I find this statement (by Diane made in a comment field here today) about Bill VanPatten’s work to be important: …If you read BVP’s stuff on teaching — I mean specific ideas for conducting class interaction, not general ideas — boy is it obvious it’s universities that he’s talking about…. Linda Li and Diana Noonan […]

This statement by Claire to the group a few days ago goes a long way in explaining, to me at least, why the ELL crowd is not on board with the TPRS crowd. It’s something I had not thought of: I am still new to foreign language. I [do] think that we can all be

I can’t make writing the story and asking it at the same time work. The best I can do is try to write it out (at the end of the story or maybe at the end of each paragraph) after the (story or paragraph) has been created in the normal way. I sure wish that

Two girls just got upset because Kevin didn’t get into the story. They wanted him in it. Instead, Caitlin Jenner went over to the spider in the window and all the brocolli and cauliflower she had just eaten in a veggie restaurant on Rodeo Drive went spewing all over Vampspooder the Spider. Now that may

John’s recent request that we think about Socratic Circles in this work made me think of an idea. Of course we know that anything involving the conscious mind in our CI classes can’t work, but then Sean suggested kids plugging themselves into or out of the center circle. This is an untested idea spurred by what Sean

Jen, who invented the actual interpersonal skills rubric, comments below on how she uses it today, now five years since it’s creation over a two year period here on the blog by Robert Harrell, me, jen, Barbara Vallejos and Annick Chen: The way I “use” jGR / aka “Interpersonal Skill Rubric has evolved over the

Ben and group: My principal expects me to resign on Monday during a meeting he’s scheduled. Am I the first person to have been forced to resign after writing a story script about religious tolerance? Yeah, it’s that much of a sucker-punch. The subtitles of the video pretty much outline the situation. What I’m telling

When a profession fails to keep up, and provides only the same old boring schlock, year after year, things like this happen: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/states-ditch-language-teach-kids-code_us_56b4b360e4b01d80b245e436?section=india

What if we write the story during the its creation and project it right then and there? When I do this, I can see the reading and writing gains piling up in the kids’ minds like snow in Québec at this time of year. Of course, I can’t sit at the computer the entire time of the

This second of the two suggested class sequences is for teachers who are writing the story in real time as it happens, not for those writing the story after it happens from notes given to them from their story writers: Read and Share (10 min.) Story (writing it out or using voice to text at the same time)

Here’s a nice class sequence for a block class or two regular classes. Note that this first of two suggested class sequences for teachers who are not writing the story in real time as it happens. The second suggested class sequence – posted after this article and labeled Class Sequence – 2 – is for

Here is the free write poster that jen and Angie and I were talking about. It is a major poster in my classroom and I insist that the kids follow its guidelines. FreeWriteRules