Viktoria has read the book with particular close attention to Cat. A. She has also attended the last few weeks of Zoom instruction on Cat. A. I am thrilled to report that we just finished a Zoom class in which Victoria demo’d Cat. A and she nailed it. She really did. What does that mean?
If you but learn how to teach in line with the standards and research, you won’t have to complain about being bullied by children in your classroom. Kids become bullies when they feel powerless. Give them power (i.e. knowledge of what you are saying) and – BECAUSE THEY UNDERSTAND – they will stop bullying you.
Alisa sent this: I just don’t agree. We in the specific field of language education have the upper hand, but nobody seems to know it. I think that with (1) the 65%/35% grading system used in the Invisibles and (2) small personalized classes, it can work fine. All we have to do is make sure
This post is from years ago, but worth a re-post: Some years ago, in a much-lauded speech to the Republican National Convention, then-New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie made “we believe in teachers” one of his central themes. This prompts the questions: What does it mean to believe in teachers? And, do we really believe in
I’ve been reflecting more and more about how it’s not about how smart you are, or how fast you process languages, but about the community piece. That’s why, even when instructing online, we can’t let that piece fall aside. We need to increase it. Indeed, everything is based on recognizing our students as people. And
Here is the link to today’s 5:00 p.m. Teacher’s Discovery webinar on online CI instruction: https://www.facebook.com/events/717709192298591/
This further explains some of the content of my webinar tomorrow: Rationale: If you are going to be successful in the fall with your online language instruction, you’re going to have to get your kids focused on the message and not on the language when you use the ZOOM platform. Despite your frustrations this spring
I’m doing a Facebook webinar for Teacher’s Discovery tomorrow, at 5:00 pm Eastern Time. Here’s the information: https://www.facebook.com/events/717709192298591/ Also earlier that day at 2:00 pm Eastern Time is our usual Zoom class on the Invisibles. We’re almost ready to go on to Category B! Anyone wanting in, let me know.
I will continuously fight against targeted CI instruction. It’s so sad that most CI teachers don’t even really know the difference. They think that targeting is what CI is. But it’s not. It’s an aberration and it’s costing them student engagement. When I said in the last article here that the novels and any targeted
The COVID crisis may be what we need to free TPRS and the entire CI movement from its self-imposed limits. What limits? Krashen has made it very clear that when you try to use comprehensible input to teach word lists, verb lists, thematic unit lists, semantic set lists, lists of words from chapter books (i.e.
The creativity that we see in the silent-era films of Buster Keaton is off the chart. But there is a reason for that – Keaton’s philosophy of making a film (and this in my view is an excellent philosophy for CI teachers to adapt) is that “the middle will take care of itself”. What does
Once in a workshop in Los Angeles, a teacher mentioned the UCLA researcher Earl Stevick (1923-2013). She said that Stevick was one of Dr. Krashen’s early mentors. The context of the conversation that day during our workshop was about how circling is not needed when using the Invisibles/emergent language because the new language tends to
