Here is the story script, by Sabrina, from the two recent videos by her that we’ve been discussing. I like the little nod to Blaine at the end of the script:   Le coureur sort

I know I just said that I would try to limit the articles this week so we can rest and catch up, but this one article is worth publishing so here it is: VATICAN CITY (AP)

This is our Charlotte in Canada, not Germany. It’s a wonderful report from the field: Hi Ben – Yesterday I had a longer phone call from a mom who wanted to know what I had

A report from skip from a recent CI workshop in Portland, Maine given by Francis J. Troyan: Hey Ben, I have now been to two 1.5 hour sessions of the “Teaching with Comprehensible Input”. It

Here is the link to the second part of that class: https://vimeo.com/59204047 My comments: I see that the artist is working on transparencies for later use on the overhead projector. Perfect. It could be done

Sabrina has given me persmission to put up a class, broken up into two videos, of one of her recent classes. Here is the first link: https://vimeo.com/59206758 My comments are below. Others please comment in the

I had asked Charlotte for a more detailed description of what she does with her brilliant new idea of a Wall Zoo to use as a bail out move to start the year (this could be

We are all well aware of the supreme importance of the natural process that we call the Silent Period in language acquisition. But we teach in schools. There is always an expectation that speech output

I’m gonig to stick this post on this front page for a few days so we can all get a chance to read and study it before it scrolls out. We need to figure out

In this article Chris comments on PQA and on a term made by James – BSITL – Bullshit in the Target Language: When I first heard of “PQA” I took it literally and I asked

Check this out. It will be a regular part of my new routine: www.imtranslator.com I will publish an article about an expanded weekly schedule – one that takes more like two weeks to get through everything

I think that we tend to be overcritical of ourselves when stories don’t work. We think we are the master of ceremonies in some kind of circus. But we’re not. In any social setting, the

Sharon shares a great analogy made by her principal: Hi, Ben… [My principal] and I have been dealing with a particular student who has had some major attitude issues since August.  The boy’s mother has

Carol sent to Diana – who then sent to her DPS teachers – the slideshow from her presentation Jan. 22 and 23. Diana adds:  [The entire thing] is too large to send through email so here is a

I’m happy that my guy from Congo – Gloire Gabell – is getting involved in the class. His entire unspoken message up until this point for the first few weeks with us was that he was

I got this from a group member. Please respond if you have a rubric that you like for freewrites: Ben – How do you assess free writes?  Do you have a rubric? I would appreciate

Re: the mixing of methods, to be clear, we can probably do some of the old grammar stuff and some CI in our classrooms, if we must or are new TPRS and it is freaking

Diane reports: Hi Ben – I am sending you the copy, without names, of an email I wrote for a parent who complained about jGR – to my supervisors, not to me – recently. (My

Today I was informed by two kids on separate occasions that they now listen to French music. They are level 2 kids. My day is made. I think that the reason they are doing that on their

Mary Beth asked about lodging in San Diego. Here is Diana’s response: …stay in La Quinta or the Holiday Inn because then you won’t necessarily need a car. The Town and Country is more like

I have been wanting to test some of the Vol. 2 scripts by Anne and haven’t had time with all the reading and writing focus in my classes lately. I know everyone is busy, but

This is from David Maust. Anyone looking for ways to fill up a block, take note: Hi Ben, I had a lot of fun with this “bottom-up” embedded reading activity today. Wanted to share: Today

Diane N. in Chicago shows us another way to “se tirer d’affaire”, as the French say, to get out of a difficult situation in class so that no one notices, which we here in our

Susan Gross came to Japan a few years ago and we thought an infrastructure would develop around that visit. Now what is happening in Japan? Anyone in Japan reading this please respond by putting your

Those here who have followed the Colorado Leap Evaluation thread in DPS over the past few years know that it is a complex teacher evaluation system – very complex – that pretty much determines if

Hey Ben, I wonder if you would let me ask the PLC their opinions of the National Board Certification process?  I am considering doing it and wonder if it is really worth all the effort,

