Counseling departments in some schools where CI is practiced in language classes often sense that special needs kids benefit from CI instruction in languages in ways that they cannot when the teacher is still doing traditional instruction. This leads them to approach the CI teachers in the building and request that certain students with dyslexia,
It generally feels like we’re failing at our careers but it’s not us; it’s the system around us. We’re doing a pretty good job actually, putting in as we are an entirely new pedagogy to replace one that has failed, and in that failure I include not just the grammar/translation approach but also TPRS. If
Note: I’m coaching a Chinese teacher on the Invisibles. Here are some questions that she asked. They cover more than Chinese instruction, so even if you don’t teach Chinese you may want to give this a quick read, if you are doing the Invisibles and already have some inclination of what Category A is about:
A repost: (I had a copy of this taped to my desk for 30 years. It helped me keep my sanity and know how to respond to bad leaders and other negative and controlling voices in my buildings:) There is a kind of energy in our buildings that carries or implies that we in fact
Why should we transmit mere information to our students when we can transmit so much more: interest, meaning, fun, confidence? Maybe we could even transmit to them a reason to believe in themselves. Why teach merely to their minds? Why not teach to the whole child, to their bodies and hearts as well? Maybe, if
This information is from The Big CI Book. It gives proper credit to Jody Noble. Jody’s idea – dating from about 2001 – was (certainly unintentionally) appropriated by many TPRS teachers over the years so that now it is known as the “Special Person” activity. But if you read through what is below, you will
Summary: Practitioners of CI get a lot more bang for their buck when they spread the process of getting repetitions on the language out over a process of reading the story, as opposed to using circling to get reps during the creation of the story. You may want to read this if you still use
One Word Images have caught on. I’ve been doing them since I first started them in 2002, but only lately have they become a basic CI strategy. Here are some additional thoughts about them as they have developed in my mind over the years, for those teachers in the PLC who may want to refine
A repost from 2017: A teacher needs help in how to respond to this situation: “I am in need of justifying how CI is an effective instructional strategy to my principal who indicated on my TKES observation that the students were not asked to write any vocabulary down during their Movie Talk. I went over
It’s never too early to plan our end of the year activities, and this post is simply to remind those who in the past have found success in late spring using the Children’s Story Project (found in A Natural Approach to the Year) to reserve the month of May and possibly even a few weeks
Sunday nights after dinner during the school year used to be emotionally very difficult for me. I made this prayer to God one time and it helped. I reprint it here periodically: Dearest God, Your teachers down here are hurting. We know you know that. We just need to say it. It seems like something
The whole thing about teaching a language is that it is the heart that leads in language production and not the mind. What does that mean? It means that people say things (i.e. use language, express themselves) because something in their heart prompts them to do so. It has nothing to do with the mind,
