Here’s panel 4 of that Georgia document: Provide learners with a rich target language environment that includes extended listening opportunities such as narration, descriptions, and explanations. Finally – this is one I agree with. This is exactly what TPRS does – we extend listening opportunities up the wazoo; we narrate stories and – in PQA […]
Laura Censi sent this image, taken at the end of class. Sorry I can’t figure out how to make the image smaller. Here is what she asked: Hi Ben, This is my first year doing TPRS and I’ve got three Spanish I classes. I wanted to show you how much I have on the board. I
I got this from Lori – there are two good discussion points in it, one about designing a curriculum from target structures (the only way I would ever “design” a curriculum and that with reluctance) and another about the P word – projects. Please throw some ideas at Lori. If she comes up with a
Somebody once commented to me about the combined intellect we have on this blog and I heartily concur. There’s Robert doing his 50% and the rest of us doing our half so Robert doesn’t have to do it all. And some of us, like Sabrina right now who is moving from Chicago to join our
Let’s take a look at panel 3: Help learners clarify meaning and express understanding without translation. If they mean no translation, as per the last blog entry on this site, then this is just another impractical idea. Who wrote this? Any teacher who has actually spent time in a classroom knows that this is impossible to achieve in
The Georgia FL Tenets as published in 2009 were in a kind of slide show or power point format. Here is one of the first panels from that Georgia document about what they want their foreign language teachers to be doing in Georgia classrooms: AVOID using translation as a tool for clarifying meaning. This is
In 2009 I happened to come across a link to the Georgia Foreign Language Tenets. I read them and was astounded at how contrary to what we know about how people actually acquire language they were. I haven’t been able to find these tenets online lately so maybe somebody took the link down. Or maybe they can be
I am just so satisfied with the Quick Quiz concept. Quick Quizzes are more than just assessment tools – they are a necessary “glue” for classroom management. How? Because they are so simple, they offer the students an easy grade if they but listen. As soon as the student figures that out, they cease to
A few weeks back we had a brief discussion of the Where Are Your Keys Program. Carla has looked it over and shares, for those who were following that thread: Dear Ben, I have been studying Where are your keys? (WAYK) online for a few weeks now. I haven’t personally seen what success looks like
We have been slowly moving in the direction of increased use of video to share ideas of what we are doing in our classrooms. John’s Vimeo clip posted today reminds us that we don’t always have to write articles to share with each other here – we can film them. We may not have the
We were talking about the value of daily formative assessment in the form of Quick Quizzes. John Piazza and Judy Ramos have sent in excellent options to using scantron sheets, which not everyone has access to: John sent this link: http://vimeo.com/52554005 Judy’s option is here: Scantron option – Ramos for more on Quick Quizzes, see
I got this question from a teacher and thought I would just ask the group: Ben, I am EXCITED to have the blessings of my administrators to use CI as my methodology with Spanish I this year. They have also agreed to send me to training (the Dallas area is probably as far as they’ll
