Robert Harrell tried to post a response to John Bracey’s situation but it didn’t post so here it is as an article. I’m glad it didn’t post, because Robert’s comment is something each and every one of us should read if we are going to teach this way. What I laughed off as a bunch […]

John, commenting on the homework thread today, in so doing revealed a profound truth about the record setting speed of old guard teachers in shooting themselves in the foot: I stopped giving homework last year and my students and parents were both thrilled. A number of my kids’ parents are hugely involved in all of

Jim Tripp was asked this question, apparently from a group of middle school kids: “Hello! My name is John (made-up name). I am an 8th grade student at Decorah Middle School. I am involved in a project called First Lego League. This project entails a group of students finding a topic to meet the criteria

The following sequence of activities can be used for block classes or for regular classes. Stretched over time, this sequence could require anywhere from two or three block days or four to six regular schedule days, depending on how the flow of the CI goes. We use the word “sequence” here to describe this schedule

[Credit: Leslie Davison, Catharina Greenberg] lost a tooth goes to the dentist Help! A dragon has lost a tooth. He goes to the dentist. He says: “Help! I have lost a tooth!” The dentist has teeth, but no dragon teeth. The dragon goes to the Museum of Natural History. He says to the woman at

Michel Baker in South Carolina has a question about TPR: Hi Everyone, Hope you are well! I am teaching elementary TPRS and loving it, and I do believe that I need to start out the year with 3 weeks of good TPR. I want to be sure that I am doing it correctly. Is there

Here is a belated (Sept. 6) report from the field from Carly, with apologies: Hi Ben! In NY we just finished our first two days of school with the kids. This was the first time I started the year with CI and CWB, so I wanted to report back on how it went…Loved it! It

Angie has a question: Okay, I’ve signed up for Textivate and am finding it non-intuitive to set up. I can enter text and run the exercises, that’s no problem, but as far as sharing with students, sending them work, and checking up on their work, I have absolutely no sense of how to proceed. If

One thing we should not do is give homework. We should offer it only and if a child chooses to go online and or to an older fluent speaker in the family system, or find some reading comprehensible input somewhere in the form of a book or something interesting, spending time with it whether it

(2nd year TPRS – 1st year was minimal TPRS. 7th and 8th grade French; four classes; 108 students) •End of four weeks – all going well! •PQA, extended PQA, one story (Matava – An Important Test). •Have established jobs: quiz writer; script writer; artist; structure counters; question word responders; “Mais” bleater; one class has a

My son Landen, now in high school, had a middle school French teacher a few years ago who taught the old way. He quit the class at the semester that year, telling me he just didn’t enjoy the class and he didn’t feel as if he was learning anything. I didn’t object. Just yesterday out

Here is another question for the group, also from a first year CI teacher: My administration are waiting for assessment of my hybrid (CI class + old). As I was getting ready to write the test, I realized that I have no idea how to write a test based on CI and NOT discrete point