In the past century, teachers would take a batch of bricks, grammar points arranged in chapters in books, and, laboriously, each day, boldly, inflict a kind of analytical pain session on the kids about the nature of that particular brick. They thought that they were building a grammar foundation for the kids to base their eventual […]
We all suck at this. I just wanted to say that. Now, that said, can we just accept that we may be clumsy with this radically different method than the one that preceded it? Can we just accept our limited level of mastery of the method and, by trying every day, get better through those micro-efforts
I was asked in St. Louis for a list of jobs my kids do in class. I can never remember them all, but here is a partial list with about 18 jobs listed – many of the ones below are described in either TPRS in a Year! or PQA in a Wink!. Those jobs marked with an asterisk
I got this from John: Ben, I was hoping we could develop and/or refine previous discussions about arming ourselves with a description of the underlying theory about comprehensible and even compelling input for our colleagues, administrators and parents. With Krashen and CI, I feel like I am much better able to describe what we’re NOT doing
August is just hours away so don’t forget that we have the Beginning the Year and Starting the Year categories with stuff about that. One thing to add is, in my view, it is not a good thing to have a seating chart from the first day. I wait and check things out. I go alphabetical
Circling is useless without SLOW, but SLOW can be quite effective without Circling. Point and Pause can be used to do the job that Circling does if the SLOW is slow enough.* Even if we are masters of all of the various other skills used to deliver comprehensible input, we will fail to reach all
Comprehensible input takes four forms in my classroom: 1. PQA – this means that we use Circing to talk with the kids. There are no key structures (guideposts), as there are with stories. The target structures come randomly from the information given to us by the kids, as in the Circling with Balls activity (see
Kate sent this about Becky Bailey’s work: Bryce and the rest of you curious seekers as to that info regarding learning, listening and speaking – I got that info from Dr. Becky Bailey at Loving Guidance (.com). Becky has been doing brain research for YEARS and applying it to the teaching process from babies to adults.
Chill sent me this: Ben: The Sauk presence at the NTPRS conference was profound. I found this video made by our friends and wanted to share their powerful message. Carol http://www.culturalsurvival.org/programs/elc/program
In this request from input from the group, Skip puts together a very cohesive point about the relationship between PQA and stories. Hey Ben, I came away from the conference with a question. My first workshop was with Michael Miller and Barb on Personalization. Michael MIller said that the better one becomes at PQA the
Referring to the series of comments on the post “Go Willingly”, Skip asked me this: Hi Ben, Can I ask you what you meant on the blog when referred to your big learning as “allowing myself to be free when presenting…?” Just wondering. I was thinking it may relate to how I feel in front of
