Today an instructional coach in a PD I’m in asked if I would present on jGR to the group. I said of course, and so Annick and Barbara (Vallejos) and Jane (Little) and I will do that next month. The reason I think it is a good idea is that jGR asks of students – […]

It’s not often that we are able to be observed by supervisors who actually know about comprehensible input. The result has been lots of crossed lines of communication, where the observer, for example, wants to see kids outputting language in class when in reality that possibility is literally thousands of hours away. Another example is

Sabrina reports: “Hi Ben, Since you are on sentence frames I want to share what I’ve been doing on the second day of class with all my kids and it’s worked out quite well to get them back into the swing of language and give them multiple reps. Yesterday I asked them: 1) to write

In talking about whether jGR is really something that we can connect to grading (it is), Chris Stoltz wrote: …is why I think behaviour(s) should not be graded unless they directly reflect learning outcomes…. And I agree with the exception of in languages. In fact, behaviors don’t just directly reflect learning outcomes in languages, they

We assume so much. I got an email from Susan today asking what a story script is. And yet, looking back, I realize that there has indeed been no specific description of the term in all the trainings I have seen and done over the past ten years. Since 2004 or thereabouts, we just assumed

I was driving Susan Gross to a presentation in Jefferson County, CO about eight years ago and I remember exactly what street we were on when she said this sentence, which I will never forget: Discipline precedes instruction. I took a photo in my mind of where I was talking with her in that car

For those who have started stories, or who will start in January, remember that we fuel stories through humor. Now, this does not mean that WE have to be funny. I’ve not met many kids who see their teachers as sources of humor. Rather, THEY are funny, and what they say is funny. So develop

Latrina Thompson joined our group a few months ago. She teaches in Paulding County in Georgia at North Paulding High School. She recently sent in this comment which I am turning into an article here, because it describes a change that is happening in a lot more places than just Georgia. I want to stress

Skip is presenting soon and has a question for the group: Hey Ben, I have been asked to present at the 2014 FLAME (Foreign Language Association of Maine) conference. I think I am going to run two sessions: The first will focus on the basics – learning vs. acquisition, key elements of CI, CI strategies

The contentious issue of forced speech output is likely to come up for some of us in our buildings in the next months. Accordingly, I have added three new primers on this subject to the Primer hard link on this page. All are taken from the recent thread initiated by Kate here about a year

Those few moments right before class are nice. The vibe is relaxed. It’s like sitting with someone in a recital hall with a loved one, just talking, waiting for the concert to begin. Sometimes I poke fun at someone about their weird ass name and if it is going to change or not. The kids always get into

Polly Fuller has some questions for us. Answer any of them as we must continue to try to help our new members get the basics down: Ben, I have been reading as much as possible over break and am starting to feel completely overwhelmed. I am enjoying all of it, but finding it hard to