Eric made this comment here yesterday re: Scope and Sequence: …explain that there is such a thing as a “retroactive” or “a posteriori” syllabus. And you could list (maybe even order) on that syllabus the types of stories you do. But syllabi should stop being lists of grammar and vocabulary…. …you can give her last […]

Stephen Cook and I and a student this morning were excitedly talking about the huge possibilities with the Invisible creatures. (Stephen is an ELA teacher here who gets TPRS and wants to work it into his instructional program.) Stephen is in Room 311 of the American Embassy Middle School. As we continued our wonderful conversation,

OK hold the phone. In the last post I said that it is impossible to mix a Scope and Sequence document with TPRS. Zach Al Moreno has changed my mind. He suggested that if we teach just 10 min. of grammar every day, we could fulfill the requirements of any S and S document, especially

Today I got these thoughts from a teacher in our group who wishes to remain anonymous: …my department head for the last two and half years has been talking a good game when it comes to CI and I was hopeful about the future at my school. About five weeks ago she said some things

A summer idea from Tina for the group: Summer conferences often have group discounts and people are often looking for roommates.  If you are going to a summer conference and you want to connect with other members of the PLC, please post a reply here and we can get together! As far as I now,

Keri has a question: Hi Ben, I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the content of what I teach and I have a few questions.  I apologize if this is a little all over the place…we now have six levels of Spanish at our high school because incoming freshman are starting with Spanish 3 (with

This is the biggest and most powerful change in TPRS history, to my knowledge. Its’ ridiculous. It sure beats circling! Why? Because this method is less about skill and more about inclusion/ownership and interest. I am in between classes right now and that is a good thing because then I would go on a rant

Robert wrote an important article a few years ago and it’s up in the Primers. I republish it here because of its importance: Scope and Sequence Harrell

This is a repost from a month ago. I have tested it thoroughly and it works. It takes a bit of time to prepare, but the time put in is worth it esp. if you are dealing with a class that needs to be hammered with discipline. This does it – literally forcing their attention

So this new class sequencing (a combined version of the very best ideas from the past two years of discussion here and which now includes the Invisibles) looks like this  (in my own TPRS world): Read and Share (10 min.) Story (writing it out at the same time) (30 min. – note that I find

If a heritage student can write reasonably well, they can help process the story by writing it out in real time. My experiment of writing it out myself in real time failed. I couldn’t do two things at the same time. But I had great success with a girl from Congo today who (an advanced class) writes reasonably

We’ve been snookered. In the goal to get more reps and to go narrow and deep, we’ve very often accepted a false truth, a received idea in TPRS, that it doesn’t matter if we finish the story. Well, I haven’t finished a story in about ten years. I just wanted more reps and more reps and