I am writing you to tell you of my presentation to foreign language teachers in my district yesterday where I am the only TPRSer.  They gave me 50 minutes, and all were Spanish speakers except

Here are PDFs of Spanish and French word walls that Tina made, based on the documents in the Resources tab on the front page of the site. Word Wall Français Word Wall Español Word Wall English

This is for French teachers. “Est-ce que” means “is it that” in French. Just now in our SF workshop (we are in day 2 today) Erik Olsen, who is demonstrating how to use a Matava story

I’ll be on the road so not blogging the next two weeks. My suggestion is that readers who are getting ready to go into the classroom right now watch some of our videos (“resources” hard

This post is for people attending my three day intensive workshops. It is to save them the trouble of having to take photos of the posters on the walls. The topics with an asterisk are

From Craig: I’ve been in two days of PD learning about how to ¨teach¨ Spanish. It’s not really teaching Spanish though is it? It’s really about how to present information from the book. It requires absolutely no

This is an update from our Jen Sparano in NJ. Some may recall that discussion in early spring. Here is a recent link: https://benslavic.com/blog/report-from-the-field-jennifer-sparano-2/ Hey Ben – You may recall that the year before last,

I just got back from a workshop in Peotone IL which is just south of Chicago and the teachers there were fantastic. We had a good time, got good work done, and it is exciting

Robert’s materials for German and other languages are now available!  He Ben – My website is now live. There’s still a lot to be done, and I will be expanding descriptions as well as uploading

Yesterday I was walking down the street here in this charming Mediterranean city  of Agen, France and ran into Stephen Krashen and Beniko Mason. I immediately thanked them on behalf of all of us for

Stories are best when they are “cartoon-sized”. Like a cartoon episode, they start, have a plot, and wrap up within 25-35 minutes.  Using the Story Driver job should help us keep our stories short, but

Tina Hargaden said: Using emergent targets, for me at least, has invited much more creativity into my work. I am looking forward to starting the year next year with no targets, because I foresee much

With emergent targets, the story will be different in every class, so different vocabulary and structures are used. Therefore, a traditional scope and sequence based on lists of vocabulary or grammar points is not needed

It may well be that allowing new structures into a story during the story at the very moment when they are needed to drive the story forward will frequently, through the mere inclusion of those student-generated structures, lift the story

Here is a link to the PLC vPQA folder: https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B7fIft4pMHUTfjIzUmZuc1hDcDJmQlA0NlAtVEZCcUxobGU3UkswVXpIXzFXR0Zwb1BBUEU&usp=sharing

We finally have resolution to the tough year that jen had and it is all great news. Those who  have been following along since the gnarly early part of last year – gnarly isn’t even the word,

A repost from 2013: Intuitive teaching is about trusting the heart/intuition to bring more to the class than just mere intellectual discussion. Mere intellectual discussion does not bring fun, nor does it bring the heart quality, which

This is a repost from some years ago. I feel like I’m swimming upstream on this point in the group. Oh well – I’ll keep repeating it. Until we jettison all the L1 explanations in class,

We should use calming music when we start our classes with silent reading. How does the it work? Our normal heart rate is around 72 beats per minute, and is much faster in kids who have

This is about a teacher in Mead, WA regarding her attending my upcoming July 11-13 workshop in Spokane with the Kalispel Tribe. So sorry to use the PLC for this, but I just can’t find that

There seems to be some confusion about my new book, TPRS – The Easy Way. I haven’t invented a new version of TPRS. Rather, I have happened upon a serendipitous combination of things. I tried to explain it

Alisa send this with the warning to have Pepto Bismol on hand. I couldn’t make it past one minute. It was either click out or feel the nausea: Alisa shares: Take a look at this

Nathaniel wrote in a comment this morning: …Paul from Denver put out a challenge a few months ago. I cannot get away from it…. I went back and found Paul’s challenge, which was posted as

