A colleague wrote: I always come back from workshops thinking, “I’m at least that good! I can organize lessons like these!” And then when I get home to my own classroom, I find that I’m not that good. I react badly to classroom management issues, or I miss some vital sign from one of my […]
Jennifer wrote this: I had some truly amazing students last year. Amazing intellect, amazing creativity, amazing personality. Truly, I was blessed as a teacher to have some of these kids. One boy borrowed a grammar workbook to study at home. He came back to me a few weeks later to report that “I’m not quite sure
K responds to my comment here yesterday. I like the term she coined to describe real (CI, speech based) grammar – “language acquisition grammar” – that’s the opposite of the plastic/rules based grammar and a creative term. Still, we see in her update below the dominant role of the teacher and the poisonous idea that
There is a phrase in TPRS that was made famous by the master himself, Blaine. Thomas Young recently asked me and Bryce about it in an email: Hey guys, I have been thinking about the “tprs game” lately. How do you get your students to “play the game”? Any ideas are much appreciated! Thomas I
Hey Mr. Slavic, I have epiphanies in weird places. I know that that is a weird introduction, but it’s true. Last week at lunch, a few kids asked if there were grammar activities in TPRS that would help them remember grammar. They are tactile learners, so grammar can be a bit difficult to learn because
Here is a question from Anne. I guess the output thing never got a fork stuck in it (will it ever?): We have learned that lots of input is necessary before students can begin to produce output. It is also commonly accepted that some students will be ready before others to produce output . We
An update from K – sorry about the delay here – the queue has been very full lately: Today was really cool for 2 reasons: 1. In addition to my teacher and the other French teacher, the special ed teacher was there [ed. note: I assume this is at that lunch French story table thing they
My first two classes with Karen Rowan observing (yikes!) stank. But good kinds of stinkers, because I learned from them. I was trying to be too cool, too adept at a way of teaching I am still learning. I was pushing things. I wasn’t entirely listening to my students, I was thinking about demonstrating skills
I am starting to realize that every time I want to break into English, I don’t have to. I can, but instead of doing it, say eight times a class period, I can just do it once. I can teach myself to avoid the needless English. Paul Kirschling (Thomas Jefferson High School, Denver) and I have
A good bail out if a story isn’t working is a dictation (this site/resources/workshop handouts). But Read and Discuss kicks major butt for bailing out also, because you always have the translation text to return to in any event. I got an email today about it and went and found these blogs on it: Dec. 22, ’08
If you read that earlier blog entry entitled Lynn 1, you knew that the story would have a happy ending. That is because, in the tone of Lynn’s writing, between the lines, is the wonderful feeling that she is taking full responsibility for reaching all of her kids. If a kid is not learning, Lynn takes
Lynn wrote me a few weeks ago: On Thursday one of my grade 9 boys came to me and said he wanted to transfer out. My heart stopped. I felt awful. I’ve been asking him questions, he seems to be able to answer. I had no clue he wasn’t understanding BECAUSE THAT’S PART OF WHAT I
