I feel that in some ways there are teachers who have an effect on children that can only be described as evil. It is because when they design a curriculum that only favors the fast

There is a another quote from Fred Rogers that I consider of immense importance when thinking about what a language curriculum should look like: Rogers said, “I don’t think that anybody can grow unless they

Fred Rogers has said that “…love is at the heart of all learning…”. If the statement is true, and I feel that many teachers who are attracted to comprehensible input language instruction feel that it

A follow-up to points made in the previous post: 1. The Acquisition-Learning Hypothesis: Conscious learning about a language, including memorizing and learning and manipulating grammar paradigms, is a separate process in the brain than unconsciously

It’s been over a year since Teacher’s Discovery found out about what we’ve known for over ten years: the greatness of Anne’s scripts, so I wish to take this opportunity to recommend it to anyone

Anne sent us this great link for French teachers:

A 2010 repost: I used to think that forcing and prodding the kids into early speech production too early was just a waste of time, but now I see it as harmful. The image is

This is from Greg in case you missed it in the comments a few days ago. It’s important: So my school did student based surveys that give scores of teachers this year (we are told

I found a nice site (link provided below) on personalized learning (is that not what we do?) while looking for a definition of the word curriculum. I like the suggested definition below and suggest that

Our PLC member Taron Ware shares something cool that he created: Hi Ben, I posted this in the French Teachers in the USA Group as a response to the Google Form Evaluation I have been

Robert Harrell – How Do I Get an A?

This is a story that might be told in the future: There was a student on a class trip to France who had quite an experience there. She was a fourth year 17 year-old student

This post from TPRS in a Year! is related to the topic of milking and will be the final article in this series on the topic. Anyone doing NTCI can ignore the targeting mentioned in

Laura just returned to her classroom after a family loss. Normally, that would be a tall order, to restore the classroom to prime form after a month of subs and right before a vacation. Here

Here are the Director’s Cues mentioned as a major tool in the milking processes described earlier in this series of posts. They are also listed in A Natural Approach to Stories (ANATS) and in A

Eugene and Bonnie Hamilton once spent a few days with me when I was still teaching in a middle school here in the Denver area. Eugene is a Latin teacher and musician (French Horn) and

Live in your classroom in full confidence that the next moment will manifest safely, creatively, just as the next note manifests in a piece of jazz, naturally. The next note is the next word or

I spent many years working hard trying to make sure that things got funny in stories. I would think outside of class of ways to bring in a certain celebrity, or some fact about a

Making a story with the Invisibles is truly a team effort. So remind your students to be on the lookout for those little insight moments – those moments to milk – that, in a second,

We take delight in leaving our old stodgy paranoid piece of our teacher self behind. We relax no matter how hard it is for us. All we have to do is be aware of our

The idea of milking certain sentences to let the story have more freedom and thus more interest is one that challenges us to step outside of our comfort zones. We pretty much have to let

When we let go of trying to teach the language in favor of letting those milking moments drive the story, we change. We become real teachers. It’s as if we don’t even care if they

Milking a phrase is of course scary, but only at first. Really, it is so much fun, and largely because you are released from having to know what it going to happen next. Now that

When we don’t target, we are much more aware of the kinds of cool sentences described in the last post because when we don’t target we align with the flow of language and not shackled language.

One skill maybe to focus on after the break would be to milk statements more. Anyone who has done CI knows that roughly every tenth thing a class says, or maybe every twentieth, is different

I just took Julia’s survey on NTCI and it only took about 15 minutes. I embrace this attempt by her to record opinions about NTCI. The thing is, I don’t know how many of us

I just got a student in my class. Came from conventional high school with an “A” transfer grade. I think that means that this student had looked up all the worksheet answers online and the

We want complete buy-in from our students when creating a one word image with them. This requires that we are 100% understood when building the image. Here is one way to accomplish that goal. The

I can’t think of a better reason to go through the insanity of teaching languages than the one about uplifting ourselves and others. And what is the best way of teaching languages that uplifts us

Are there any other reasons why we teach, something not so obvious? Personally, I believe that a not-so-obvious reason we teach is to uplift ourselves and others, so we can find work that at least

We must often revisit our motives for going into teaching in the first place. It will keep us heading down the right road. We spend a lot of time doing this work in very difficult

The next time you want to sit on the pity pot and complain about what a sucky job this is, go read this article in the 2016 issue of Time Magazine: http://time.com/magazine/us/4547305/november-7th-2016-vol-188-no-19-u-s/ Then go into

I am working with a teacher who is unfortunately in one of those “dramas” this week that we sometimes get into with parents when we try to teach according to the standard.  I thought I

This is what Beniko Mason shared with us a few summers ago in Agen on the topic of reading. With respect, and acknowledging the crushing daily opposition to the work we are trying to do, I

https://www.thisisinsider.com/best-mr-rogers-quotes-2018-9

Craig found this:

Many of us fault ourselves for not being good enough teachers, for not doing more. Now, I can see that the culture that exists in our schools of a lot of the kids being just

Al Franken as Stuart Smalley famously said this memorable line on SNL years ago: “I’m Good Enough, I’m Smart Enough, and Doggone It, People Like Me!” Why did this particular line reverberate with so many

Anne sent this question in today: Hey Ben – This discussion has probably been had on your blog and on the facebook page 100 times, but I’ve missed it, and I really want to know:

I got this email from Craig today. He shares an awesome insight: So now in my 5th year at this school (continuation school). I’m really seeing that language learning and language ability is all about

I call the Monday after a break Snarky Monday. The kids just seem to get basted with an extra layer of snark over the break – who knows why? Since trying the same stuff that

There is this quote from Soren Kierkegaard: “There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn’t true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true.” I connect this to

How’s this for an unnecessary and professionally embarrassing website? http://www.angelfire.com/az/english4thechildren/krashen.html

Here is an excellent MT clip from Craig for Thanksgiving: https://goo.gl/UJUjfR

In the next year it would be nice to collect some readings here and put them all in one place. I remain convinced that we don’t need the novels. They are pretty boring. We can

I was just reading a thread in an online group. It said, “Challenge them by introducing more vocabulary.” I don’t agree with this. “Challenging” kids is code for “make them think harder,” or “make them

Hi Ben – I think the last email I sent you the subject line read, “Worst Year Ever.” So I thought it appropriate to give the subject of this email the title “Best Two Years