Eric is in the process of trying out a new idea to teach high frequency verbs. I thought that if some others of us in the group tried it as well we could give him some feedback. I love the way the verbs are grouped here. Eric explains: “Here is my first, yet-to-be-trialed plan: I’ve put […]

From Brother Eric: Gotta post a TPR breakthrough! I tried how Asher teaches TPR –https://youtu.be/KmfnrYerYbY – the teacher demoing with 2 students, the rest of the class observing. Wow, did this make classroom management easier, especially with the younger kids! The rest of the class was told to be silent and just observe. The rest

Pour some concrete into your shoes. Or attach a 20 lb. ankle weight on each ankle. Take a sentence: Jacob was born on Sept. 29, 2011. Walk to Jacob. It will take a while because of the weight. Feel the weight. Drag yourself over there. Touch Jacob on the shoulder. Now walk back over to

We sometimes get bogged down when getting details via circling during stories. We get too many details. Details are great – they flush out the spatial imagery of the story. But they shouldn’t overshadow its linear piece, the actions/events that move things forward. It’s not like we have three hours to create a story. How

from Linda Li: With beginning students, I limited to three verbs “was at”, “saw”, “ate” as they learned those three words already. I used my 3 details as an example: 1. I was in India. 2. I saw the Dalai Lama. 3. I ate a lot of pizza. The students have to ask me questions

Here is a link to Michael’s blog where he gives more information about how to do Two Truths and a Lie: http://optimizingimmersion.com/two-truths-and-a-lie-2/ For the record and I could be wrong but the originator of the Special Person activity is Jody Noble and Sabrina Janczak to my knowledge along with Nina Barber originally authored the Two

Linda Li used Sabrina’s Two Truths and a Lie today. I observed one of the classes. She first modeled the activity, using a power point slide show, saying that she: Met the Dali Lama (who was in Delhi) Ate a lot of pizza Went to the hospital The kids asked a lot of questions, drawing

It is so nice to teach in a SBGR school where the four learning habits of respect, responsibility, perseverance and collaboration are not just meaningless but terms to describe how a child learns. In fact, I am firmly convinced after almost forty years of doing this that the learning habits/social skills/EQ are FAR more important

If we are teaching using a vPQA slide presentation we may come to a slide of an angry girl. We just park there. We don’t leave it. There are posters (Director’s Cut, Sabrina’s Greetings) to support our instruction of the emotions and so we can laser point from the angry girl to the emotions on

This idea is from Michele Whaley –  Provide the observer with a translator… I think it’s a cool idea. Mega. By being provided with a translator, a checklist and an explanation of what is going on, we completely transform the energy in the room, building a strong bridge with the observer before the observation even

My artists this year – probably because of the iPads – are getting way too much into their drawing during the creation of the story. They give me little eye contact and miss a ton of CI. So I demoted them all. They now have to draw the story on their iPads as soon as