We can’t have the mindset when we start the year that we are going to be merely teaching our students a language – that part is incidental. Rather, our mindset should be about looking forward to training them, which includes hiring the 17 student jobs (over months and months). We want to get to know
Teacher: Any words of advice on what to focus on? I don’t want to let my school / kids down this year. My response: You won’t. They only want to be loved, quite frankly, and you do that, I can tell. To repeat; they only want to be loved and feel confident. Love them from
Teacher: I’m mostly focused on what to do for procedures since classroom management has been my Achilles heel, and find myself overwhelmed with ideas how to structure my lesson plans. I know you said to stick to more traditional for now because it’s a new school, but I keep writing down ideas and then trying
In this article I hope to show how two of the bread-and-butter terms of TPRS and of the CI movement in general, two terms that people really like to spend lots of time on in trainings and summer conference, are largely unnecessary and tend to obfuscate and confuse new CI practitioners. Let’s start with something
I am making three TPRS books available to all PLC members for free. The books are TPRS in a Year!, PQA in a Wink! and Stepping Stones to Stories. Just email me at benslavic@yahoo.com and tell me which ones or all three that you want.
People who like to micromanage sometimes think that the Interpersonal Skill grade at 65% is too much, but it’s the most accurate grade we have. We are experts in assessing observable non-verbal behaviors and people who don’t teach a language aren’t. We see things they can’t see in kids’ eyes. If a kid isn’t able
Here’s an update on where we stand on the various topics we’ve been discussing over the summer: I haven’t forgotten our classroom management initiative (of writing the book here over the next year). I just have to accept that that (long dreamed of by me) book will get done when it gets done. We have
Craig just found this on somebody’s site online. Maybe elementary teachers could use it. Credit: not given, but I’m pretty sure those are my classroom rules.
Free Choice Reading (FCR) came up in discussion yesterday. Here is a video of Greg’s presentation on FCR at NTPRS this year in Chicago – not to be shared outside of the PLC.
I can’t post graphics in comment fields so I’m putting this here for Craig. Craig, I really like the simplicity here vs. the instructional cycles. But as I said in the comment field, this star is the DNA for the instructional cycles.
We’ve got to design curriculums that include all our students. It’s time for that. The research screams for such a need. Or are we going to continue to embrace the failed curriculums of the past, with the result that our upper levels classes remain shamefully lily white? If you want to be a part of
Greg gives a great report on OWL in the comment fields in the OWL – 1 post if you want to check it out – https://benslavic.com/blog/owl/. Here’s my opinion of OWL after reading his report:
