Is it not true that our jobs are really about creating an environment for our students to become aware that they are beings who are capable when learning a language of experiencing joy, to be happy and secure and valued in the moments that they spend with us? Are those things not the real goal […]
I remember two occasions in Denver Public Schools hosting Dr. Krashen (in 2012) and Dr. Mason (in 2010) into my classroom to observe, Krashen for an afternoon and Mason for an entire day. Krashen said after visiting my classroom that my teaching was “terrific” and Beniko called me “Mr. Comprehensibe Input” after her visit. I
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, he says: Narrator: Mais…qu’est-ce que tu fais là?/What are you doing there? Narrator: Et il me répéta alors, tout doucement, comme une chose très sérieuse/And he repeated to me,
Q. I was looking at one of your books that talked about a daily quick quiz. Can you tell me what you do for absent students to make up the quiz that is easy to manage? A. Thanks for your question. The purpose of the quizzes is to see if the kid was listening that
I just got this very positive report from Anne just now – thought I’d share it: Ben – two things: 1. In the story-making process with the Invisibles, the two questions “where” and “with whom” are the crown jewels. I just love how they lift the whole thing off the ground and send it flying.
Anne Matava just sent me this image from her classroom in Maine: https://photos.google.com/share/AF1QipMEG8-cYZDW0XDx95rqRMW1El0YPr1_GlitnCd3Du-sVdUZvVRtOwO-HRBdARc4lw/photo/AF1QipMo5afXD0ORgucXBeINMPlNGSlwo3GAsWCZCPDU?key=WlExR1Jrc0ZyMDdBM3pUMllnNC1WVWpxb2k3a0lB Those teachers working with ANATS* (the book that explains One Word Images/Invisibles) are asked to note the following: (1) The gallery is a subtle way to vastly improve class buy-in to the Invisibles for the obvious reason that when a child walks
SL post from 2016: Kathrin explains Beniko’s Story Listening in an elegant and simple way. The link is a must-see. In it we see great pacing, nice and slow. We see Kathrin just teaching language using language with the goal that the kids follow along in a general way. In my mind giving up the
I just found this unpublished and now completed draft that I wrote in January of 2016. It was about the same week that I first started developing the Invisibles concept. Kind of a blast from the past to read that shows how the concept of working only from images and not words got going back
Alisa recently sharesd some pencil and paper bail outs for when we need to get the kids writing, if for no other reason than to give ourselves a break: 1. Turn a narrative into a Reader’s Theatre. So you ask them what the character would say while the narrative is onscreen, and they offer dialogue,
This is a response to a teacher who is at his wit’s end about uninformed administrators requiring him to do things in his classroom that don’t make sense in terms of the research: Well then if this problem will lead to you just surrendering and being yourself, then maybe it’s not such a bad thing.
Alisa’s 2nd grade class recently created a one word image together (below). I present it here to make a point about who draws at those lower levels. I’m not sure we’ve talked about this here yet or if this point is in ANATS or ANATTY, but it needs to be made clear. The teacher or
I think that this statement reveals a big difference between NTCI and TPRS: “In non-targeted comprehensible input (NTCI) we use images as the starting point to impart language to our students and not the other way around. It is because images are more interesting than words to kids, especially when it is they who create
