Most teachers, really unfortunately, just soldier on until they collapse at the end of the year, when that is completely unnecessary. When I don’t want to teach, I teach what I call fake classes: FVR

 The following applies to reading  novels, not stories, which is described in: https://benslavic.com/blog/wp-admin/post.php?post=13558&action=edit&message=1 When we simply read aloud to the students in L1 while they follow along in the book, they are experiencing full CI

God’s Friend Marienhafe, Eastern Frisia Winter, 1400-1401 The Sea Tiger is sailing fast, although the ship is full of plunder, for there is a following wind. In three weeks and four days they will be

Gottes Freund Marienhafe, Ostfriesland Winter, 1400-1401 Der Seetiger segelt schnell, auch wenn das Schiff voll ist, denn sie haben den Wind im Rücken. In drei Wochen und vier Tagen werden sie zu Hause sein. Alle

<<Boy!>>, laughs Jan, the old gray quartermaster.  <<Shiver me timbers, you are not all there!  Or did you not hear my story?  We are Likedeeler! We are freebooters!  What do you think?  We are on

Auf Kaperfahrt <<Junge!>>, lacht Jan, der alte, graue Quartermeister. <<Beim Klabautermann, du bist nicht ganz dicht! Oder hast du meine Geschichte nicht gehört? Wir sind die Likedeeler! Wir sind Freibeuter! Was denkste? Wir sind doch

SSR of the current  class novel – 10 min. 1st half of PQA, a story, or a reading class, depending on what day of the week it is – 15 min. See Suggested Weekly Schedule

I’m going to hold up the queue for four or five days for needed discussion on the past ten or so articles. I need feedback from the group on the content of the past week’s articles before

I’m afraid that the push for simplicity is leading to more complexity. There are four very important blog entries here on this site, however, that, if used in a conscious way, can go a long

The thing on this article is whether we read to them in L1 or L2   1. Go through the chapter that will be read that day and find any scenes that might lend themselves

A story from Jim:  The St. Patty’s Day Pinch  has on (or is wearing) can’t see is only looking at pinches Shirin has on a green sweater. Elliot can’t see the green, because he is

After a hiatus of a few weeks, we return to our molst important discussion of Reader’s Theatre, moving in the direction of a possible template (an initial draft is given below) that we can use

Two years ago, Diana finagled $400,000 from the district (we got $32 million from the Gates foundation) to supply every single WL teacher in DPS with a BIG, all levels library of at least 100

How do we get from a fact that we learn about a kid during PQA into a full blown story? This will be discussed in greater detail here in a series of connected articles over the next few days. We

Below is the article by Sandy Cutshall that we networked over to Robert (through Michele and others) that is now in the current issue of The Language Educator, the monthly publication of ACTFL. David sent it to

  We could say a lot about the move in support of ACTFL’s Three Modes of Communication by the College Board AP Exams. We have actually already done so, in a far reaching discussion that

This and the next few posts are follow-ups/rewrites/recollecting of previously published posts on the topic of the new AP exam format. I just wanted to revisit and update them. The blog queue is really jammed right now,

Here is a comment I better put here as a post to keep it within reach, as it were, in case anyone does a search on PQA. It’s on trusting PQA. It might be best to read this

The Spring 2012 Edition of the online International Journal of Foreign Language Teaching includes articles by a few of our group members:   Articles include: Overcoming Fear of Reading in English: The Astonishing Impact of a

Here is Kate’s lesson plan as per the two previous posts: Kate Marquez 3rd Grade FLES Independence Charter School Lesson Plans: Week of March 5, 2012 Unit: Family and Home Unit Objective: By  end of

Here is a concrete suggestion for Kate as to how to plan this thing out to make sure things go well. It is especially useful in this kind of situation, when you know you are

I got this from Kate in Philadelphia: Hi Ben – I just found out that  my supervisor has arranged for evaluators from ACTFL to visit next week. We are getting interviewed as well as observed

I haven’t forgotten about RT and a template. Yesterday in a reading class I decided to just try a little very basic RT, to get over my nervousness about the whole thing, because, when you

