This comment from James Hosler – channeling Greg Stout – today really needs to have a spotlight on it, since we are not just trying these days to teach language but to stop all rudeness from kids as our primary focus: …today in class there were three students sitting together and trying to have lots […]
I’m wondering about the cute answers thing – do any kids ever get upset about making up answers to questions? Or teachers? I find myself thinking of it as lying at times, and I don’t know if I’ll be able to do it well. I feel like every time I say something like “I drive
Should I do something different on the third day to give CWB a break and show them something different? Or do a little more CWB and give a quiz so they see how much they already know, then do something different part of the time on Monday. I shouldn’t whine, we only have 41 min.
Most of the kids are with me on the CWB, but I can see that a few are very skeptical. I’m trying to connect with the ones who look the most disgusted and make sure they’re answering with the rest of the class, etc. I stopped a couple of times and just assured the class
Here are four questions – in four separate posts – from a teacher who is new to this work. I’m sure that she will welcome any and all feedback from the group: I’ve read so many of your books, watched the videos, and read posts on the PLC – my head is just overflowing with
I was once demonstrating Look and Discuss with a French 3 class because the picture was still up from a previous French 1 class. (I often use the same material for all my classes because I don’t enjoy planning classes and see no need to, which is a testimony to the power of the comprehensible
The usual daily flow of ideas here is now almost eight years old. Each year we go through the cycle of returning to our classrooms and supporting each other by sharing ideas about our teaching and our emotional relationship to what is really a very difficult profession. After not hearing from Chris Roberts for some
Yesterday I saw a former student in a coffee shop. She is now at Pepperdine. I taught her six years ago in middle school before I went to Denver Public Schools. She went on to a traditional French program in high school. The background is that in eighth grade she was a gifted listener, a
Here is a video on Circling with Balls if you happen to be doing that tomorrow. Steve Johnson, a new member here, reminded me about it, and thank you Steve: Also, Vimeo is back up so you can access those DPS videos at: http://www.schooltube.com/channel/dpsworldlanguages/
Louisa reports from San Diego: Hola Ben, Glad to see the blog is going strong with great posts! I am writing to report on my first few weeks of classes. I have had 12 classes with my first year Spanish students and I am happy to report that we did our very first Read n’
