Ben Slavic

Super Carrot Activity

This is an updated version of the activity Carly described here in a comment field a few weeks ago in response to her having a lot of extra individually created characters who didn’t get into stories during the course of the year. This assures that they at least got some attention since the artists put

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Laura Avila on Speaking

Even though I have explained and repeated over and over why speaking is something I don’t expect, and will not grade, etc. my students still want to speak. I know they are really, really bad at it, and I know it is wasted class time, as per the research when the conscious mind/monitor takes over.

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Participation Grades

I got this question: How do you get participation grades when you allow students to speak only when they feel like it? A. I am not looking for speech and I don’t give participation grades. I evaluate them on their interaction with me in terms of ACTFL’s Interpersonal Mode of Communication, which is very different

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TPRS/NTCI

Some newer members of our community may not be aware about something I wrote in a comment to Orlando this morning, so just to repeat the point here: I try to direct the discussion here in the direction of NTCI and not TPRS. Since 2015, after ten years of writing books about TPRS, I finally

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New Book – pp. 9-11

A Spatial Curriculum  In the past, language instruction has largely involved isolating parts of language (grammar or working from word lists) and then breaking everything down into pieces and analyzing it. This is a left-brain dominant process requiring thinking. It is a process that involves planning and memorizing and testing and filling in blanks and

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Blessings

I believe that sometimes rain can be like a blessing. It’s just something I’ve noticed over the years. This morning in Denver this (link below) is my view from my computer – not rain but big snow flakes. By the way, that’s what air looks like when the cottonwood trees release their pollen at this

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End-of-Year Activities

In my view spring is about reading, writing and the few authentic CI games like the word chunk team game, and most importantly book making, which can eat up as many as six or even seven weeks while you put your feet up on the desk and enjoy watching them work. Maybe walking around faking

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Videos

We must all acknowledge the limitations presented by books about teaching using CI. We must do more videos and live demonstrations as Sean and Alisa and Greg do in the Chicagoland TCI Group and also how they go right into weekend trainings and videotape them as much as they can as well.  We all need

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New Book – pp. 6-8

A Curriculum Based on Images The Star Sequence There is an interchange between the pilot/narrator and the Little Prince in Chapter 2 of Le Petit Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. When he first meets the Little Prince, the pilot says: Narrator: Mais…qu’est-ce que tu fais là?/What are you doing there?  Narrator: Et il me répéta alors, tout doucement,

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