Ben Slavic

In ordinary times, some 16% percent of public school students nationally are chronically absent, with higher rates among high school, black and Hispanic students, according to the U.S. Education Department. Now, with online school, it is up to 80% in some schools. And it would be difficult to measure, but I would suggest that we

There are still spaces in the upcoming Invisibles training on Zoom. See this link:

So much is going to change in our profession as a result of Covid-19! We will move more and more to using the internet, as schools go in that direction in general. Physically showing up for class will not happen very often, and eventually not at all, and that will reveal one of the biggest

Now let’s take a look at how Category A works, where in the Create phase we make a character from a student’s card in the Card Talk activity and then take it around the star to a completed journey. Category A – Creating a Tableau from a Student Card Category A/Sample Journey 1 – Henry

The Categories There are six categories of drawings of Invisibles – Categories A-F: Category A – Creating a Tableau from a Card Category B – Creating a Tableau from an Individually Created Image Category C – Creating a Tableau from a One Word Image Category D – Creating a Story from a Card Category E

You may want to consider joining our Zoom training group on the Invisibles. It’s a way to be able to meet the challenges that the coronavirus has brought to us and therefore a good way for you to keep your job over the massive changes of the coming years in our profession. Let me know

I am astounded by the implications that the coronavirus is bringing not just to our profession but to society in general. Of course, I am only qualified to speak about our profession, but I do feel that for every bad thing that happens in the world, 99 good things will also happen. They will just

How Does it Work? We take journeys around the star. The basic pattern for each journey is the same: Step 1: Start in the Create Phase (12:00 on the star). Here you create an image. Step 2: The Review Phase (2:00 on the star). Here you review the image. Step 3: The Write Phase (5:00

This is a repost from 2014. I ask the language community: “Who is going to orchestrate the obvious changes needed in ELA to get them up to speed with the research?” Someone has to do that. The chasm between WL and ELA pedagogy needs to be bridged: We have 2000 ELA instructors in Denver Public

We as teachers are generally strong people physically and mentally. We have to be – just because of the nature of the job. So let’s just stay strong mentally and physically during this crisis! Good things can come from this. Indeed, they WILL come from this. For one thing, so many of us who now

As many know, our long time group member Ryann Campbell was caught by the coronavirus about two weeks ago in the Washington hot zone. Here is her report as of today: “I got a bit worse, and had to go to the hospital. My oxygen saturation was dropping dangerously low. Last night was better than

Here is the third installment of the new Invisibles book: A Spatial Curriculum Let’s expand on the idea that we learn languages by focusing on the message only. In the past, language instruction has largely involved isolating parts of language in the form of grammar or working from word lists, and then breaking everything down