Warning- This reposted article from 2011 could also be titled An Out of Control Ramble in Defense of Comprehensible Input. Skip it. I really like how our group takes responsibility for making sure that we keep the focus

We were talking a week a few weeks ago about the Susan Gross Administrator Checklist, and it is indeed a most useful document, but I think it is too busy. Honestly, I think Susan just

Bob sent me an email this morning extending his thinking on understandable messages. It all relates to a previous article (Bob Patrick on CI – 1), which I republished this morning here to give us

Bob wrote this a month ago, and I am republishing it here. I put certain parts of this text in bold. It is a powerful argument and a decisive one against all who think that

I very much want new people to be able to make sense of this site – there is a level of complexity in the discussion here that is of major concern to me. It is

Our newest group member is Latrina Thompson and she asks a good question here: …I really want to start fresh with CI in the spring. Do you think it is possible to transition to CI mid-year? These

I’ve been publishing articles here less frequently and I kind of like the slower pace. It gives us a chance to go narrow and deep and gives newer people time to digest stuff. The 250

Erica McCurry reformatted the Susan Gross administrator checklist to make it look nicer. Thank you Erica. I will put a link here: Administrator Checklist The recommendation is to use this often and have it available

Nathaniel made an important point about translation last week and in doing so called our attention to something many of us had never even thought about. Robert Harrell then gave us a very succinct illustration

Here is Bob Patrick’s report from Orlando: Robertus amicis collegisque, s.p.d. Babae! Quid dicam nisi maximas gratias omnibus! Wow! What should I say if not the greatest of thanks to everyone! I am going to

Bob Patrick shares with us some exciting things going on in Florida in the next few days. I should say, very exciting: Dear Ben, I am heading to Orlando tomorrow for the ACTFL conference where

I like it that we solve our problems together. Like a family. Now for some sad news for some in our family in the Maine group. When I went up to Maine about five years

Thank you to those who held my hand these past five days. Each comment took me closer to understanding what was happening. I wasn’t even aware of it, but since its inception the forum was

The thoughtful teacher who ponders the following image by Robert Harrell will be able to get a more complete response in her class. More will happen. The business of how we interact with our “voices/instruments”

Thank you for the comments on the site and our future. I learn by writing. I can’t string a thought together using spoken words that isn’t out of bounds in a few minutes – that’s

I am concerned that the discussion here, once so focused, is getting overly diffuse. This is not a good thing. It’s what happened to the moretprs listserve and I don’t want it to happen here.

Non-targeted structures may or may not be acquired by the students – we don’t care. Our only focus is on the targeted structures and repeating them at least once in each statement or question we say

Grant Boulanger shares an idea about verb walls, one that I don’t endorse but that others might want to explore: Ben, As you know, I was involved in immersion education for a long while. My

Those who think they might want to attend iFLT next summer, the information is here: http://tprstorytelling.com/conference/ It’s July 15-18, 2014 in Denver. The link above is very incomplete but Diana told me today that Carol

James has some good thoughts here in his field report today: Ben, Last year I struggled a lot during Step 1 of TPRS, the PQA step where we introduce what everything means and get reps

Hello Ben, This note has been on my mind to write for many weeks. I wish to reach out to anyone who is not feeling appreciated where he/she now is teaching. I would like to

Right about now many of us are getting into stories. We’ve normed our classroom for behavior and rules and we’ve done a lot of personalizing via CWB, the questionnaire, etc. When we get our first

I am suggesting a possible template for this reading of authentic texts, subject to change and approval from the group. It’s a first attempt to make this discussion useful in the hands on way for

It is great to hear from Greg Stout. It wasn’t so long ago last spring when he was standing in a chaotic classroom in Charlotte staring out of his classroom window à la Grand Meaulnes

So James we had that discussion a few weeks ago about reading authentic texts and some here (you and Sabrina and a few others) expressed an interest in knowing how my level 3’s were going

