Ben's Blog

Use the search by date, or the page numbers on the bottom of the screen to search for posts as far back as 2010

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Libby Whitesell

Libby writes in her bio (we have 34 now and are approaching the half way mark for everybody getting into the Group Members category for reasons expressed in the past few weeks here): I never

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Skip Crosby

Here is Skip Crosby’s bio. Skip is doing much for TPRS in New England and this blog site would not be the same without his presence on it: My TPRS journey began 6 years ago

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Update on Memberships

I have made the membership changes I intended to. Now, most members are paying members. The group is much smaller, back down around 75, from the bloated group we had become of almost 200. I

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Susan Gross Workshop in Maine

A Reminder:  Susie Gross Workshop in Maine Oct 6-7. Don’t miss this chance to see and learn from the best! More info and a registration form at:  http://www.classjump.com/m/mainetprs/

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Colorado LEAP Appendix

Bryce, according to Diana, the LEAP Appendix will make no sense to people without the overall LEAP Framework, which actually is online on the DPS site: http://leap.dpsk12.org/ Below is the DRAFT of the Appendix which

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The Case for Stories Early On

I know I just posted this a few days ago but I want to post it here again. I think it is important: Energetic classes with high talent of about 25 kids (less is too

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Announcement

If you are currently a non-paying blog member and we have privately agreed to keep it that way due to genuine financial need, please send me a private email – benslavic@yahoo.com – so that I

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Notice

Thank you for sending me as emails certain things you write if  the message is too important to scroll out like regular comments. We have a bunch of those right now, so this is just to inform you

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Video of the Three Steps 3

This is the third in this series of videos made last year that we are kind of in the middle of. The first two series (clips 1-6 can be found by searching “Video of the

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LEAP Document 2

The traditional teachers who don’t get comprehensible input have been waging a kind of battle for more than a decade now in Denver Public Schools, where ten years ago only a few voices aligned with Diana Noonan

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4th Year Problems

I got this from Melanie and I hope a lot of people comment on this, especially those who, unlike me, have TPRS experience with fourth year kids. Dear Ben, I have a problem with my

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Jennifer Sparano

Hello. I’m new here and just wanted to add a few things to the discussion. First, I should introduce myself. I’m a 3rd year Spanish teacher at a small school in NJ. This is my

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College Professors of Latin, Wake Up!

I got this from John. It reminds of that post from Anne (https://benslavic.com/blog/2011/07/15/anne-matava-9/) Ben, Bob Patrick recently mentioned on our Latin Best Practices list that a few of his former students who have decided to 

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ACTFL Voting Advice Needed

Hey Ben, I just received an email from ACTFL announcing their board of directors election. I am a new member, and don’t know much about the organization and its current board, but I was wondering

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Anne Matava

Anne  sends us this bio: This is my 27th year of teaching language, 20th year of teaching high school, mostly German.  I teach in a small rural high school in Maine and have 6 sections

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LEAP Document

The LEAP initiative in Colorado is being paid for by millions of dollars supplied by the Gates Foundation to major metro areas across the country. These sweeping new state legislated programs are being designed to

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Annemarie Orth

This bio is from Annemarie in Maine. The more of these I read – and thank you for personalizing the blog so fast in response to my request – the more I feel like we

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Classroom Discipline 1

In terms of getting better at the our comprehensible input instruction, I see four areas that need support and therefore should be the primary focus of this blog: 1. Emotional support (perhaps the most important, because

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Statement of Emancipation

In the continued interest of our collective mental health, I have decided to say that I no longer wish to feel as if I am doing something wrong as a teacher just because school buildings are

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Louise Walker

I am totally getting into reading these bios. I feel so much trust in them, and lots of honesty. Here is another gem of honesty, this one from Louisa: Hi Ben, First of all, I

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Big Bruno No Pay!