I have mentioned this before but just to repeat – we should never, ever, feel scared when doing CI and we always have dictée to bail to, at any time during any class on any

A totally cool thing happened in class with names today. A new student from Congo has this name in Congo: Tag (given to him in Paris) Rolde (first first name) Gloire (second first name) Gabell

We must repair our voices. What does that mean? It means that we must speak from a place of joy in our classes. How, when there is such negativity everywhere? The method has joy within

In R and D we get facts from the kids after reading the text and we compare them to the facts about the chapter books – Robert’s term of chapter books is correct, by the way,

Last month I had a good ending to a class story with the cloze technique. I don’t know how many of us use that. I forget to do it a lot because there is often the quiz

Chris has been busy with all his different responsibilities and we need to send him lots of ideas now. We need to step up for him. Keep in mind that his audience (see below) will

Melisa (Misha) Cahnmann-Taylor – http://teachersactup.com/ Carol Gaab – http://www.tprstorytelling.com/ Diana Noonan/DPS – http://curriculum.dpsk12.org/lang_literacy_cultural/world_lang/index.shtml Leigh Anne Munoz – http://munoz.chinohills.groupfusion.net/modules/blog/multi.phtml?profile_id=75981&sessionid=151ef0bfedfa4ad3bcaedbe4a8899183 James Hosler – jameshosler.blogspot.com John Piazza – www.johnpiazza.net/comprehensible_input Laurie Clarcq – http://www.heartsforteaching.com http://www.EmbeddedReading.com http://www.mwcsd.org/webpages/lclarcq/ Charlotte Dincher –

If you have a website/blog, please send it in to me at benslavic@yahoo.com. We have the Group Members bio list and the Group Members email list (pls. update those as well if you haven’t yet)

This is further information about Readers’ Theatre, provided by jen after a recent Carol Gaab workshop. I publish it pretty much verbatim here as an article so we can include it as another article on

In a recent comment, jen said this about Robert’s Essential Sentences: …I love the Essential Sentences! I have not used this as an exam yet, but plan to do this for sure. I actually used

This is taken from a response in comment form to Kevin a little while ago. I think it was a comment but I wanted to make it a post. It is just more discussion about

Beth is new to the group – welcome, Beth! – and asks this great question. I hope we can provide some concrete answers: Hi Ben, I’m so excited that I finally got subscribed to your

Melissa has some important questions. Let’s provide her with some great responses:   Hi Ben, I am back to having a hard time again. I feel so all-over-the place with this stuff.  I feel like

Reading novels could replace traditional TPRS storytelling. We should look at the idea, at least. It is possible that we can do more with less effort when we base our comprehension based instruction on reading

Here are the last two clips from the story – Brrr! by Jim Tripp – done in November with a combined level 3 and 4 class in their first year of TPRS. The first two clips are

MB wants some advice from the group. She’s going to get a ton of answers from us and we are all going to say exactly the same thing, because there is only one thing to

I had an interesting conversation over the weekend. On Saturday I attended the memorial service for the mother of some friends. During the reception I spoke with a Spanish teacher who just retired at the

Leigh Anne reports from California: Wow, what a difference the new jGR and jobs has made for me and my students this year!  Final exam time and I had 150 French I students applying themselves

Cheryl reports from Connecticut: I had a great experience Friday at a World Language meeting!  I have been working with the same group of teachers for quite a while, and while I am the only

Doug Stone sent this for us: http://www.wimp.com/homeroomteacher/

I had an insight about Point and Pause while reading Charlotte’s description of how to do the Wall Zoo. She wrote that she would use the kids’ personalized animals on the wall to ask questions like this:

Just some more ramblngs on what I learned from Carol this week about RT: Our biggest observation of the year in my district is always unannounced. So mine was today (Friday). I had just enough

James Hosler has a question for our core group of Latinists: I feel I’m getting a hang on the ideas, if not the practice yet, of jGR, PQA, CWB, R&D and all the day-to-day stuff. The

Either we apply Krashen’s work or we don’t. Either we think that the unconscious natural process of just being exposed to the language is enough or we don’t. The desire for order in the form