Someone not in the PLC has asked me this question. I don’t know how to begin to anwer it: Hi Ben, I’m really enjoying your book so far – it’s been amazingly helpful in organizing my class for TPRS style learning. I’m teaching an ESL class to newcomer middle schoolers who are in mainstream classes […]
We are in a kind of fellowship, as per: Frodo: I wish the ring had never come to me. I wish none of this had happened. Gandalf: So do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the
Here is a handout I give to observing teachers when they visit. I think it is not too complex for new teachers and it helps them as they use it to follow along throught the class. Ben’s punch list of things to think about in a TCI class – pls. look for these things as the class
We have another Lori in the group and she has written a nice bio for us. Thank you and welcome, Lori. Those who still haven’t submitted a bio, maybe you can use Lori’s as a model and get them in. Many have yet to do so – make it a New Year’s resolution! Hi Ben,
What we do is a mental and emotional exercise in realizing that our worth does not and never has and never will come from teenagers who, for the most part, don’t value our work at all. They don’t. And yet we spend years trying to get them to not only value our work, but us
Here is another idea for a writing class, to add to free writes, aWB, bWT, and the other things we discussed in that thread last November about writing. It’s just an idea I had and I haven’t tried it yet but I am going to tomorrow. It’s with a second year class. I wouldn’t do it with
I have been threatening to put up a few videos here from classes filmed in November and December. Here is the first one. It is based on Jim’s story Brrr! and this is just the PQA part so there are three more to come, one on the story and two reading classes. So the first link
I vote for this simple little story by Anne as a good candidate to get back into the swing of things. It’s simple, funny, and most importantly, simple. And did I say that it is simple? When I did it in December, Jana gave Vicky a fish wrapped up in a magic carpet, and then,
This is from skip by way of the moretprs list. I include it here because it fits into our recent thread here: Hey Ben – This recent post from the more list resonates with the talk on the blog recently about “teacher control”. We have SO much work to do 🙁 to save our children from this…).I deleted the name
Some of us are in worse situations then others. Those of us here in Denver Public Schools, for example, are in the majority to the extent that, because of the huge work over years of Diana Noonan, teaching using comprehensible input is pretty much a district wide requirement. But many in this group are not
I got this from an excellent TPRS/CI teacher today: …today I found myself pissed. I had a great script, was circling, pausing, pointing, going at a snail’s pace, pouring rivers of gold from my heart to theirs, and they wouldn’t receive it. This was one of the few times that I didn’t blame myself for
Robert (Harrell) reminds us about boston.com. below. This is something Paul Kirschling does all the time. That’s his lesson plan. He uses pictures to teach culture. He puts up the picture and off they go. I made a kind of composite list of cue words at the bottom of this post, taken from stuff sent in
