Whenever we feel like giving up, like the battle is just too intense, then we need to remember what has become for me a rallying cry from Paul Kirschling in the Denver Public Schools: ..we know what we know to be true. And we know that if we don’t do what we know to be […]

A parent of one of my best students, although she would not be in a grammar class, was told by a previous teacher that her daughter “has neither the discipline nor the patience to learn a second language. Sophie at that time was five years old. That’s an extreme form of what we’re up against.

My department chair here at our school in New Delhi is Zach Al Moreno. We were just hanging out talking about teaching this morning and Zach said something that made me realize that staying in shape professionally (my theme for today) cannot be done without constant remembrance of one particular fact about how we acquire

There has always been that old question about staying in shape if it is more important to have a good diet or good exercise. Which is the most important and in what relationship to each other are they? I have slowly learned that for me it’s 90% diet and 10% exercise. That’s for me, though.

Man, does anyone agree that we need to say it out once and for all on the Project Based Learning thing? We’ve knocked this around for years, and we all pretty much agree, and there are some qualifications to the PBL concept where they actually may have some value in terms of real acquisition, but I am

In the interest of transparency, I want to announce that Eric Herman and Michael Coxon and I have parted ways. Both have contributed much to the discussion here, but their strong focus on SLA, fascinating as it is, isn’t the best thing for the average teacher trying to work on their classroom teaching here. It takes

I remember growing up that in certain classes certain teachers would kind of let us not worry so much about walking the straight and narrow all the time in class and worrying about the test. Those teachers would often tell us stories and just somehow make the class more interesting than the other classes. Some

We can’t “teach” using TPRS. We can only share information and negotiate meaning in a light hearted way with our students if we are to authentically reach them using comprehensible input. In no way can that be called “teaching” Comprehensible input is a fickle bride. She demands that we completely trust her ways if the marriage

I’ve been putting this off for long enough. It’s time to get current, to clean up the group membership information found below. Let’s improve this list. This time I’m asking everybody to please include your city and state as well. This will help us find each other. Of course there is also the map that needs

Another video from our Alisa: Hi Ben, As promised, here is another video from my classroom. This second grader (8 yr. old) is reading the captions of an 8-frame storyboard he illustrated based on the cute Movie Talk clip called, “Paddy Pan.” Compared to how my students used to read in my old legacy life,

From John Bracey: Hi Ben, I thought it might be helpful to remind the PLC of the 10 Minute Rule, especially at this point in the year. Here is how I have been using it and why I think it is so powerful for keeping class in L2: I have found myself using the 10-minute

From Craig West: Hi Ben I was reading about how to incorporate social media in classroom. I was thinking why not have an Instagram for school? You could put up images and captions from all the stories you covered in class including the numbers and colors students can passively scroll through on their phones as