Ben Slavic

Susie always said to dive right into the method. I used to agree but now I think otherwise, for these reasons: 1. It is too difficult. I wouldn’t want to race in a Grand Prix without some practice time in a Formula 1 car first. 2. Too many people will notice, in and out of […]

Rules are the first expectations that we communicate to our students. Teachers who are new to TPRS, or struggling with TPRS often want to know what Rules work best. We have been taught that Rules=Discipline. Rules are not discipline. Rules are communication. They tell students what we expect. From the rules students infer what we

People always complain about how shitty Blaine’s novels are. Stop it. Just use Movie Reading to make it enjoyable for the kids to listen. Read to them with a relaxed, permission giving, softness. Read to them with love. Give the characters in the novel a bit of personality, but not too much (let the kids

A big reason I got attached to Anne Matava’s story scripts is because they fit in so well with my need to be guided along through a story. A more honest way of saying that is that my CI train went off the track all the time when I was just learning the method and scripts kept

In the last piece I wrote, “It is important we connect with the class for at least a moment to them know that we are here, we are glad that they are here, and that we will be making the decisions that direct what happens in the room.” If I make a few changes, I

This is from our brilliant Laurie. MB found it – it was posted awhile back. If you want the other one that goes with it, just cut and paste from the title here and put it in the search bar. Transitions are tough for all human beings. Each one of us transitions differently. It’s no wonder

Obviously when we do dictée we tell the kids the words for comma, period, question mark, quotes, etc., but I have started doing a cool thing that helps the kids become more aware of those pesky accent marks in French. If a sentence is: Sa mère crie… it often happens that the student “kind of knows” that

Smooth transitions are a key piece to successful classroom management. Most of us do not start out using TPRS in the classroom for an entire class period. Even when we get to that point on some days, we rarely do just one CI-based activity (ie PQA or storyasking) for an entire class period..especially if our

This is a lengthy post that is intended simply to gather together in one place some of the ideas/comments on what Ben Lev started, and hasn’t stopped (see in red below), in drawing the attention of his principal to how the new CA standards might really be interpreted by teachers if they were to stop and think about

Rules and Expectations Part 1b During the Lesson Here are some interactions that you will see being used in TPRS. I’ll list them in “script” format..the way that we might say them to students. For students who are NEW TO THE TL and/or NEW TO TPRS, the first explanations will probably be in L1. ONLY

Laurie has just posted a very important series of articles on her website (find the link in the lower right hand corner of this page). I will repeat each article here over the next few days, pushing other discussions aside just a bit. This stuff needs to be anywhere on the internet where comprehension based instruction and

I got this email from John. I read it on a gut level. What he did was what students of language who feel the same way should also do. No exceptions. This is very strong! Ben, I just wanted to share an anecdote about an experience I had playing music which relates to our work: Last year