I want to bring up Scott’s video again. It is an important video because it represents, in my view, a stage in our development as comprehension teachers that we all must go through, and that

This quote from Berty Segal, who invented the questioning process before PQA even existed, is another way to say that learning a language is an unconscious process (Krashen). It was commented on here by PLC

Scott Grapin, a colleague of Liam in NJ, shows how easy it is to post video here for each other to learn from. I’m sure he will welcome input from the group. Here is his

From Grant Boulanger: Ben, Here’s an interesting article. This guy is a friend of a friend and RIGHTLY attacks the grammar-centric curriculum. He is an ally in that regard. However, he suggests appropriating from the

Hey everybody go to the Tutorials hard link and click on “How to Change Your Forum Password”. Sean Lawler did that. Badass. Thank you Shawn!

Our relatively new PLC member Erica McCurry reports from the field about a change she is contemplating to work with CI and younger kids – she currently teaches high school. Here is Erica’s report: Ben,

Daniel Navar sent this link: http://www.thedailyriff.com/articles/21-things-that-will-become-obsolete-in-education-by-2020-474.php He commented: The technocrats think that “Language acquisition is only a smartphone away.” What BS.

Many of us must post daily language objectives near our door, for each day. That’s ridiculous, so we in our department have a generic statement so that when any observor walks in, right by the

Our group member Jason Bond in Scotland on the Isle of Islay in Western Scotland has a question that is so common from new people that I decided to publish it over on this side

A repost from 2008 that fits in with a recent thread here: There were so many great strategies. There were so many that I couldn’t keep track of them all. It was like a wagon loaded

If we have a child who is brilliant in writing, but is not communicative in class, then how do we assess him? Do we keep him from the high grade simply because he doesn’t communicate well in class?

This blog entry from 2011 responds to a thread on the forum. It is by Catharina Greenberg on teaching elementary kids: The very talented Leslie Davison is presenting this year at ACTFL in Colorado and

I would like to suggest that we nominate people for Teacher of the Month instead of me just picking. The criteria for the nomination should include, mainly, contributions to the group here in our daily

In this comment-turned-article John Piazza makes a couple of key points about what actually leads to measurable and real gains in the language, in the true and not false way, and then he reveals his

In speaking about using short YouTube videos in our CI classes (see categories on that topic), Sabrina once described how they can be used. Here is that description. Using videos for CI just adds to

Here is a lengthy letter of mental support I sent out to a teacher who is doubting himself. It was a comment but I made it into an article. It’s a long pep talk at

James Hosler sent this: Ben, I just read the quote below on the blog of a well know Latin teacher who sticks closely to the textbook and is from the “eclectic” school of teaching. Lots

Kristen sent this upon my request and thank you Kristen: Hi Ben, The app I have been using more and more of this year is called Educreations. On a storytelling day, I hand my iPad

Another group member in Calgary: Hi, Ben – My name is Jacqueline Ford. I am a French teacher to grades 5 – 9 in Calgary, AB, Canada. I am the sole second language teacher in

John send an article posted by Bob Patrick over on the Latin Best Practices site yesterday. Thank you John. Here is Bob’s post: When we spend our time talking about Latin, students learn about Latin.

This is a bio from Eric Herman. Watch some of the videos. Amazing from only a second year teacher! Hi Ben – I am a Spanish teacher, grades 3-8, in Edgartown, MA. I am in

We have a set of questions here that need our attention and responses: Ben, This is year 2 (really semester 2) of my Spanish 1 TCI odyssey and I’m feeling some serious self-doubt. I am

I’ve been thinking about the administrator pressures that we endure each day. I consider them extremely detrimental to our mental health and I feel strongly that they are unnecessary, because administrators don’t understand how people

A repost from last spring, updated: We have talked about what possible “forms” an academic year could take doing TPRS/CI. There are links on that topic here: https://benslavic.com/blog/category/yearly-planning/ There is a general plan that I