Here is a grammar question from Angie: Hi, Ben! I had my first full day of classes on Friday and it went well.  I’m wondering about how to explain the difference between preterite and imperfect past tense verbs in pop-up grammar language, and any advice on using past tense in storytelling.  I know about throwing […]

In my opinion, Step 1 forms the anchor, the glue, to everything we do in comprehension based teaching, so that any discussion about changing even little things that we do in the midst of our ever changing relationship with the various strategies that we use in our CI classrooms is best housed in and looked

Dear Ben, Gotta vent outside my school. I used to have a huge Russian program at our high school due to the fact that I taught Russian to the attached junior high through Storytelling. All the HG kids signed up for my class, and entered my program at either second or third-year. Their enthusiasm leaked

Here is a good question from a teacher. We all have to answer this one at some point: Hi Ben, After one of my Spanish II classes today, a student came and told me that he has problems understanding what I’m saying. He said that he can understand when it’s written down and I point

Here is a nice report from Keri Colwell: Hi Ben! I just wanted to tell you that yesterday I taught my very first two classes using your methods and they both went very well (Spanish III and Italian III).  Surprisingly, my class of juniors laughed and seem to enjoy the CWB even more!!!  I trusted

James Hosler’s enrollment numbers are exploding. James uses Textivate. Therefore, if you use Textivate, your enrollments will explode. Wouldn’t it be nice if it were that easy, right?  Of course, James is doing other things with CI to make Latin the happening language in his school. He is reaching his kids on a human level, he

We have touched in our discussions on a program called Textivate. In view of its value in visually processing even small bits of auditory CI created with our students,  I am republishing an article from last year by James Hosler on that topic: Ben, Inspired by textivate.com, I recently posted this on my blog (http://jameshosler.blogspot.com/). I figured,

Here is the last jewel from Erin. It will need some testing. I am looking forward to hearing how it works out. I personally tossed a similar idea about six years ago, but that was purely because I am a very lazy person. 4. Interactive notebooks. I went to a local Common Core & Literacy

CI 810: Comprehensible Input for Language Acquisition Fall term starts now for the online graduate course through Portland State University. Most of us are already planning for kids and practicing new ideas on them, so Fall is a very natural time to take the class. Registration is open now. The final date for registration is

This is the best jewel from Erin by way of Martina Bex. It involves getting not just the student but also the parent to do some self-reflection about her class. It’s brilliant: 3. Syllabus homework. I got this idea from the lovely Martina Bex. My syllabus somewhat wordily explains how my CI class works and

I thought I would republish this article describing some work Bernard did a few years ago in Las Vegas: I learned something while coaching Bernard that I would like to share bc it seems like kind of a secret. I learned in watching Bernard be coached, more by the group than just me, that what