I think it’s amazing. We don’t have just one job – teaching kids – we have three. The other two jobs are: 1. trying to constantly grow and change into the 21st century way language will be taught, and 2. keeping up with all the emails we have to read from over wonderful administrators who think that […]
It occurred to me that if I write less articles, I can publish more of yours and release more of the articles stuck now in the queue. My fear is that I will talk a big ball game about offering training to new people here and then not do it because our conversations about the
When you run the grueling sport of cross country, it’s easy to slow down. You’re running at a high rate of speed for miles and all you want to do is slow down. Then someone comes along next to you and you have to speed up. It may be a teammate or somebody from some other
Teacher of the Month – August 2013 – Mary Beth Tietgens Read More »
Here is Panel 7: Plan and teach around a theme. In this panel, the Georgia teachers who wrote this plan for teaching languages gave a fine example of some written student work on the theme of endangered species. It was great. It was also written by a superstar. Let me think about this – teaching
Lori sent this: There is a really exciting opportunity for anyone in the Delaware, Southern PA or North Maryland region. My department chair and I are currently creating a TPRS/CI curriculum and just found out today that we will be needing another Spanish teacher. Please send me a message at loribelinsky@gmail.com Warm Regards, Lori B
James Hosler wrote an article to share with the group that is pretty important. I will time stamp this same article for August, as I see it as important as jGR in some ways. I am creating a category called jGA – James’ Great Argument – for it. It’s on a topic most of us deal with all the time,
Okay. Saturday morning now, and I have my first cup of coffee. Here’s the story a little more filled out. A couple of changes took place in our district this past year. You should know that Gwinnett County Public Schools is the largest school system in GA and compares size wise with the LA School
Here is Panel 6: Present vocabulary in chunks and in context rather than as isolated words or lists. In TPRS/CI we chunk words in context. It’s awesome. It is the right way to go. Totally agree with this one. 2 and 4.
As I mentioned in the last post, I weigh jGR at 65% of the grade. But how frequently do I assess using jGR? A teacher asked me this question in an email: Q. In your new book you mentioned using jGR for a daily assessment. Do you make that assessment every day for every kid?
I weigh Quick Quizzes at 65% of the overall grade and jGR at 35% – those numbers work for me. I would like to share in this post how often I enter grades on Quick Quizzes: My take is to do as many as I can. Two per week minimum. But I see the wisdom of
Panel 5 says: Provide learners with meaningful concrete experiences, making extensive use of visuals, props, realia, and hands-on activities. I am kind of split on this one, but I am going to have to disagree. This implies that the teacher is this kind of Professor Magic with a deep bag of interesting tricks and activities (realia)
I want my classes to be about discovering things together with my students. I want to make things up with them. I want us to learn together how to have fun while we learn French. I believe that my students need people like me to help them get more curious, and less jaded, about school.
