Jen anticipates her first days back with the kids after the hurricane: Ben, I used Matava’s “The Thirsty Boy” as a basis for my own story “The Cold Boy” that others might want to use and/or help me to tweak a bit. It uses “need/want/have/goes”. I PQA’d the structures today (it is our first day back since the […]
Charlotte (in Canada) has a question for us: Hi Ben, I have an interesting dilemma that I could use some suggestions for. An elderly, wealthy benefactor is contemplating giving my German department some funds, but he wants to know how I would spend the money. My answer might make him decide to proceed or withdraw
Thanks to John for sending us this article: In a NYT article on the impact of technology on student attention spans, we see another example of a “dedicated” teacher taking it all on: “’I’m an entertainer. I have to do a song and dance to capture their attention,’ said Hope Molina-Porter, 37, an English teacher
I saw this on moretprs. A cambridge study saying that language learning is unconscious: http://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/unconscious-language-learning/ In other news, I went to a workshop today with Teri Wiechart. It was a session for teachers who are already using TPRS and it was, what she called, a “teacher talk” session where she answered questions about our problem
Vote for one of these: Choice A: Teaching is all about hard work, especially in assessment. We must give as many formative assessments as possible so that our students do well on the summative tests. We must take frequent writing samples. If we are unable to give a quiz in one class, but have done it in
We know that the main reason kids don’t get involved is because they don’t understand, which is because we are going too fast. We know that. But perhaps another reason that TPRS stymies teachers is that the method requires that we listen to our intuition, which is not exactly a major sport in schools. For
Below is Robert’s Statement of Involvement for those following the thread started by Diane: https://benslavic.com/blog/wp-admin/post.php?post=21982&action=edit He clarifies: If someone disagrees with the description or statement of equity, then this becomes the basis for a conversation about collaborative and collegial work. If someone comes later and says they signed that they agreed under pressure, then this
Lori sent this: Ben, It looks like I should have the opportunity to teach a CI level 4 Spanish class next year; I’ve only taught 1st and 2nd so far. I need a course description for the guidance office to post in their class listings. The one I was given is very generic from the
Great post and video on Quick Quizzes from John: Ben, I have just posted a short video in which I describe how I write, administer and grade a quick quiz. I have figured out a way to grade each one in about 5 seconds, for those who don’t have access to Scantron. You can also
Margie just joined our group and we thank her for her bio: Hi! My name is Margie Snyder and I teach Spanish at a middle school in West Virginia. I taught middle school science for 8 years before taking 5 years off when my youngest daughter was born. When I returned to teaching, I was
We welcome Sharon to our group: My name is Sharon Reiter and I signed onto this community this August (2012). I am just returning to the classroom after six years of retirement. I teach Spanish 1 and 2 to high school juniors and seniors in rural West Tennessee. I was born in Oakland, California, and
Here is Laura’s bio: I teach at a 600+ student high school in Belfast, Maine. It’s been a long journey getting here from Córdoba, Argentina, where I was born and raised. This is my seventh year teaching Spanish and sixth with TPRS. I came into teaching quite late and accidentally, when the high school in
