Eric wrote this to Dr. VanPatten: Dear Dr. VanPatten, I am reaching out to you in an attempt to bring our worlds closer together. I teach Spanish to grades 3-8 using an approach called “Teaching with Comprehensible Input (TCI).” This subsumes TPR, TPRS, MovieTalk (of the Focal Skills Approach), FVR, as well as other Natural […]

This is good article from Robert Harrell on classroom discipline and a reflection on what it means to act like an adult in a school so that students can have real adults around them and not teachers trying to be their friends: Hi Ben, As part of obtaining my credential in California, I was required

Well Diana’s job is safe. It turned out to be less in limbo than we thought. The details are unimportant but it would have been a truly crazy situation because tonight (Wed.) I just returned from a yearly gala evening downtown honoring various employees of Denver Public Schools. Paul and Julie had nominated Diana for

Those following the VanPatten Open Letter thread here over the past few days are invited to do some nonviolent direct action (MLK) as per: …we who in engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive… We don’t have to

I asked Michael for an update on the Arizona situation and he kindly replied: Hi Ben, Here is a link to the document. If you click the PDF the new version will come up. The final version is just okay. They seem to “scrub” it to make sure certain words and phrases don’t stick out.

There was this comment from Diana Neubauer in response to my comment about how she in her Chinese classes starts stories early in the year with “She is…” or “He is…” instead of “There was a girl.” or “There was a boy.” – You can do “there is a person” in Chinese, too, but I

There was a discussion here at the end of May on embedded reading and somehow this comment by Laurie got put into a holding pen somewhere and wasn’t published. I just found it. So it’s actually good, because now we can make it into a post and link it to the category on embedded reading.

Just wanting to teach slower, so that they can understand, cannot be willed by the mind. No amount of SLOW posters can help us. The problem is the mind itself, it’s nature. We can’t depend on it to slow us down. The mind, it seems, only wants to speed things up! So much to teach,

Diane shares: Here’s what I’ve done with reading as it’s developing this school year: – 3 Steps from Establish Meaning to massive aural input to reading stuff created in class with the students (or sometimes written by me, but highly linked to previous class discussion). – In addition, about once a month or at most

Eric shares: The article recently shared by Sabrina deserves our attention. It concludes with a letter we can cut and paste and send to administrators, which I have already done. Below is what I wrote my principal and I include the letter: The below introductory paragraph and letter to university admin are the conclusion to

Online conversations are always happening between individuals about the two current schools of thought (CI vs. Traditional), but rarely are they as pointed as between the two people in the conversation below. After a number of emails back and forth between these two people, our Alisa Shapiro just got tired of playing nicey with Person

David Young writes: About two years ago all the teachers in my school were given the book “Better Learning Through Structured Teaching” by Douglas Fisher and Nancy Frey.   This book has been a sort of guide for the professional development sessions that we have most weeks.  I look at the book at it seems