I use and promote input based methods, including TPRS, in part because I want to attack the Achievement Gap in our nation’s schools. I never want to let too much time go by on this blog without mentioning the best possible use of input based methods I can think of – slashing the throat of […]
This year I got too much into Point and Pause and not enough into Circling. I did that consciously, thinking that Point and Pause was faster and taught more vocabulary. That is not necessarily true. A word, any new word introduced into a story, cannot be acquired unless it is circled enough. If a new
O.K. there have been two blogs featuring some questions by Amber Sullivan here lately, with commentary by Byron and me. There will be additional commentary in blog 4 from Amber by Matt Jadlocki. The two not yet published here – 3 and 4- will be published in the next week. But I am not going to publish Amber
Amber, in a previous blog entry here yesterday, said: “Mainly, I feel that my students (particulary at lower levels) are doing more of ‘memorizing rules’ than they are of acquiring language. Something is coming up short in my activities…. and I think that the issue on my behalf is the amount of instructional time spent in the
Below is the first of four blogs that were posted originally on FL Teach by Amber Sullivan, and brought to this blog by Byron Despresberry. I think that they are very very very important in the overall discussion about comprehensible input methods. Recently, Susan Gross told me that there are teachers who do a lot
Susan Gross commented to me the other day about two kinds of teachers who don’t do TPRS – those who base their teaching on worksheets and those who work hard to be eclectic in the best sense of providing their students lots of varied opportunities to learn the language. I feel that what she said
Toni commented recently but somehow it didn’t get on so I’m just putting this here as a blog: 4th quarter began at my school a couple of weeks ago. With each new quarter, I get a new batch of 7th graders and a new batch of 8th graders in my 2 Exploratory Spanish classes (the
Before I learned what is to me the secret of comprehensible input, its FLOW, I was always nervous when teaching. I was trying to get things done a certain way. I was very much focused on if my students were paying attention to me. I was in charge, and very much attached to results. I
Today my students took the speaking portion of the French level 1 assessment that we use here in DPS. I expected nothing, because rarely have I asked for any output during the year. I have received a lot of input from them this year, of course – please don’t misunderstand that last sentence. My watchword
There is so much happening up in Alaska. Tina Fey has become involved in politics up there, Cara sent us an awesome reflection paper a few weeks ago, and now here is one – slightly edited for length by me with her permission – entitled “TPRS and Comprehensible Input” by Jennifer Kelly after her recent visit down here.
We love success stories. Here’s a cool one from Ray. Sorry, Ray, on the long time this gem was in the queue, but it sure is worth reading and congratulations: Hi Ben, I’ve asked a number of stories today, now I’m going to tell one. I teach grades K-6 at an elementary school and this is
I goofed. You have to go to the part of the site for students and parents. Here: http://curriculum.dpsk12.org/lang_literacy_cultural/world_lang/assessment/students_parents.html And if you go to this page, just a couple of the links under “Rubrics” for writing are active. http://curriculum.dpsk12.org/lang_literacy_cultural/world_lang/assessment/teachers.html There are other interesting links that you can get through on this site, including, under “standards,” a
