Q. You spoke about how the word chosen for the one word image should come from the class. What if the class simply cannot come up with anything interesting? A. Oh that happens! But I

Q. If you are trying to limit the length of the story to the overall 25 – 35 minute desired time frame, wouldn’t the transportation scenes add time to the story and “blow it up”

This is from TPRS in a Year! – Whenever an actor needs to go to another location in a story, the potential for a humorous mode of travel exists. The conveyance can be merely described

Bryan seems to have put his finger on exactly where TPRS is these days, in my opinion: “I’ve been thinking about how circling as it is usually taught (at least to beginning TPRSers) really is

Tina told me this: The teacher has to do CI according to what they think is best for them as an individual teaching artist. One person likes targets as they are used in conventional storytelling,

A member of the greater CI community, but not of this PLC, recently wrote: …if someone is a purist about TPRS, then they have the right to be. If someone is a “dabbler” and hasn’t

The data piece is vastly overrated in language classes, because of the intensely human, not robotic nature of human communication. Paying more attention to students’ eyes and body language shows us far better than tests

Tina concludes: Now, do we all have to tell story after story, year after year? No, but hey, it might be worth a try. Beniko does not see her kids but once per week so

As Tina said, the problem with the Realm was that there was no plot and hence no problem. I did not know then (fourteen years ago) that a good problem emerges from the quality of

This is a follow up to a post here a few days ago. It is a lengthy post describing an online interchange between Lizette Liebold, who goes to great pains to represent the position of

Lizette Liebold recently publicly said this about the Invisibles: …the Invisibles are a creative way to develop characters but not anything earth-shattering…. I disagree, but privately. However, Tina, with whom I wrote the book on

Tina continues: I consider Beniko Mason Nanki a good friend and I want to let people know about what Story Listening has meant to her. I first heard of Story Listening from Beniko at Judith

Intuition is what drives this work. It is what causes the comprehensible input engine to rev up into what storytelling really can be, given the chance. If a story is to be interesting, new and

Tina recently wrote on Story Listening: Recently on the FB page The Comprehensible Classroom, a discussion developed, with teachers asking about this “new” Story Listening approach. Story Listening is old, yet also new to many

In the Pringle Man video from New Delhi, which was done about a year ago at the beginning of my exploration of the concept of creating stories with invisible characters, at one point I include

Invisible characters can be created by the class using One Word Images or by individuals. Here are some individually created characters from one of my 6th grade classes in New Delhi last year. The kids

Cascadia CI Conference is in Portland, OR June 29-30. https://comprehensiblecascadia.org/ The Early Bird discount is available through February 14. Show up early for The Day Before the Conference June 28, to meet the kids and

I remember once when I was sitting at my desk at the end of another long day in the trenches, thinking back, reflecting on the four decades and roughly 35,000 – I did the math

A member of our group recently presented a workshop on our work to a group of traditional teachers. In the email below, she shares her thoughts with me on how she successfully reached across the

We’re coming up to comment 50,000,with 49,337 comments as of today. I can’t wait to find out who writes number 50,000. How about that person gets free lifetime membership in the PLC as a prize?

I found a kind of strange-ass line from Dr. Krashen that reveals to me that there is quite a bit of distance between T2 and NT: “Hypothesis: Grammatical rules targeted in this way [T2] are

Alisa reports from Chicago, showing what hard work over years with a few dedicated colleagues by your side can do: In my district we were given explicit permission to follow the research and not worry

When I say that the real enemy is using T1 and expecting kids to show on an assessment that they “acquired” certain words/structures, I do not want anyone to think that there are not CI

Nathaniel said: …knowing a list of grammar points may be considered a skill, but it is not a communication skill. It is more like Sudoko or finding the differences in the two drawings. So I

I am not a research scholar, and so this may be way off, but it is what I have experienced as a teacher in the classroom.  There is this term, “tracking acquisition”, that has come

