I have found it helpful, in the very first classes, to begin the year by first asking the class to pair up and briefly discuss which of the four skills (written on the board) are

I don’t use the hand comprehension checks anymore. Not only do the kids lie about what they are getting, but also it takes too much time and sometimes leads to English. Instead, and many of

Check it out. Our own Skip Crosby is getting some love back for all the love he has put into his career and and into CI and into making the Maine Conference each October one

http://www.online-stopwatch.com/countdown/

OK Bob Patrick wrote this a year ago here. I just found it. It might provide an answer to the question about how to work with kids who need writing as per my previous post

In 2009-2010 Annick Chen at Lincoln High School was asked by her administrative team, along with every teacher in the building, to make writing the focal point for that year. Ever dutiful, but knowing full

Don Read shares some thoughts from the Agen conference: First, what a great conference and what a great time I had in Agen! Thank you for organizing this very special opportunity! Second, below are a

We can just relax when it comes time to teach an actual class, after studying so hard about this stuff. It’s time to get TPRS out of our minds and into our bodies. Just get

vPQA.looks for.Spanish.SeanLawler

Does anyone know what works well for the Bleater Job in a Spanish classroom?

I don’t think our idea of working together to identify a verb sequence that we wanted to teach – common planning on line – can work. Melissa and I were thinking about it but here

Ruth explains how we can access Creative Commons to use with Power Point and thus avoid using copyrighted materials when making vPQA slide presentations. She explains: Here is the search page from the Creative Commons

Here is Sean’s suggestion about use of instructional time in a block class. It really is a very useful template, including all of the things one would want to do to keep the brain engaged

Here is a conversation from 2012 with a PLC member who was completely new to comprehension based instruction. It will help us to review some basics about PQA as we crank up the engines again. Hi Ben, Two

Chill I know that you and Ruth and Bryan and Craig – a few others as well – have been thinking about vPQA and how to rescue it into some kind of form that we

Everything listed here is just a suggestion: To start the year, we can ask ourselves if we have addressed these (optional) things: 1. Wall Posters (see Resources/Posters on this site for a complete list) including: Word Wall blank

A new article from Krashen. I think it is from Nathaniel, but pls. correct me if necessary: Does Duolingo “Trump” University-Level Language Learning? Stephen Krashen March, 2013 Duolingo is a web-based self-paced language teaching program that

Here is a suggested fourth blog post/communication with parents about what to expect in your classroom this year: How Children Learn Languages – A BBC Video Worth Our Attention As a follow-up to the previous

I really like the idea of mentioning to parents before school starts what to expect in terms of expectations from their child in the coming school year. I know that not all parents will be

This second suggested school blog post/communication with parents is intended to alert parents to the fact that they should not expect much output based instruction in your language class this year:   Listening and Reading

Teachers who have a school blog or some other kind of electronic information page for parents might want to consider some of the articles here that I have posted on my own American Embassy School

I noticed that whenever Dr. Krashen talked to us in St. Paul this summer about comprehensible input and how it should be interesting, he also added, as I remember, that the input should also hopefully

When we try to use our conscious minds to arrange, drive and organize what is an unconscious process, we invariably bore the incredibly powerful unconscious mind. It’s like a little boy trying to get up

OK what is the deal with Haikudeck? Are we going to use it as a slide show delivery platform, or just some of us? How will we make vPQA happen, for those doing it this

David Sceggel makes good points about CWB below. This is his comment from last night turned into a post. The reason I post it is because in the first article on the first day of

Here is my 2015-2016 professional growth statement: I want to finally use pausing, a collaborative norm for any group, in the real way, not mechanically. I hope that doing this will allow me to get

As we continue laying the theoretical groundwork for the first CI class we teach this year, and we’ll get to the nuts and bolts of that soon, we again make the point that organizing CI

In the Denver Public Schools what we do is work backwards from novels. We make a list of the verbs that are necessary to read a certain novel, teach those verbs using the the various

The order in which the verbs are taught doesn’t matter, since we know from Krashen that we can’t know or predict the order in which language is absorbed by the human brain anyway. When the

I mentioned in the last post that I only stop working with a verb when it feels “saturated”. Here are some more thoughts on that important topic: I only add a verb to the list

Since many of us are in or about to begin lots of meetings in our buildings that connect to SBGR, etc. I suggest that we all at least read and become familiar with the vocabulary

We may be working from a list of verbs provided for us by our district WL leadership. Or not. It doesn’t matter. Another point, and one bound to irritate some people: in my view the

From Nathaniel: Hi Ben, I just found this. Interesting. http://www.sdkrashen.com/content/articles/2015_notes_on_tprs-_contributions,_controversies,_problems,_and_new___frontiers.pdf

Jen just sent me two photos of her new classroom: It struck me that the space is so inviting and expressive of the time now of starting again, of the possibilities. But then I realized

I received an email from a PLC member who really sees the big picture about what we do: I’m looking forward to my new gig and also was sobered a bit by some stats I

This question is from Joe Eye: Hi Ben – I hope all is well. I have a scenario/question for the PLC and you. Scenario: New school has a Spanish program that they want taught exclusively

So, having tried to stress the importance of teaching verbs, verbs and verbs in our CI classes, let’s get started with our suggested sequence, our train tracks, for getting through our first class with our

A second metaphor, a heavier one, that illustrates the importance of verbs in our work can be found in the image of dump trucks. Each truck is a verb that is loaded up with all

All the other words that comprise the rest of the language besides the verbs need reps, of course, but we get them on the backs of verbs. It is the verbs that should sparkle and

Mary Beth asked in a comment here last week about a possible actual first class scenario. The following series of posts provide one possibility. There are a lot of background posts before we even get

Well, Landen and I got here to New Delhi all right after a relatively calm but exhausting journey through with a week long stopover in Paris. Although we didn’t stop in Iceland, I wish now

I was working with a Chinese teacher on the last day of the conference a few days ago, and she chose to work with: looks for finds These two words are powerful together! I highly

I wanted to report that Dr. Krashen in MN was very enthusiastic about a conference in New Delhi, in the next year and a half of so. Everyone is invited. We are still in the

Here is a valuable set of well-matched verbs if you want to start out the year with a super mini story. I know that they are well matched because we used these verbs in coaching

I heard lots of comments about how Eric was missed at iFLT. Oh well, he does send this from Honduras: Hey Ben – This sums up the “facts” of SLA in a nutshell: https://www.llas.ac.uk/resources/gpg/421 “Second

Stephen Krashen has said many times that he only did the research and that it is up to classroom teachers like us, everyday people, to implement it. This is a profound thought. It means that

Anne Mackelvie in Australia has some good questions for the group: Hi Ben, Am currently reading and taking notes on your book “The Big CI Book”. It is going to be my bible! I also

Carol Hill says: All of the jargon aside, when I read this it’s very easy for me to say that I do all of this in the TPRS/CI way. I think that another more traditional

I’ve been going through some old comments looking for that one that has the list of all the things a teacher does in the course of one day (it’s a ridiculous amount of stuff but

I can’t believe we have a “Chairs” category. But as some of us, increasingly more of us, dump the desks we probably need one. I was going over some old comments and found this from