Tina made this. It is a line from A Natural Approach to Stories:

Here’s Steven’s commute along with that double rainbow he mentioned. To me it symbolizes hope for us:

A member of our community said this to me in an email today. Guess who it was? I got a free latte for Teacher Appreciation Week. The mom who delivered it is Chloe’s mom. She said Chloe loves Spanish and sits around at home talking in Spanish and writing in Spanish for fun. She said

When we target parts of the language, and repeat them with the goal of getting students to learn them, we inevitably leave some of our students behind. Some get left behind because they are not yet ready to learn that little piece of the linguistic system at that time, and we leave others languishing in

Tina took this photo today in Portland:

Alisa adds a few most profound thoughts about how we are doing this work: Many of us can’t teach all day, pouring all we’ve got into relationships with kids, and then fight all night justifying what we’re doing to ignorant or close-minded bosses… But I think in the short time that I’ve been involved with

This from our Alisa is the best way to look at data collection and admin requests that I have yet seen, and we have hundreds of articles on this topic here on the PLC.  This is the way to do it: The more we can assuage teacher and admin anxiety, by providing documentation: rubrics, can-do’s

We are nervous because, though we hope for the best, though we know that at times our skills and training allow us to hit the stories out of the park, we are always fearing the worst — stories that fall flat, that do not engage our students, that leave us wishing for a way to deliver

In non-targeted work, we are freer to think in terms of activities and topics, and not worry so much about finding that Perfect Activity to Teach Colors.  We thus can give up the pressure to tightly control the flow of language, and let the students’ interests truly serve as the sole criterion for the content

Just as every student can acquire a language by hearing and understanding messages, every teacher can learn to speak slowly and understandably to convey compelling messages.  But expecting students to gain control of targeted structures on our imposed timeline does not honor their natural ability to acquire.  Neither is it in accordance with Dr. Krashen’s

To my understand as well as Tina’s, delivering compelling messages in a relaxed community is all Dr. Krashen is recommending. The two of us have talked about this topic non-stop for over a year now.  Krashen says nothing about repetitions, targets, heavy circling, establishing meaning (not necessary if we are teaching slowly enough and the context

Natural speech using language that emerges from the need for communication allows us to focus more completely on students’ ideas. This has built incredible community and student engagement in our classrooms. When getting repetitions of targeted language is the focus in the classroom, the language is not allowed to do its natural job of expressing