Helena Curtain is dangerous to our profession, if one accepts Krashen. Why is this? In my opinion, Curtain has done nothing more than cobble together a lot of ideas from TPRS and mix them with a lot of last century ideas, which can’t really be done any more than we can mix oil and water. […]
Here is a survey designed by Drew. If you have one send it and we will add it to this (new) Survey category. Drew explains: I did a great survey with our HooverCam (a camera that grades multiple choice tests on the fly, where each kid generated a random ID number so I wouldn’t know
Meredith is a new PLC member from Washington, D.C. Here is her bio and she needs some responses to an important question raised in the second paragraph below: Hi Ben! I’m a newly-joined member of your PLC and so far I am really learning a LOT. I’m in my first year teaching secondary ed –
This request is from Trisha: Does anyone have any experience with or knowledge of elementary French curricula? I am interested in anything from first grade to sixth. I know that there will be differences between what interests a primary student and what interests an upper elementary student. If you know about something, I’d appreciate the
Hi Ben and all, My wife and I just returned from a wonderful week in Ireland and came back immediately to 4 days of PLU for our local Latin teachers. Along with a colleague here, we created a 20 hour PLU totally devoted to CI. Had 9 Latin teachers there who ate this stuff up.
Dear Ben, I just wanted to give you an update about what is happening over here in France. Fifteen people from 8 countries, the USA, Canada, France, Germany, Holland, Spain, England and Scotland, have officially registered for the TPRS Workshop in Agen. (The lady from Scotland insisted that she is not English.) Seven or eight
Chrisz (Canada) has come up with an idea that has the potential to blow up the entire grading system into little pieces and bring some sanity into our lives: I have moved Spanish with TPRS to a whole-mark-based-on-final system. Yup, you read that correctly: 100% of the kids’ mark is based on their final exam.
John While doing my grades, I felt the need to bump a student’s overall grade up or down, depending on how well I thought my numbers accurately represented how that student was doing in my class. Trouble is, some of my little angels will check their numbers to see that they add up. This is
Nate Hill has a new site that could be of interest to our group. Here he describes it: As language teachers — especially as TPRS teachers — you know the importance of personalized CI for language learners. Wouldn’t it be great if language learners could build a network of speakers in the target language who
This is a brain break strategy, and a good one. The high level of rigor in comprehension based instruction requires brain breaks: The students form a circle around the perimeter of the room. A soft squishy ball, or just a tennis ball but nothing harder, gets tossed around the group from one kid to another. The
For those new to this group, this from TPRS in a Year! explains what circling is: Skill #5: Circling In the same almost magical way that pausing and pointing properly creates more engaged students, the students become strongly engaged when you circle properly. There is always a strong link between student engagement and good circling.
There is a rhythm to circling. It should not be a totally conscious, mechanical process, but rather one based on rhythm. Over years, it kind of moves down into our bodies and, whether we circle a targe structure a lot or just for a few seconds, it is still a feeling more than something that we think about
