Claire recently said that we need a Scope and Sequence and not a curriculum. But I can’t find the comment. It was two days ago. If anybody can find it I would appreciate it. The reason I bring it up is because, when I asked Diana Noonan, WL Coordinator and Curriculum Specialist for the Denver […]

I am trying to keep up with Claire and can’t seem to be able to do it. But I have to because she is pointing rapidly and repeatedly, jabbing more like it, in the right direction for us, in my opinion. What direction? In her overarching concept of what the terms assessment and curriculum even

It used to be routine that traditional teachers, who held the keys to such awards back then, would vote each other in as state teachers of the year. But that is all changing. Our wonderful Sabrina Janczak has been chosen Colorado Teacher of the Year for 2016-17. On our site we have videos of Sabrina

Our PLC member Craig West has written a fine passage about language acquisition. It goes deep, very deep, and should cause each of us to wake up with a jolt and again assess how we are teaching: My daughter is almost two years old. She’s just starting to really put sentences together. The other night

Here is an even more detailed description, also from TPRS in a Year!, that connects with some of the things Keri was doing in her video. (The little images didn’t transfer from the text but the point is still clear.)  Nothing could be more important to the novice teacher than a feeling of being on

This long passage is from TPRS in a Year! It gives some insight into what Keri was doing in her filmed class: If your story is too carefully planned, you may feel the need to force it on your students. This prevents the story from taking the form they desire. Keeping the story loose allows

After years of largely futile discussion on the topic of blurting here, Keri has perhaps hit on the best way to keep our little angels from blurting. I put this gem in the Primers too. Keri’s simple formula: …I think I owe it to the timer and how I use it. Each day in each class

For convenience, I am putting my responses to Keri’s video here with the actual link to the video as well. https://youtu.be/WL-p0aueG3o 00:05 – students are relaxed but they know who is in charge and I don’t think it is just the fact of it being recorded. You have a very strong teaching presence, loud clear

I just got this email from Claire today. The next few weeks are gonna be intense. We are going to battle at the least time one would expect. At the beginning of the summer. If not now, too many kids will be hurt in the fall. Message from Claire: Ben – I posted the link

Laura Abuhl just wrote what she thought probably to be a rather innocuous question: …yes, I am tired. And yes, I need to take a rest and breathe, but I am so intrigued by these two topics and need TIME over the summer to shift my paradigm. Ben, are you suggesting that the assessment topic

Looking back over twelve or thirteen years of designing and implementing various student jobs, I have settled on these as the most important for both targeted and untargeted stories: PQA Structure Counters Story Writer Story Artist Class Photographer Professeur #2 Mais Bleater Où/Where Person Quand/When Person Reader Leader Videographer Story Driver Actors I would like

Let’s rest now. We have to. When else can we? The current threads are: targeted vs. untargeted new assessment model new curriculum model that will rest on the new assessment model. We can pick them up at iFLT. This will propel us into the fall. We just need to rest a bit. This has been the most