OK all you Matava script fans….Story Scripts Volume 3 is finally here. Give me four days or so to get it listed in the benslavic.com pages as an ebook and Anne is making it available

We have talked about mini stories, which is Blaine’s original term for those really short stories that we use to warm kids up early in the year for longer stories. I have been thinking lately

I was reading through some old notes and found this quote from Susan Gross in 2007. I realize now yet once again how lucky I was in 2001 to have found her as my mentor:

Alisa sent this and thank you Alisa: http://www.schoolsmatter.info/2016/06/our-reform-proposal.html

Let’s start it up again in the fall or even next month. We can announce a Teacher of the Year in June like we just did with jen. We just have to remember together. It’s

Jen for so many years now you have been such a great champion of the kids – it comes as no surprise to me that you just received the comments below from kids at opposite

As we get closer to the TN conference, I wanted to announce to those not yet aware that Carol has given us our own session (Wed. – 3:30-4:30) to discuss, among PLC members who want to be

I deeply feel that we in teaching are in the midst of a profound shift in education from the mind (the science of teaching) to the heart (the art of teaching). We are learning, and

Look at Grant Boulanger’s powerful example of untargeted, unscripted student interaction: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JszVvKn3jVo&feature=youtu.be Now ask yourself what would be lost in this beautiful human interaction had Grant’s intention been to say “needed to brush her teeth”

In this new untargeted work, we must keep front and center in our consciousness that we still must absolutely shelter vocabulary and unshelter grammar.  This TPRS mantra has been true for decades, though it is

When we target structures in order to teach them, we break down language into pieces as opposed to teaching language as an organic, unified and naturally emerging whole. The pieces become more important than the whole, and

This past year, in working with the untargeted storytelling approach with the Invisibles, in giving up the idea that I needed to start my stories with the classic TPRS list of three target structures, I

Our own Diane has an article in the most recent issue of the peer-reviewed journal iFLT, entitled “Modifications for Teaching Mandarin Chinese”.  Congratulations Diane! Link to a PDF of the journal here.      

Carly Robinson shares: Hi Ben! I appreciate all the discussion that has been going on here lately, especially the recent focus on authentic assessment… I was wondering if you would let the community know that

Alisa Shapiro shares: Due to 2 retirements and some reshuffling within our WL dept, we now have an opening for elementary (grades 1-4) Spanish at Hubbard Woods School in Winnetka. Interviews are RIGHT NOW!! This

Some of us have been waiting literally years for the Queen of Scriptology, Anne Matava, to put together her third script book. She has been steadfast in making sure that this new volume is full

I am back in Colorado with my wife and my boys, and loving every minute of time with family in this beautiful part of the world.  Until the July conferences, I am putting family first, and

Steven Ordiano has a question for the group: Hi Ben, Could you ask the PLC for some topic proposals I could possibly teach at a foreign language teachers conference that will take place in the

This question is for everybody. Is there anything we can do to make the blog better? Things we need to change? What are your end of year observations and reflections? Have you had time yet to

I’ll be away from my desk for a week or two, coming home, doing a workshop next week, lying down in the backyard and staring up at the beautiful blue sky, dusting off my road bike

This morning while walking to work I was greeted by this big fella:  

I met David at North High School at iFLT about four years ago in Denver. Seeing him teach there made me see that he is a master of CI technique. My name is David Sceggel.

This response to Julio Maestas from me in January of 2016 points the way toward this new focus on using the Forum for collaboration.  I am finding that the Forum is a more user-friendly way to

The Format of our blog community will change now. Readers will use the Forum more often. The expansion of options here will continue in the long run to include more and more changes. For example, we

Usually the honor of being asked to mentor a struggling teacher is given to veteran teachers with years of experience under their belts. In his district in Fresno, CA, our own Steven Ordiano has been

Zach Al Moreno told me a story this morning. He told me that his old department chair in his old school told him that kids need to practice speaking, otherwise how could they learn it? “They