Ben Slavic

We always seem to be in some kind of discussion about how the 1950’s style teachers in our buildings exhibit some kind of enmity to our current initiatives with comprehensible input. And yet, students are starting to say some remarkable things on our behalf. This brief report from Robert Harrell says it all. It is […]

I messed up and forgot to write an article for Teacher of the Month for February. Here it is: There are certain people with whom I have shared many hours of stimulating intellectual conversation, albeit in cyberspace, over the seven years of existence of this blog. They have been very rich hours. When I met

Diane in Chicago shares a troubling situation. We need to have a “form letter” response for situations like this: Hi Ben, Looking mostly for sympathy from the group. I need to reply to this email about one of my graduating 8th graders. She’s a great student and a quiet girl in general; she is right

We come and go with different threads and ideas here. My attention has again been snared this week by the importance of highlighting, focusing on, spending extra time doing TPR on, etc. VERBS. Eric shares a useful idea about that topic: I would like to share images to use for Visualization during PVA. I have

Like the report we got from Jeffery today, Joe brings happy news. It’s a good thing to read two positive reports in one day! So I wanted to give everyone an update to my situation which was posted back in September 2013. First, though, I want to thank everyone for their support, kind words and

Here is a fine report from Jeff. If you want to know more about Jeff and what he endured last year, click on the Teacher of the Month category: Dear all, I wanted to update everyone on how things are going. Many of you know all too well what kind of year I had last

Here is a question from the forum that we all need to read and provide thoughts about for Melissa: I’ve been reading through the articles on assessment and grading in an attempt to absorb as much as I can about how to assess and grade students in a CI classroom. I just switched over to

Here’s a question from Ben: Hi Ben – Here’s a question for the PLC: I have to write official year-long course descriptions for new classes at my high school that we want to get approved by the University of California. Has anyone else done this, especially in California, and can anyone help me figure out

Megan has a question and as usual I like to get multiple opinions rather than just my own answer, so here it is: Hi Ben, I have to say, I am confused about a piece of advice I have read in TPRS in a Year where it says that you can’t let the students suggest

Chris asked for a sample script from Anne Matava’s new book of scripts to set up Le Nouveau Houdini/El Nuevo Houdini. I’ve chosen the script written for Chapter 3, about the house rules Brandon had to follow when his parents went to Hawaii. In my level 1 class, instead of Brandon’s grandmother or a fireman

Do we need to limit structures to two or (typically) three structures for a story to work? Why do we have three structures and why have experts like Laurie Clarcq in recent years limited her stories to two structures? The answer is that when a student hears too many new things in a story, he

I know I have been juking people around on Anne Matava’s new scripts for the Le Nouveau/El Nuevo Houdini novels by Carol Gaab, but after some final editing by Martin Anders (TPRS Germany), they are ready. Translations were by Sabrina Janczak (DPS/French version) and Laura Avila (Anne’s colleague in Belfast, Maine/Spanish version). I am expecting