Celebration is in order for one of our group members. Bob Patrick got a write up in the Atlanta Constitution! Here’s the link: http://www.ajc.com/news/news/local/making-the-grade-latin-teacher-makes-language-leap/nhzCz/

Robert made the effort to actually purchase and read the Content-Based Teaching and Learning book, so the least we can do is read this post slowly and reflect on what he says: When we start talking about method, approach, strategy, etc., we quickly get into a quagmire of conflicting definitions and opinions with often little

Matthew Webster and Nathaniel Hardt have written in defense of jGR, or the Interpersonal Communication Skills Rubric (ICSR), the following. Teachers new to this powerful rubric can use them in discussions with parents about its enforcement in their classroom. I have also placed these two statements in the Primers section (hardlink above) for ease of

Here’s an update from Inger: Dear Ben, Before last school year, I read your materials, scoured your website and watched many of your videos. I taught five level 1 French classes in two middle schools. I ditched our textbooks and did my own thing. It was awesome!! My kids did just as well or better

It is clear that we are not going to get any good discussion going from the members of the ACTFL Language Educators group. Every time they read something they don’t like, they disappear. Ben Lev made this excellent point: …the longer posts take a lot of time to digest, and don’t lend themselves to interaction.

Many group members who have been reading here for the past seven years would agree that the basics have been hammered out. The hammering is done, in my opinion, and the time for decorating – putting frills on strategies that we knew worked – arrived a year or two ago. Not all will agree with

This is a suggestion for the teacher who is finding that stories are not working right now. The suggestion is to experiment with some little one word images at the beginning of class. It is often true that stories fail because the students understand far less than the teacher thinks. That is always the first

Now there are three ACTFL threads. They two new ones resulted from Eric’s explosive and original question about research behind a main tenet of ACTFL, on which tremendous amounts of instruction and cash sit perched, that of building a curriculum around thematic units. Some PLC members have even chosen to contribute directly to the discussion

I got an email from a teacher who is having a hard time right now in his classroom: Hi Ben, Hope you doing well. First of all, I want to thank you all that you do. Secondly, I am in need of a little hand holding as I am becoming tired. I have done stories

I like reading these bios. It is always nice to be introduced to people new to the group. Send stuff in if you are new to the group and haven’t done so already and maybe we can we can rekindle the bios. And don’t forget to put your pin on the map so we can

Elissa asked the group for help in planning a teacher training she has coming up soon. (We have a category for that now.) This is a response to Elissa from Chris Stolz in Canada. I really like the part of pushing the Movie Talk or what Chris calls the picturetalk aspect of this. I think

OK we are finally starting to formulate a concrete plan for teacher trainings. Many of us who present on the method have done so kind of by the seat of our pants, usually drawing information from the blog in general or from the Primers hard link across the top of this page. There has been