If the story script ywe are using has only action, it is not as interesting to the students.  A script must contain some element of emotion, pathos, sadness, etc.  This brings emotion to the story

Dr. Krashen says this about T2: 1, The goal is comprehension of a story or other CI activity. 2. This will not require as many comprehensible/interesting reps as in T1. The goal is comprehension of

Tina wrote this on her FB page this morning: There are some radical, life-altering tenets of CI that, if we would just heed, could transform education from the bottom up. Or at least language education. The

I got this from Ben Lev this morning in Sebastopol, CA (just north of SF). Tina and I met Steve at a summer workshop organized by Erik Olsen and by Don Read: Hey Ben, here’s

Before 1990, we had stuck language learning up in the brains for so long with the book. Then Blaine applied Krashen’s ideas on purpose in the early 1990’s. For Blaine it was a wonderful process

Heading into a tough part of the year, we need mental support tools. The classic French dictée format to teach writing and reading is a powerful tool indeed. I think of dictée as a nice

Jen wrote this a few days ago here as a comment. I made it into a post: The gulf between research and real live classroom / school requirements for teachers. I am not saying we

This is by Tina: You have told a story to the class as in Story Listening, or created a story with the class, or you have done a One Word Image with the class. Now

To come to a greater understanding of terms that are in vogue right now, the reader is asked to read this: https://www.google.com/amp/s/martinabex.com/2017/01/04/story-script-to-target-ar-imperfect/amp/?client=safari Also this: http://skrashen.blogspot.com/2016/11/three-options-non-targeted-input-and.html    

I find it outrageous that teachers have to so often  jump through so many hoops justifying their decision to teach using comprehensible input. Such pride in those they work for and with! We ought to

When a teacher shows by example how much can be done with CI, others in the department or district sometimes call in trainers. It becomes a tug of war between those who want to change

 Trying to find a certain building in New York City’s canyons and complexities is not easy. I suggest that we avoid building a New York City out of our work with comprehensible input. I sense

Here is how Wikipedia describes Krashen’s Natural Approach: …the natural approach is a method of language teaching developed by Stephen Krashen and Tracy Terrell in the late 1970s and early 1980s. It aims to foster

I’m reposting this. I feel it is going to be an important thread here this year. I will follow this with a related post tomorrow. In it, Alisa asks a few questions that would make

Good article from Erica: http://www.profepeplinski.com/profes-blog/learning-a-language-or-3-or-4-is-for-everyone  

This article was written a few years ago and published in Education Week by our PLC member Jeanette Borich. It provides an excellent overview of what we are all about in our comprehensible input classrooms

I propose a motto for our group for 2017: You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation.  Plato

We have fought long and hard for ten years here in our PLC on behalf of kids. As we get ready to crank up yet another year of discussion, I want to thank everyone who

Erin Nielson in Connecticut just shared with me this email, very useful information for those with pdf files of my books, so thank you Erin for sharing it with the group: …I figured out that yes,

Our classes are based on a creative community that we lead.  In all communities, the members play different roles, and bring different strengths to the group.  We create stories together, but some kids are stronger

Here is a link to Alisa’s blog. It’s a fine article for us to keep in mind as we get ready to crank the comprehensible input engines up again: Motherese

Here’s Paul’s report from Utah and it will drop a few jaws: Hi Ben, I’ve been trolling the PLC with more rigor for the last few weeks since we have been back in school and

As we often do at certain times of the year, let’s take a little break. We’ve been working hard, teaching hard, finding things out about ourselves and this method, sometimes gnashing our teeth and sometimes,

The question is about how to best create the problem in Questioning Level 5. Here is a much better answer than the one given back then, which was mealy-mouthed: Having utilized the One Word Image to create

A repost from 2012: I’ve been wondering why storytelling is so challenging.  But then I thought that, for the past few hundred years at least, the modus operandi of teachers has been to simply intimidate kids