Ben Slavic

These two jobs make our total available jobs at 57. I don’t think any of us could have predicted the impact on classroom management of letting these jobs emerge organically into the classroom setting. I find it much more powerful than even jGR in that respect. Here are the two new ones: 1. Place Poster […]

Anne Marie is in one of those situations where she is presenting on comprehensible input at a board meeting and would like our help and suggestions: Hi Ben! I’ve been asked to present 5 minutes of TCI to the Portland School Committee here in Maine for next Tuesday’s board meeting.  It’s to give them an

This from skip Crosby: The 8th Annual TCI Conference in Lewistonn Maine October 10,11 and 12…. The Agenda: Laurie Clarcq will present on: 1. Using Music in a TCI class 2. Assessments (TCI style and standards based) 3. Embedded Readings 4. Using TPRS (the three steps) a DEMO with a lesser known language (Vietnamese) Sabrina

Ian Burke sent this question: What do you suggest to people who have already gone down the road of learning a language through left brain approach, classes etc. and have failed or who have reached an unsatisfactory intermediate level like so many have done. Is it possible to fix? They have mixed jumbled output from

We often return to the theme of Simplicity as we go along and that is a good thing. On his website yesterday James published this idea about how to use a word processor to create personalized readings for step 3 of TPRS that allows us to make that process simple, since preparing readings for five or more

So are we going to give energy to that judging thing going on when adult observers come into our room? Perhaps we should remember that: “Toutes les grandes personnes ont d’abord été des enfants….mais peu d’entre elles s’en souviennent.” (Le Petit Prince, Dédicace) “All grown-ups were once children…but only few of them remember it.” (The

So let us ask a question about being judged. What if we didn’t feel judged when an observer came into our classroom? What if we could see through the false power – I believe it is false – that the observer thinks they have over us? Their power is only the power that we give them. Our job

When people come into our classrooms to “observe” us what are they really doing? I think that they are judging us. They should call their creepy actions what they are – judging. Announced or unannounced, it is still judging. Sure, they say that they are there to help us, but that is a surface truth. The deeper truth, in my

Chris Roberts recently made a comment here that reflects what we all think and feel when being observed: …the assistant principal came in and observed the entire period of Spanish 1. I was a little nervous because I didn’t know he was going to be coming in, so it wasn’t necessarily a “fun” lesson…. First of all, look

Liam reports: Ben, I went to iFLT over the summer, which was really, really good. But, honestly, reading Stepping Stones was perhaps twice as impactful. Most of the info was not new for me, but to read all of it, in one place, systematically laid out, was dynamite. I can see reading it every summer

It’s truly odd that the very people who claim to be the elite in education, the IB people, have their heads most wedged when it comes to best practices and current research in foreign language education. This is from our group member Joe. It’s nothing new for many of us, but that doesn’t make it any

Carol Hill is chill and is in New Jersey. Carol and I are cut from the same mold and she has supported me in many moments when I was unsure of myself. She conveys to others in our group the message that we can do it and she usually finds some article in the research