In an email today from Sean, he presented the best description of an aspect of concern about SL that I have yet seen. The following is some deep thinking and in my view gets to the core of the matter. I would add to what Sean wrote that Dr. Mason teaches students who are older […]

It’s almost like the issue of Classroom Management is at such a critical point that we can just start calling it CM, since we here in the PLC already have a long history of acronym-worshipping. Bryan sent this: Salut Ben, I was reading “The Smart Classroom Management Plan for High School Teachers” by Michael Linsin, and

I’ve ridden the three books below about as far as I can ride them. But any of our group members who still want to educate themselves on targeted TPRS instruction may want to read them. Accordingly, here they are as free downloads for PLC members only: TPRS in a Year spacer version_2_14_14 PQA in a

Those following the thread where Greg recently had to impose Grammar Rule on one of his classes, which he did with a vengeance, will enjoy this update on that class: Hi Ben, I thought you would enjoy this scan.   In my grammar souffleé class we are on the step where they have 1 full lecture

Miriam Patrick’s new novel came out today for all those in the PLC who teach Latin. Text: A girl just starting her journey, Eurydice finds herself thrust into a dark world from which she may never return. Can her true love face death itself and defy fate?

Anne’s book is now out on the Teacher’s Discovery website, but at this point only in electronic form. The hard copy is very close to appearing there, however. You can get the ebook from them or from me at benslavic.com. Only TD will sell the hard copy when it appears later this fall. WL teachers

This is a situation where I feel the group’s combined experience is needed to provide a good answer to Kara’s question: Hey Ben, I have 10 Middle School classes (divided into 3 preps; Beg, Int and Advanced) and trying to do OWI at this time feels too much. I would say that out of those

Today I received a private e-mail from John Piazza and reproduce it here. I think its timing, its subject matter and its implications for the future of this work are staggering. We must decide how we are going to respond. Inaction will result in, in its worst form, the end of our profession as we

Tina is back in her classroom in Portland today after a pretty intense but very rewarding experience in Atlanta with 146 teachers of the North Atlanta Cluster of the Atlanta Public Schools. We had been invited there by their WL Coordinator, Dr. Margaret McKenzie, for a two day training. The energy there is, has always

What is this new idea that might help us get rid of the feeling, born of the need of the few, usually white, kids to compete with and dominate the many? I call it, and it is almost a game, “Gimme an Object”. It is important to know that this is nothing new .We already do

So, as per the preceding three articles here over the past few day, the problem is how to get every child wanting to be involved in those few seconds after SSR ends and when the auditory input is about to begin. How to do that? If we practice the greetings, (this is kind of fake,

So basically what we said in the previous two articles in this series is, right after SSR in a very subtle yet disastrous process that effects the success of the entire class for the rest of the period,  that the kids break into the haves and have nots. That’s what happens. And the thing is,