This is a necessary updated repost: Classroom Management Tool #1 – The Classroom Rules On the posters page of this site: https://benslavic.com/tprs-posters.html you can find the “Classroom Rules Poster”. It is strongly suggested that you use this poster in your classroom. Why? Because it works. It is actually a collection of the eight best rules

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April Test Prep 2

I have chosen to take the current thread on April testing and isolate Eric’s set of excellent questions, presented by him this morning, and make a new thread out of it. So it is a new thread from an old one. We need to answer Eric’s questions, and a lively discussion on this could lead

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