Ben Slavic

This is a repost from last November. I feel that the stress now in April is much much higher than then so I am reposting it: Stanford neurobiologist Robert Sapolsky’s long work with baboons has revealed that the big stress is on those lower down in heirarchical systems. Those at the top don’t get the […]

Elissa:  On Wednesday night this week for the parent curriculum night I will have two 20 minute slots to do a demo class for parents and am thinking about what to do. Am leaning toward the “has/wants” thing… Would love your thoughts on this…. Ben: There was a blog discussion at some point about parent/curriculum

In January Kate was called out in a post observation email by an administrator who doesn’t yet understand how people acquire languages. (That is an understatement.) We asked for help from the group, not just academically in terms of pro-Krashen statements of support that she could share with this administrator, but also emotionally, to deal with the

I got this email from a Chinese teacher of small kids: Do you have any idea where I can find TPRS stories with simple pictures? They are hard to find. Any ideas out there about what are the best materials for younger kids in terms of creating stories?

To get video of ourselves teaching is a real challenge. We can all agree that the reticence on sending in videos to share with others here is well-founded and very understandable for all of us. It’s a pain in the rear to set up the camera, we have to get releases from the students, we have to be

Maybe somebody can provide an answer to this question from Annemarie: Q. Are there any blog posts about the faster processors, the students that just get it right away? I have this handful of students in my 6th, 7th and 8th grade classes who find the books we read super easy. I go too slowly

Excellent information from Michele: Dear Ben, The post below has several links to a video that I made yesterday and uploaded today. I’m sending it to you because MSU Clear has made the system of subtitling way easier than any other place that I’ve found…easier than Garage Band, easier than iMovie. I don’t know what

Here is the English version of the final chapter of Robert’s novel: Return Huntington Beach, Today It is not dark anymore but light, and Götz swims towards the light.  As he is swimming, a monster wave takes him and throws him hard on the sand.  For a moment, everything is dark again, and Geoff –

With this installment we have the final chapter in Nordseepirat, with congratulations to Robert. Now, let’s be clear about what this means in terms of our creating materials together, hopefully using Ben’s list as we learn to work together in that interest. This novel will be available for use by PLC members at no charge

Here is the last of those ridiculous conversations. But there are hundreds of them all over the internet going on every day. Are the kids really that bad? Is there anything that their behavior may be trying to address to these adults, in the only way they know how? Did these teachers really get sent

Here is another one of those ridiculous conversations: Teacher 1: Is there something in the air today? I had the same type of day with my 8th grade students. I just wanted to let you two know that you are not alone. Teacher 2: It’s funny you wrote this, because I was going to ask

This from Chris today: I went to our state’s FL conference over the weekend and first of all, Susan Gross is fantastic! Second, I ran into one of the Spanish teachers at our high school and she asked me “You use that TPRS, don’t you?”. She tried sounding nice when asking this question, and it