Stephen Krashen here suggests a way that we can share a great idea with others that my, if enough people emrace it, put a dent in the Achievement Gap. In the process, we might learn to

Here is an example of basic PQA. It’s always good to keep our fundamentals sound and revisit them from time to time.  If the structure is: lazy then first you write both the word and

A new problem is cropping up in schools that have accepted the TPRS/CI approach and want to move as quickly as possible in that direction. It is that some teachers in the department will immediately

[ed. note: don’t read this long article on the Net Hypothesis if you aren’t willing to do full-on comprehensible input in your classes in the form of listening and reading. You won’t like the content

Here Robert describes the new AP format for German, which will be put into place for the 2013-2014 academic year. I’m going to try to memorize the course themes so that I can instantly  inform

There are some kids who do well on the AP exam in spite of not hearing the language in the classroom. These are the very few kids in each room, not even four percenters but more like 0.4 percenters, who

We could say a lot about the move to ACTFL’s Three Modes of Communication by the College Board AP Exams. Indeed, we have already done so, in a discussion that has lasted since May, 2011

When Jason Fritze was in town a few weeks ago, he quoted Marsha Wilbur about the new AP exams: …if we want students to be successful on the new AP exams, there must be CI

Around this time of year, my melting Grammar Man (he’s almost completely melted), starts thinking about how our students are going to “do” on end of year asssessments. My kids haven’t written much this year,

Laurie’s winter break is over and this is definitely one of those posts from her blog that we all want to read on a Sunday nite. No, we don’t have to do everything right and

Clarice compiled the main ideas of the thread from last week on rigor into a poster. Since it is in the form of a Word file, it can be adapted in any way (communication with administrators, etc.).

What we do is so emotional. We are just squirming around on the cutting edge of  this change, trying to keep our balance and often failing. We have such difficult interactions with our colleagues. The

Again, we express our thanks to both Brigitte (Ch. 2) and a master of English, French and German (and who knows what other?) languages Martin Anders (Ch. 3): Die Vitalienbrüder Der neue Schiffsjunge putzt das Deck.

From Robert: Hi Ben, Martin is the one to thank this time for his work proofing the German in this chapter and then translating it into English.   Robert The Victual Brothers The new cabin

I got this question from an ELA teacher who is not a member of our group: …do you have any word lists for English classes? I saw on your website that you have a ton

This is pretty bad ass. I think of it as a two year list: demande pose apporte achète peut veut lave compte boit conduit mange tombe trouve finit vole oublie va a est écoute sait

La pipe du papa du Pape Pie pue. (author unknown) Le ver vert va vers le verre vert. (mine) Qu’est-ce que c’est que cette caisse cassée? (from Paul)

I got this request: “I’m in the process of rewriting the course description for my French class, if you have any advice or ideas you could share with me I’d really appreciate it.  I’m the

I got this from Paul. We were talking about how much stuff we try to cram into the hours we have. It’s like trying to pour the ocean into a thimble. I deeply appreciate Paul’s

I have long needed a simple and organized (therefore stress free) way to plan what I do each week with the kids. So below is my own way of organizing all of the information that I have gathered

Grant sent this in January: Ben, This is my 5th or 6th year of using TCI, only the 3rd using TCI exclusively (or what I feel is exclusively). Each year I’ve gotten better. Each year I

The blog content has gotten very busy – probably Jason’s visit. The queue is pretty jammed. So this is just an update so as to not to lose any of them. Here they are: 1. Robert Harrell’s

Here is a list of 72 pretty good verbs for a level 1 French class. It’s not scientific – I just pulled them out of the air. Please correct or add or subtract. This gives me

I prefer words blown up in strips of about 12 words each about 1″ high. I won’t be doing word “walls” next year but those word “strips”. They are new for me. I experimented with them this

I am just going to start this list and then date it for the first week of August 2012. We can update stuff as it occurs to us. To start the year, we can ask

Do we still want to keep adding song files and Matava/Tripp readings to the site? I am trying to simplify the site for the new March version, and only want to keep those categories if

I am launching a new site look in March. It will be much more easy to use. I am also making a lot of posters available to blog subscribers.  Maybe some of us will want to