The Pool Is Deep

A repost from 2013: Intuitive teaching is about trusting the heart/intuition to bring more to the class than just mere intellectual discussion. Mere intellectual discussion does not bring fun, nor does it bring the heart quality, which in turn brings more learning and much bigger enrollments with happier kids in them. In fact, teaching from a merely intellectual stance, where

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Uninterrupted Flow

This is a repost from some years ago. I feel like I’m swimming upstream on this point in the group. Oh well – I’ll keep repeating it. Until we jettison all the L1 explanations in class, which are about ego and showing off more than they are of any actual value to the students, we will

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Using Calming Music

We should use calming music when we start our classes with silent reading. How does the it work? Our normal heart rate is around 72 beats per minute, and is much faster in kids who have eaten sugar and drunk those caffeine and sugar laced monster drinks just to get themselves going in school. The music

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Teacher in Mead, WA

This is about a teacher in Mead, WA regarding her attending my upcoming July 11-13 workshop in Spokane with the Kalispel Tribe. So sorry to use the PLC for this, but I just can’t find that email to respond. Permission has been granted by the tribe. Contact me for details. Again, mes apologies but I didn’t

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TPRS – The Easy Way

There seems to be some confusion about my new book, TPRS – The Easy Way. I haven’t invented a new version of TPRS. Rather, I have happened upon a serendipitous combination of things. I tried to explain it to Diana Noonan a few nights ago and it took over two hours. I could tell that she wanted to

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Have Pepto Bismol on Hand

Alisa send this with the warning to have Pepto Bismol on hand. I couldn’t make it past one minute. It was either click out or feel the nausea: Alisa shares: Take a look at this +-3-minute chunk of gobbledy-gook.   It’s in “cute” cartoon video w/narration form.  PU. World-Readiness Standards for Learning Languages | American

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Paul’s Challenge

Nathaniel wrote in a comment this morning: …Paul from Denver put out a challenge a few months ago. I cannot get away from it…. I went back and found Paul’s challenge, which was posted as a comment here back on February 15th: Cher Ben, We know what we know to be true. And we know

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Ultra Short Scripts

We have talked about mini stories, which is Blaine’s original term for those really short stories that we use to warm kids up early in the year for longer stories. I have been thinking lately how important they are, and how, although we have a small collection of them here (https://benslavic.com/blog/super-mini-stories-2/) I still would like

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Quote

I was reading through some old notes and found this quote from Susan Gross in 2007. I realize now yet once again how lucky I was in 2001 to have found her as my mentor: “As I listen to teachers, I hear that something is missing. In our attempt to spell things out and to

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