Ben Slavic

These RT posts will necessarily be disjointed. It’s all we can do – Jason hasn’t written the book yet. Let’s just piece together things as best we can, then, as we get some intellectual understanding, we can move to putting it into our bodies. I can’t wait to get to that point. It looks like […]

Just because a lingua franca is no longer spoken among a people (Latin, Sauk, Chickasaw, Euchee, etc.) doesn’t change the fact that it was originally acquired through sound patterns. All acquistion is sound based. There is no other way to learn a language because of how the brain is wired – it has to hear

Robert Harrell on Reader’s Theatre: Reader’s Theater is new to the concept of CI/TPRS. It needs to be distinguished from traditional Reader’s Theater. Traditional Reader’s Theater is when an actor or group of actors performs a “reading” of a play. Often they will sit on stools and will have the script in hand. There is

The dialogue below between Jody and I is just a sample of the kind of discussion we hope to have as we try to wrestle this template (not even begun) into existence. It addresses the crucial issue of making sure that RT is really about reading and does not become a story dominated largely by auditory input: Jody said:

Besides Reader’s Theatre, I have been thinking lately about using more instant writing during stories. I am exploring just writing the story during the class. I might just expand the “Oh, I Gotta Write This Down!” skill to say that all the time during the creation of the story. Before we knew it the story would be up there on

We can stop during the creation of the story in Step 2 and say, “Oh, I gotta write this down!” Doing this leads to acquisition of the subjuntive. (We don’t teach the subjunctive anymore, although I used to. Worksheets for over two weeks. Making them memorize all those expressions within each category (ndefinite antecedent, expressions

I had said earlier this weekend that RT embellishes what we do in Step 3 reading classes, but that is a mistatement. Actually, Step 3 reading is all about working from the class story created in step 2. RT has nothing to do with the three steps, and everything to do with reading novels, making

With the increased focus on tying learning targets to habits of learning (the Orthe Principle), comes increased personalization. As the director/coach keeps bringing up actor after actor and, in the process, calls out question after question for the group to answer, people get to know each other. Greater trust is built in RT. We always have the

To set up a chapter in a novel for Reader’s Theatre, we go through the book beforehand and find the scenes that best lend themselves to theatre. Next we backwards plan. Before we ever do a chapter in a novel, we must absolutely have identified any words in the novel that the kids don’t know (to

In Los Alamitos we didn’t have books because we were all French teachers. We didn’t have books (Isabella by Karen Rowan) on Friday either. But we should have. The point was to teach reading. At one point I was so captivated by Bryce’s acting with Annemarie (and the mom voice and the Mark Mallaney voice)

A teacher did some RT last week and reported back: …my one disappointment was my actors – should have fired them. I have to work on that…. This speaks volumes. It shows that we all need to deconstruct what Jason does – which includes very strict classroom order and discipline – and build it into

Robert sent Ch. 2 of the book. We’re going to slow down the posts on this project to give the author and translators time with it. I know that Robert wants ideas for improvement/change so please chime in on this and if anyone wants to put up their own novels you are most welcome. We