This is a bio from Eric Herman. Watch some of the videos. Amazing from only a second year teacher! Hi Ben – I am a Spanish teacher, grades 3-8, in Edgartown, MA. I am in my second year of teaching, but thanks to my obsessive study of the second language acquisition research and of the […]
We have a set of questions here that need our attention and responses: Ben, This is year 2 (really semester 2) of my Spanish 1 TCI odyssey and I’m feeling some serious self-doubt. I am curious if, when you were getting started, you felt overwhelmed, a bit lost, maybe a bit random in terms of
I’ve been thinking about the administrator pressures that we endure each day. I consider them extremely detrimental to our mental health and I feel strongly that they are unnecessary, because administrators don’t understand how people acquire languages – they think it is an academic subject but it is a human one. So I updated this
A repost from last spring, updated: We have talked about what possible “forms” an academic year could take doing TPRS/CI. There are links on that topic here: https://benslavic.com/blog/category/yearly-planning/ There is a general plan that I have been gravitating toward. 1) I do about two months of the stuff described here to start the year, the
Chris Stoltz’ article is getting continued attention. This is from Nathaniel Hardt in Massachusetts: Hi Ben, I tried to get to where your commendation was to Chris’ article but couldn’t remember where it was. [ed. note: it is here: http://www.bctf.ca/TeacherNewsmagSept2013/ (p. 16)] I shared the link with other FL teachers in my district. At least
Here is a bio from Susan: Salut Ben! I am a French teacher at Junction City High School in Kansas. I’m one of those French teachers who is also the French Department. I attended a Blaine Ray Conference, probably 5 years ago in Denver, and decided to make the leap of faith. I told myself
Here is Jessica’s bio: I teach Latin at Guilford High School in Connecticut. I first encountered CI in the form of a TPRS demo using an African language at a conference and was blown away because I felt for the first time that I could, in the right circumstances, learn to understand a foreign language
Anne Matava has recently completed ten scripts for Houdini. Here is what she says about them: Ben – Three or four of these are some of the best scripts I’ve ever used, and the rest are solidly serviceable. The first one, the one about the rules of the house, the mother who is too busy
We are starting to get different versions of jGR, each tailored to the individual needs of the teacher. That is a good thing, as we are all individual teaching artists. Here is one from Chris Roberts, who first explains: Ben, I’m attaching my jGR revision that seems to be working for me. Could you take
Leigh Anne sent in an important article: Hi Ben – The data that our brains love CI (they call it ‘Implicit Learning’) is all there in black and white. This is from the National Center for Biotechnology Information at: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21861686 J Cogn Neurosci. 2012 Apr;24(4):933-47. doi: 10.1162/jocn_a_00119. Epub 2011 Aug 23. Explicit and implicit second
I have copied below the Denver Public Schools Appendix to the World Language LEAP Document. The LEAP acronym stands for Leading Effective Academic Practices. Search “DPS LEAP” for more information. Sometimes we refer to it as the Framework for Effective Teaching. It has a lot of teachers freaked out. If they don’t do what the document says
We share so many ideas in this PLC and so we get to learn from each other. Here is a cool idea from Carla: Hi Ben, There’s a tally app. It’s called Tally, and it’s in the IOS app store. Still free right now. I thought people might like it for tallying structures. You can
