This may be the baddest ass rubric I have ever used with real classroom behavior teeth in it. I think it is. Man am I thankful that jen took those other wonderful rubrics and simplified

This is a cautionary tale for new teachers: I wish I had the 37 years in my classroom back. Every time a kid crossed me, whether I showed it or not, part of me, a

We have been dancing around the AP question for years. This question from Darcy is truly unique in that she is inheriting only CI kids in an established program, as she replaces a successful TPRS/CI

I hope the regional War Rooms idea takes flight. There are just too many people on this PLC who can’t get to national conferences. I guess each region will react to the possibilities in its

Our discussion of the very most important jobs in our comprehension based classrooms continues. Without the three listed below, my anchors, I wouldn’t even want to start a story: Story Writer – Along with the Quiz Writer, this

Here is another excellent article from Mary Beth: http://www.edutopia.org/blog/storytelling-in-the-classroom-matters-matthew-friday

Mary Beth sent this: Hi Ben: This falls into the thread that was going on about SLOW. It is a rare video of Helen Keller with her teacher Anne sullivan. Anne is explaining how she

I got this question this morning: Hi Ben – I’m new to TPRS. In the fall I will be teaching Spanish K-5 and would like to incorporate TPRS/CI. The classes meet once a week. This

The big new thing at the 2014 Denver and Chicago conferences was the interactive whiteboard app called Educreations. Interactive whiteboards electronically capture your voice and handwriting to bring to life just-completed stories in your comprehensible

John Piazza has compiled a list of take-aways from his experiences at IFLT 2014 in Denver. He said: …I tried to limit this to specific strategies that I will implement or keep in mind as

There is a War Room Group in Portland of one. It’s a start! Darcy Soto sotodarcy@gmail.com

This report from James is from 2013 but bears repeating as we enter another year knowing that a key ingredient of our instruction this year will center around students jobs: When I first started around

In the next few articles I feature a few of the most important of the fifty-two jobs listed at benslavic.com. The first is on the PQA Counters: PQA Structure Counters (3) – Kids love to

Here is the beginning of a War Room group in Chicago: Sean Lawler Ray Bauer

If you are in the NE Oklahoma and want to get a group going please contact: Melissa Sadler caesarrosa@att.net

Here is a repost from 2012. It applies again to how we can begin the 2014-2015 school year as well: It is the main purpose of this site to help teachers find ways to make

Here is the beginning of a War Room group in Denver/Co. Springs: Matthew Webster mateomuchofeo@yahoo.com 970-903-0402 Ben Slavic benslavic@yahoo.com 303-995-0526 Sabrina Janczak 630 849-9423

Here is the beginning of a War Room group in San Francisco: John Piazza john.piazza@yahoo.com Don Read dread121@gmail.com Sara Delman sarahartneydelman@gmail.com

Here is the beginning of a War Room group in St. Louis: Melisa Alexander malexander@bethalto.org Derek O’Chui chiudy@gmail.com Heather Manibusan heather.manibusan@estl189.com Daniel Madrigal danmadrigal@gmail.com (plus one more from East Saint Louis High School) Heather Sandy

I am thinking that the success of the War Rooms at the national conferences could lead to regional War Rooms. We could use the PLC to create a list of PLC members in each major

This comment-turned-article is why Robert Harrell was first published here last winter. It is worth a re-read, or a thousand of them throughout this coming year. It is so incredible – I would like to

Jobs must emerge organically. You can’t just assign a job. It has to be chosen by the kid. The better jobs have to be earned. The superstars who occupy the best jobs enjoy a kind

On Wednesday nite last week in the Chicago War Room session Jenny (China) suggested some sites that are similar to Educreations. These are sites that I thought that we might explore as a group to

Sometimes comments get denied by some weird PLC software security rule so when that happens I just publish the comment here as article. This is from Michele Whaley as she comments on the thread about

I got this question from an Italian student in China: I read your website with much interest. As I am treating the topic of TPRS in my Master Thesis for Teaching Chinese as a Foreign

I got this from Andrew Snider, who is developing some new materials with real promise. He invites us to share feedback and use our network here to brainstorm as to where this project might go:

How many teachers have you seen who have had to deal with burn out? Why have they burned out? Many would say it is because they simply have too much to do, too much to

A small group has formed after NTPRS in the St. Louis area. Contacts are Melisa Alexander and Derek O’Chui. Melisa is at Civic Memorial High School in Bethalto, IL and Derek is at Belleville East

Mary Beth shares this excellent article with us: http://www.edutopia.org/blog/storytelling-in-the-classroom-matters-matthew-friday

I discussed this topic with Sean and a few others and the vote is in. We want more and more video of ourselves working. Sean suggested that since we now know and trust each other

Deciding which tense to use when in the Three Steps has caused confusion over the years and many of us do it differently. Remembering that there is no wrong way to do comprehensible input instruction

Should we mix TPRS/CI instruction with textbook instruction? Nathaniel Hardt discusses why it is unwise to do so: 1. Kid-centered TPRS/CI is of interest to kids. Textbooks are not. When required by my school to

Q. I just want to be able to reach my students with this activity and not be boring. A. Our students are so talented, but some of us spend an entire year with them and

Q. Are the sports balls necessary? What about those kids who ski, dance, skateboard, etc. where getting props for those sports into a classroom is difficult? Also, what about the students who do activities that

Chicago was wonderful. Craig Sheehy slept at the mini-steering wheel of the monorail above Victoria’s Secret and his Turkish boss yelled at him and then just outright fired him. That same Turkish boss, Lt. Col.

Sometimes I publish comments as articles. I do so because I think that sometimes we miss comments that are important. So this comment-turned-article is from Mark Knowles, Director of the Anderson Language and Technology Center

This is a repost from 2013 that fits in with the thread started this morning by Wileen and John about teaching traditionally trained kids: Q. In your new book you mentioned the agony in trying

John concludes sharing his thoughts on how to work with upper level kids we get from traditional classrooms: All my best efforts I’ll save for the first year students, and let the word of mouth

John continues his response to Wileen’s question about inheriting non-CI trained upper level kids from other classrooms: I really think reading is the bridge between traditional inherited classes and CI. If they are looking at

Wileen asked this question in a comment earlier this morning: …I am teaching all third-year classes in the fall (well, in two weeks), and they are all coming from more traditional classroom environments. Do you

Q.  In Circling with Balls, what do you do if there are five kids in the same class who play basketball? A. This has happened to me. I just make each one of them the

Since many of us will be starting the new academic year with the Circling with Balls activity, I present some additional information about it in this next series of posts in the form of questions

I got this question: Hi Ben: I will have 48 8th graders this year that I did some CI instruction with last year but with whom I also used the textbook (I caved!). How would

I had mentioned earlier the Educreation website that Chris brought to us this week from Kristen. Here is a sample story in Latin from John: John says about it: …I made this in about 5

This wrap up represents about .01% of what happened this week. Much was accomplished as the trust grew by day and hourly and with each new friendship. I apologize to the PLC members for no

In a recent article* I offered those who bought Stepping Stones in 2013 a free ecopy of the 2014 (second) edition of that book. Now at the end of iFLT I have to ask for

We are just developing this coaching model so we need to refine it each day. Here are some of the things that we are learning about this model. By the way, it’s wonderful to finally

Last June (2013), in preparation for the San Diego iFLT Conference, I tried to slam together a book called Stepping Stones to Stories. I didn’t think much about it – my main goal was to

I am most concerned about the evening arrivals – that’s the biggest hassle – tomorrow so they have priority. I’m thinking of Joe, Annemarie and John. Anyone else arriving in the evening? Also I am