Ben Slavic

I got this email: Hey Ben, At my middle school we used to have a modified block where we saw the kids two out of every three days for 65 minutes.  Now we have the kids for 45 minutes every day.  What a difference in retention and achievement!  Our kids are doing so much better, […]

I got this reason to celebrate today: Hi Ben! I am one super lucky language teacher. I get to teach the elementary level and I get to teach them every day. I get the kids in 3rd, 4th, and 5th grades. Anyway, a 6th grader who had me last year was telling me in our

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bb4NfJL9w8E

Clips 4-6 of this series of 24 show how PQA (clips 4 and 5) can move into extended PQA (clip 6). The reckless speed of the discussion is due to a group of precocious kids pushing me, and I am very aware of not doing a great job of keeping up with my barometers, who are

Brian wrote: If you use, say Anne Matava’s scripts for stories, then you aren’t backward planning for the readers/novels – is that right?  If that is the case, is it better then to just do some backward planning and work out my own bare bones script from there?  How do you do it?  My guess

I’ve got those 24 short clips from my old school – video taken last spring – that Frank was asking about. I’ll start putting them up here. I think I learned a lot at NTPRS this year, so these clips, especially the first ones showing PQA, are still way frickin’ too fast. But there is value here

I used to go to Saint Louis Symphony concerts a lot in college. I remember that the sound of the live orchestra was so much greater than listening to a recording of the music. I think that that is because the live players, the generators of the sound, were there, right there in the concert

I love songs. They are fantastic for the kids. But I avoid songs. It is because of the amount of new vocabulary that needs to be PQA’d for the kids to properly understand and thus enjoy the song. There is so much, especially when considering the song for a first year class, so much that it seems

I have two new jobs added to the jobs list: 1. the Reader Leader. This is the kid who leads the class in the choral reading of texts. She reads slowly and loudly and literally brings the class along with her. Extra credit for that. 2. the Memorizer of the Cards. This kid knows what

One of my students -Pamela (not her real name) – is on a remediation plan for some offense. She did something wrong. So she has to get a signed blue note from each of her teachers every day, as a way to keep tabs on her. The grade has to be reported on the blue slip.

Bryce want our advice: Estimados colegas, I am slated to present TPRS methods to two regional university Methods of Teaching Foreign Language classes in the next couple of months.  It has to be good because the national FL teacher of the year is presenting a week before me on both occasions (Yikes!!!).  I have only