This is actually John’s latest comment turned into a post because it is so compelling. His previous report from the field (it’s been like a soap opera!) told us that he was leaving his position, tired, I imagine, of living a Jurassic Park sort of existence. But then this: Wow! Thanks for all of the […]

This from Maya Angelou made me think of what we do, how we are different: …a bird does not sing because it has answers. It sings because it has a song….

So many people just quit trying with CI. I think I know why. It’s kind of insane to try it in a building with students and classes and all that the way schools are set up with their testing and regulations and forced attendance and all that. It’s unmatched socks. It’s like taking a wild

This script from Anne Matava has home run potential: assis(e) dans le coin fait attention Bob est en cours.  Il est assis dans le coin.  Le prof parle, mais Bob ne fait pas attention.  Il caresse un renard.  <<Toi dans le coin!>> dit le prof.  <<Fais attention!>>  Mais Bob ne fait pas attention.  Il continue à caresser le renard.  <<Va chez M. Hatch!>>

We have only nine decks in German, French and Spanish. If you want to help build our vPQA library for next year, so that we have hundreds, when you have time, go build one. Haiku Deck Log-in Information: Log in: vpqaci@gmail.com Password: krashenrocks HD runs on Chrome and Safari, not Explorer. Find articles on vPQA

Looking back on this year I remember vPQA and the discussion about exclusive (99%) use of L2 being the two dominant threads of the year. Of course, we continued to refine other things as usual. We got some great discussion on research initiated by Eric and volleyed back to him by Michael and others. It

A lot of what we are experiencing now in our classrooms is a direct result of what we did in the first month of last year. What is the best way to start a year off using comprehensible input? There are as many answers to that as there are teachers. In this article I would like to

Usually in the summer we work on establishing meaning of three structures via Circling and weaving the resultant PQA into a story. This summer in MN we will of course work on that, but I would like to at least try to focus on other things as well: 1. The first day of class – what

This report is from Lance and thank you! – Hi Ben, I am fairly new to the CI scene, and figured what better way to introduce myself to you and the PLC than to send you a link to one of my first blog posts as a soon-to-be-contributor of things CI? I have used my

Our kids know so much. It’s most dramatic with strong kids on the AP exam, like that kid who got the four on the AP French exam in level 2. But it’s hard to measure as explained below. Chris rightly touts writing results. We need to do that. We have been talking about listing, identifying, publishing

The text below is taken from a comment Michael Coxon wrote a week ago here. It’s one of those comments that should appear here every week or so, to remind us. Here, Michael reflects on the past five years of knocking heads with traditionalists in his building in Arizona: I have also endured hours and

I have to just relax and take a deep breath and just realize that this is all evolving at its own rate. It is the nature of the mind to want to codify and create all these CI tornadoes – we call them strategies – that keep emerging from the CI cloud, and we are starting to