Here is a comment I better put here as a post to keep it within reach, as it were, in case anyone does a search on PQA. It’s on trusting PQA. It might be best to read this other article first: https://benslavic.com/blog/2011/08/02/choosing-structures-is-important/ The background on this is that Chris wrote: I think “receives a package” and “is afraid […]
The Spring 2012 Edition of the online International Journal of Foreign Language Teaching includes articles by a few of our group members: Articles include: Overcoming Fear of Reading in English: The Astonishing Impact of a Short SSR Experience by Kyung-Sook Cho A Comparison of TPRS and Traditional Instruction, both with SSR. by Joseph Dziedzic. Developing
Here is Kate’s lesson plan as per the two previous posts: Kate Marquez 3rd Grade FLES Independence Charter School Lesson Plans: Week of March 5, 2012 Unit: Family and Home Unit Objective: By end of unit (late March 2012) teacher will invite Spanish-speaking family members to visit each class. Students will be able to ask
Here is a concrete suggestion for Kate as to how to plan this thing out to make sure things go well. It is especially useful in this kind of situation, when you know you are going to be observed but you don’t know when: Sometime during the week before you know that the observors will be
I got this from Kate in Philadelphia: Hi Ben – I just found out that my supervisor has arranged for evaluators from ACTFL to visit next week. We are getting interviewed as well as observed but we have no idea which class they will show up to. I am super nervous about making sure that
I haven’t forgotten about RT and a template. Yesterday in a reading class I decided to just try a little very basic RT, to get over my nervousness about the whole thing, because, when you see Jason do RT, you get intimidated by the power and scope of what he does. The text was about a couple of
Stephen Krashen here suggests a way that we can share a great idea with others that my, if enough people emrace it, put a dent in the Achievement Gap. In the process, we might learn to read for the fun of it again. It’s not too late! The Bookmooch plan: An easy way to help close
Here is an example of basic PQA. It’s always good to keep our fundamentals sound and revisit them from time to time. If the structure is: lazy then first you write both the word and its translation into L1 on the board and you tell the class what it means: …class, paresseux means lazy…. Then
A new problem is cropping up in schools that have accepted the TPRS/CI approach and want to move as quickly as possible in that direction. It is that some teachers in the department will immediately start talking the talk in meetings, and even attend trainings, but, for whatever reason (they don’t really get it, they don’t
[ed. note: don’t read this long article on the Net Hypothesis if you aren’t willing to do full-on comprehensible input in your classes in the form of listening and reading. You won’t like the content because it will make you change what you are doing in your classroom.] Judy Dubois wrote this: If we talk
Here Robert describes the new AP format for German, which will be put into place for the 2013-2014 academic year. I’m going to try to memorize the course themes so that I can instantly inform any doubters that this change is really taking place. Can you imagine what kids who have only been trained to
There are some kids who do well on the AP exam in spite of not hearing the language in the classroom. These are the very few kids in each room, not even four percenters but more like 0.4 percenters, who can pass such exams. But such kids only give the impression of acquisition. When they are prepared for the exam, they
