Eugene Williams
This article is about an old friend – Eugene Williams. He is pictured at the bottom of this article. Eugene was one of my assistant track coaches at Myrtle Beach (SC) High School. He mainly
This article is about an old friend – Eugene Williams. He is pictured at the bottom of this article. Eugene was one of my assistant track coaches at Myrtle Beach (SC) High School. He mainly
A new Ultimate CI Book 1 class begins on March 20. There are currently 15 spots available in this class. When you sign up, here’s what you get: Twelve hours of Ultimate CI training over
Some of us have been following the process of being observed that Danielle has been going through lately. Here’s an update: Last week, she had the pre-observation with her principal. It was probably not unlike
It is my opinion that the word “planning” is just embarrassingly overused in our profession. Why, if we all gained fluency in our first language without a shred of planning, have we bought into the
Here’s a possible start in finding some common turf between ELA and CI instruction. Way overdue: There are many terms used to describe ESL/ELL and EFL instruction. For now let’s just use the acronym ELA
Q. When you write in the board do you do write the English first? A. Yes and the Spanish below it. Then you draw a thick line under the Spanish to separate the new expressions from
This is a reminder for Group 4, Class 3. Prepare this from the Book 1 Syllabus: Class 3 – Saturday – 2.20.21 (12:00 – 2:00 p.m. Mountain Time) – Demo and Coaching. Review pp. 17-66
Over the years there certainly have been hundreds of posts here on the PLC about how CI interfaces with the reading piece. However, after studying the problem (reading is a problem in the CI community
For those using the Ultimate CI Book 1, the following eight steps can be used for when you get observed. So if you have a formal observation coming up this spring, I recommend watching these
My books are available as PDFs, which will open and can be read on a Kindle. You can use a registered Kindle’s “Send-to-Kindle” email address to send your PDF to your Kindle via email, or you
I was asked what materials are needed to do the Star. This is the list:
If you’ve ever tried to update or overhaul a website, you know how much time it takes. The “free stuff” from my former site will for that reason be delayed for some months, as I
If you scroll down to the bottom of the categories list, you will see both the “When Attacked” and the “When Observed” categories. These two were created to help teachers who are (a) undergoing any
A great hypocrisy when an admin asks you during a pre-observation meeting “What will the students be able to do after the lesson?” is to answer it. The real answer to that question is “It
What about rigor? Some language teachers say that teaching using comprehensible input is too “easy” for the students and so they succeed too much, earning “too many” A’s. The answer to that question is that
The Chef Everything rests upon the main research idea that language acquisition is an unconscious process. Here’s an image to drive the point home: The unconscious mind is like a chef whose kitchen is located
The Chef Everything rests upon the main research idea that language acquisition is an unconscious process. Here’s an image to drive the point home: The unconscious mind is like a chef whose kitchen is located
Noam Chomsky Noam Chomsky said, back in the 1960s: “Grammar [is] acquired by virtually everyone, effortlessly, rapidly, in a uniform manner, merely by living in a community under minimal conditions of interaction, exposure, and care.”
A Big Pill The idea that we have no control over how languages are acquired and cannot think our way to acquisition is a big pill to swallow for many language teachers. After all, many
When we get observed, we often realize how truly out of touch our evaluators are. They don’t get the research. It makes for a very nervous few days of pre-observation and then the observation itself.
Personalized discussion provides the glue for the process. During the class we don’t go out of bounds – we keep things simple for our students by only introducing new vocabulary in the form of reading.
You are welcome to share this with anyone who wants to more about your work with CI: Despite huge expenditures of public funds, most language students in American schools are failures in their study of
Q. What does one do without the support of one’s colleagues when trying to make the change to comprehensible input based instruction? How does one react to a colleague who does not wish to implement
According to the US Department of State, an academic program is rigorous when there is: depth and integrity of inquiry: Many teachers have expressed concern that there is too much curricular material to “cover” and
If I’m teaching kids who are new to comprehensible input, I typically make four posters out of the facts below to help them understand how they should feel in a CI class. They deserve as
Yesterday I got some specific questions from a colleague and want to share my responses to him with the group. Sorry for the long rant. I do that sometimes, more for my own mental health
The way I figure it is that when we don’t include and encourage every single student, regardless of race or background, we will end up hating our jobs while at the same time trashing a
I’ve given up hope. Our profession is broken and useless. It pretty much always has been. That is my conclusion after being in the field for 45 years. If you disagree with this statement, if
Much of what we focus on here in our group is our mental health – it is a major topic. A big aspect of protecting our mental health on a daily basis is dealing effectively
There are a lot of readers here who are just getting started with CI. That’s great. But there are also many of us with strong CI experience to whom I would like to direct a
Our PLC member Frank James Johnson has said this about the Star Sequence: Scope: “Whole Language Instruction” Sequence: “Spiraling Expansive Recurrence of Comprehensible Input”. Of course, these blanket terms would freak out any admin who
Here is the letter that Danielle and I crafted, which you are of course welcome to copy and paste and rewrite if you are finding yourself in this kind of situation in your own teaching:
One of our PLC members received this email from a parent the other day. I asked and received permission to share it with the group. Hello Senora (name of teacher) – Hopefully things are going
Far too often, we CI teachers get challenges from our peers – teachers with whom we are supposed to be working on toward common assessments, high frequency verb lists, thematic and semantic units, etc. We
So the reversal of instructional priorities is moving now in favor of middle school teachers who use CI in their teaching. The high school teachers are being “outed”. It’s got a lot to do with
I was watching “Inside the NBA” with Shaqille O’Neal and the “Round Mound of Rebound” Charles Barkley. On their Christmas show they gave away about 40 bicycles – placed on the set – to disadvantaged
Let’s do a good job of being language teachers, because we certainly don’t want our kids to end up living in a van “down by the river”….
OK. Everybody knows that for at least a decade and more like two decades here there has been a kind of cold war between us (CI teachers) and a new breed of CI teacher who
Our bosses profess to want REFORM in education. We all looked to CI. That was the right place to look. But to our shame we largely ignored the equity/inclusion side of things. Maybe it’s because
To repeat the main point of the last article: how our students do in terms of language gains and how we do at our jobs is directly and deeply connected to how we address the
In recent years, the focus here on the PLC has been not only on CI but also on how we can use CI for better mental health. How can we plan less, rest more, have
I just made about twenty TikTok videos that all focus on one thing – that we learn languages by focusing on the message and not on the form of the language via worksheets and other
Certainly, 2020 needed to go. The big world was a disaster, and our small world of language teaching took a major hit as well, with most of the damage being done by the new online
Of the many questions Robert asks of the textbook companies in this series of articles, this is my favorite: How does the textbook align with the current emphasis by Advanced Placement (College Board), ACTFL and
Robert continues with his questions for textbook companies. It would be nice if they would answer. But they won’t. Their involvement in education is not spurred by the same interests that prompt these questions from
Robert continues to adress Sarah’s original questions with some questions of his own: How do the textbook’s scope and sequence align with the Natural Order of Acquisition? Since language acquisition researchers (e.g. Noam Chomsky, Daniel
The Zoom training on Book 1 of the Ultimate CI series begins this coming Monday, for those interested. Go to benslavic.com and click on “training courses”. If you want to really access what is in
In this third article in this series, Robert begins a series of responses to Sarah’s questions. Sarah had said: …the Department Chair has told us we are going to use Realidades. I used that book