Jennfer sent me this interesting email: Ben, I have always been a 4%er, and now I may know why. I’m wondering how this can impact my classroom… I picked up my Russian copy of Bednaya Anya (Poor Ana) and have been happily reading through it as my bedtime reading. As such, I have been re-reading […]
There are two things that are considered standard operating procedure in foreign language classrooms that I just can’t accept. I really believe, and so must state that as my truth, that some, many, teachers are getting away with ineffective practices in their classrooms and nobody is calling them on it, in two ways specifically. First,
Here is another blog for our “beginning the year” category. It is a third thing with potential to help start the year next year – one word images. They do such a good job of embellishing the vocabulary and creating a sense of fun right away, not to mention providing perhaps the very best activity
We created a “beginning the year” category here a few months ago. Here are a few quick additions to that list, which I will time stamp as well for August. First, there is no doubt that TPR is in for a renaissance in my CI classroom. A lot of us seem to have been thinking
Those who remember the heyday of the Realm in TPRS can recall the great excitement around the idea of building an entire year of stories around certain medieval/gang/whatever characters, as the class chose. I think I have finally figured out why the Realm didn’t work for me. Those very characters, as excited as the kids
Congratulations to Holland for opening up a can of Whoop Ass on the Brazilians. The Dutch have been such a good team over the years, and this is just a deserved victory. We in America send our best congratulations and best wishes in the next two games to Kirstin, Iris, Alike and all our orange
Susanna Kesterson thank you for sending me this which I share here with all of us: ACTFL Announces New Position Statements Source: FLTEACH The ACTFL Board of Directors recently approved the following position statements: * Use of the Target Language in the Classroom (http://www.actfl.org/i4a/pages/index.cfm?pageid=5151 ) * Language Learning for Heritage and Native Speakers (http://www.actfl.org/i4a/pages/index.cfm?pageid=5152 )
I was in California for ten days up in their mountains, and so apologize for my absence. I”ll try to catch up on any threads in the next few days. While I was gone I got a question from someone overseas. I have no idea how to answer it: “I teach English but the students’
If you are new to this stuff, there is not that much to worry about over the summer, besides keeping things simple for you and the kids! The three things I want to remember in the fall really are simple. (Simplicity is required at the beginning of the year, when kids are being bombarded with
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When you assess a kid on whether he knows certain discrete facts about the language, you kill his interest in it. The tragedy is that his mind already possesses wiring (that we often do not acknowledge) that is easily capable of acquiring the language, if only it were left to its own ways of decoding, which need but
The strangest thing about fully espousing comprehensible input methods, including TPRS, is that in June I’m not exhausted from trying to push a program that essentially doesn’t work down kids’ throats. The kids liked what I taught them last year, and they want more next year. Thank you Dr. Stephen Krashen and Blaine Ray! The
Jim suggested that I turn this recent comment on grading into a blog entry so that we can access it via the categories. Here it is: Most kids have to want to be in the classroom in order for most approaches to grading to be accurate and honest and true indicators of progress. In my
