Photo

Jen Schongalla had sent me a photo last week from ACTFL and I posted it here of her and Grant and Robert. There was another guy in the picture but I didn’t know him so didn’t publish that photo but it turned out to be our own Nathaniel Hardt! I just haven’t met him in […]

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Libera Me

I was making tea this morning and the term: …quando cœli movéndi sunt et terra…. just popped into my mind. This was from the Libera Me  from the Faure Requiem. But I hadn’t heard it for thirty years back in South Carolina when I sang it over an eleven year period in my church. So I

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Rant

There was a brief thread (one comment) here a few weeks ago on a post by Robert on the topic of Comprehensible Output: https://benslavic.com/blog/comprehensible-output-hypothesis/ I put the part I consider most important in that article in orange. Robert’s comments on Swain cannot be ignored. His read on Swain is so accurate. It reveals so much.

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Cautionary Tale

More important than teaching well is keeping our jobs. In this report, a teacher in our group shares with us a topic that is almost never discussed, and yet is one that is in my view the single most important thing in teaching – keeping things from getting too real and personal in a classroom

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ACTFL Photo

Jen just sent this, a photo of her with Grant Boulanger and Robert Harrell in Boston this week: Some of us will be disappointed to note that Grant was not chosen as ACTFL TOY. A traditional teacher was. I don’t think that a single one of us who was involved in helping Grant make his

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Mindee’s Stories

Here are the images in Mindee’s two stories from last week with her 2nd and 3rd graders. Looks like she is a fast learner! First story, 3rd Grade: 1. There is a pencil.  She is a girl.  Her name is Bobita and she is happy.  She is 7 years old. 2.    Bobita wants a pokeman cat for

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Fences

Aiming for 100% transparency is just another fence between you and the students. I watched a teacher once who was aiming for much more transparency than I had been. As I watched her it felt annoying. She wrote everything on the board when I just wanted to know what came next. I realized we lose

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