In a comment here a few days ago, Annemarie wrote: …I felt that I couldn’t have any moments of quiet, that I had to fill every single minute. I realize that I still feel that need…. These are the words of a warrior. Yet, the war is not physical, but mental. How can we convince
This is an update on the new Invisibles book. What I did was combine the two older books into one updated 410 page masterpiece, if I do say so myself (I’ve never said that about any of my other books) – it was an ease of reference thing. So, if you have purchased the books
Students are always exactly where they are, and if we express something in three seconds, and they need four, it is up to us to slow our speech down to their level and not expect the reverse to magically happen. When we do this, we exhibit and practice empathy. The TPRS Community rightly points to
In general, one could say that one of the primary reasons for many of the overall failures in the American educational system is that teachers routinely speak to their students, in all subjects, using rates of words per minute that exceed the capacity of high school students to understand them. There is data on this.
One day I was watching my classes being taught by a teacher new to the method. I was coaching her from the side of the room. Being new to it, she went extremely slowly. The kids responded beautifully, due to the excessive slowness. I felt the truth of SLOW at that moment. One student, whom
This is a repost from many years ago. The information in it cannot be repeated enough. Many of us fail to look in the right place for the solution to the problem of not reaching our students with our comprehensible input instruction in the way we want. We think we need new strategies, that the
You must accept that you are never going to come close to teaching your students anything more than a fraction of the language, in spite of what the College Board would have you believe to keep rapidly burning-out teachers all over the country contributing to their coffers in the form of the AP Exam and
Below is a video link to a Story Listening example (in German) by Kathryn Shectman. It’s a very simple story with lots of repetitions. Notice how she brings her pacing and vocabulary content completely down to the level of her very young students. The children are almost entirely focused on meaning and not at all
Craig had an idea that at this time of year if we create a one word image of a turkey we could have fun riffing on it. He explains: Hey Ben – ….I had each class come up with an invisibles story based on a turkey they created together, one who committed a crime or
Regarding distribution of instructional minutes in Story Listening (SL), I asked in a 2016 phone call with Dr. Beniko Mason, the originator of Story Listening, if she thought that Story Listening and the Invisibles would make a could combination CI program, My question was if a ratio of 50% SL to 50% Invisibles would be
There is one specific activity that I suggest we throw in from time to time as a break from the Invisibles. It is another way to teach using comprehensible input that is tried, tested and proven to work, and a very welcome addition to our CI arsenal. Story Listening is a highly effective technique in
The words in French, Spanish and English – Mais/Pero/But! – can be bleated. This is one of the funniest thing that occurs in my classes, and it occurs all the time. But it is hard to explain and may not resonate with some. Also, it may only work in French. In French the word for