A big burly guy gets on the the bus and says to the driver, “Big Bruno no pay!” and walks to the back.  The driver is insulted but he’s a small guy and this guy

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Andrea Westphal

Andrea shows us in her bio how not having perfection in the language in no way keeps us from helping kids succeed in school – her French program has tripled using TPRS. Not too bad: Hi Ben,

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Naomi Graham

This bio is just fun to read: My name is Naomi Graham.  I started teaching in middle age, when my husband and I moved to a small rural community in Upstate New York where jobs

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Norm Veilleux

Norm is up in Canada and shares this video that the Canadian Ministry of Education did with his classes last year: Hey Ben, Been lurkin more than contributing lately. I’m sending a link to a

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On Writing

This is from last spring. I was reflecting on how well my kids could write (free writes rules are on the posters page of this site) after very little practice that year. In fact, we

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Terry Thatcher

I got this interesting email from a colleague. It shows how people are changin: I was starting to think I knew most of the basics about TPRS, and then Carol [Gaab] and Terry [Thatcher] both

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Changes In Membership

Inner Circle Members, I would like to go over some changes that are going to be taking place to this membership starting in October. As you know, this membership started as way to make my blog

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If You Get Locked Out

Hey, you may get an email like this: We have detected a fairly large number of login attempts using your email address, from various different geographical locations. To protect your account from abuse, and to help

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Story CDs

Jim wrote in a comment: One of my adult students explained that she was feeling [great confidence] after listening repeatedly to a CD I made of all our class stories. Here’s what she said to

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Block Schedule Question

I got this email: Hey Ben, At my middle school we used to have a modified block where we saw the kids two out of every three days for 65 minutes.  Now we have the

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It's Elementary!

I got this reason to celebrate today: Hi Ben! I am one super lucky language teacher. I get to teach the elementary level and I get to teach them every day. I get the kids

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Video of the Three Steps 2

Clips 4-6 of this series of 24 show how PQA (clips 4 and 5) can move into extended PQA (clip 6). The reckless speed of the discussion is due to a group of precocious kids pushing

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Backwards Planning

Brian wrote: If you use, say Anne Matava’s scripts for stories, then you aren’t backward planning for the readers/novels – is that right?  If that is the case, is it better then to just do

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Video of the Three Steps 1

I’ve got those 24 short clips from my old school – video taken last spring – that Frank was asking about. I’ll start putting them up here. I think I learned a lot at NTPRS this

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Throw It Up

I used to go to Saint Louis Symphony concerts a lot in college. I remember that the sound of the live orchestra was so much greater than listening to a recording of the music. I

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Question About Songs

I love songs. They are fantastic for the kids. But I avoid songs. It is because of the amount of new vocabulary that needs to be PQA’d for the kids to properly understand and thus enjoy

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Two New Jobs

I have two new jobs added to the jobs list: 1. the Reader Leader. This is the kid who leads the class in the choral reading of texts. She reads slowly and loudly and literally

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Pamela

One of my students -Pamela (not her real name) – is on a remediation plan for some offense. She did something wrong. So she has to get a signed blue note from each of her teachers

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Bryce Wants Ideas

Bryce want our advice: Estimados colegas, I am slated to present TPRS methods to two regional university Methods of Teaching Foreign Language classes in the next couple of months.  It has to be good because

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One Word Image Video

I have a One Word Image video posted at this link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H47hWgbAN6Q Also, during the workshop Monday, I crammed in a short five minute demo of how to do one at this link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fhn5rdU5D38 I

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Trying Hard on the Videos

Catherina said that she got confused with the voiceover and I agree that it is too much to absorb. It’s very similar to asking our students to understand when we go too fast and provide

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Levels of Acquisition

These from Julie Baird via Robert: Hi Ben, Here are the Levels of Acquisition from Julie Baird. LEVELS OF LANGUAGE ACQUISITION 10 = can easily retell the story in German from a different perspective or

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Automaticity

(A video link to a class by Michele is below in one of the comments…) Bryce your comment needs to be a blog post here because you have used a word to describe a quality that

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Educating Smart Ass Kids and Their Parents

Hi Ben, You could call this one “stop teaching the rules, and start teaching language,” because this is the attitude I am getting from my 4%ers who are getting bored, disrupting class, and then getting

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Elissa McLean

Let’s remember that, for the purposes of getting to know each other and to know with whom we are talking, we were going to send in bios to share with the group. But then summer

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Player of the Week

I read this in the school news: A sophomore this year, Sandy Romero has improved her time by 9 minutes in the 5K from last year. Sandy worked very hard this summer and didn’t miss

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Call For Releases

We need to have some examples of releases to videotape. I’ve got one somewhere but I can’t find it. I’ll look for it. Send ’em in. There are at least ten teachers, members of this

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What To Do?

I got this from Skip today. It’s a good question and I’ll bet he’s not the only one thinking about this: Hi Ben, I have been really focusing on SLOW this year. I have REALLY

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