If you are working in one of the Ultimate CI Books (the old Invisibles book), here are a few related videos: Lori 

Q. Without tools like Can Do statements, how are we supposed to evaluate what our students can do? A. Why is it so important to evaluate what our kids can do with the language, especially at such an early age? They can’t do much with it, certainly, any more than a three or four-year old

Danielle wrote this to me. My response is below. Hi Ben,I hope it’s ok to ask you for advice, you are Ben SOLVE IT.  This quarter I have 6th grade Italian.  Mark C. is the only other Italian teacher.  I only teach it when necessary.  Anyway, he has written emails to me on two occasions

Q. If teaching kids how to meet important benchmarks like the Can Do Statements is not what we should be doing, then what do you think is the best use of time in a foreign language classroom? A. The best use of time is when we get our students fully focused on truly compelling messages,

For those working their way through the first Star book, here is an excellent video of Jesus Horacio Baez Avila, who is master certified in the Star, leading a group of Zoom teachers from Phase 1 to Phase 5. Of particular interest is a section of the video that begins about an hour in (59:40).

Q. So what needs to happen now? A. Teachers need to go back and read and re-read more carefully what Dr. Krashen has said and figure out ways to truly implement his ideas so that they work on behalf of kids and not the Can Do fraudulent learning dictated by the school district. When Krashen

A repost from 2014: What Angie wrote today about Can Do statements could apply to almost any aspect of traditional language education, I felt a deep connection to every word. If someone asked me why I am so opposed to the old ways, and why I embrace human based teaching so strongly, I would say

At the end, Eugene didn’t look too much like Eugene. When we got to that point, it was me doing most of the talking. The way I looked at the whole situation, there in that corner room of Grand Strand Hospital with the word QUARANTINE in big letters on the door (they let family in

In the hospital, before Eugene succumbed to death in 1993 at age 37, we had a lot of talks before he went up to heaven. He was quarantined, of course, but they let me in anyway since I was his only family. Our topic was always fairly obvious – we talked about running track. I

Eugene was a champion athlete, but he was also a champion person. He lived in the aptly named Race Path Community of Myrtle Beach. He lived on Neighbor Lane. Neighbor Lane actually wasn’t very neighborly. When we dropped the athletes off late at night after away track meets,  Neighbor Lane being a “shoot zone”, they

This series of articles is about an old friend – Eugene Williams. Here he is: Eugene was one of my assistant track coaches at Myrtle Beach (SC) High School. He mainly coached the sprinters, having run the 200 and 400 meters himself at Myrtle Beach High about twenty years earlier. The term for runners like

Q. Do you observe what the students can do in terms of the Can Do statements of ACTFL? How do they fit into your schema? A. Can Do statements do not fit into what I do. Most teachers teach them using skill building, which involves memorization and conscious monitoring of output. That is a far