Here is Bob Patrick’s report from Orlando: Robertus amicis collegisque, s.p.d. Babae! Quid dicam nisi maximas gratias omnibus! Wow! What should I say if not the greatest of thanks to everyone! I am going to be leaving the ACTFL conference this evening after being here for the Teacher of the Year Awards and the unbelievable […]

Bob Patrick shares with us some exciting things going on in Florida in the next few days. I should say, very exciting: Dear Ben, I am heading to Orlando tomorrow for the ACTFL conference where I will be one of five candidates for Teacher of the Year. I am sharing here with you my mock

I like it that we solve our problems together. Like a family. Now for some sad news for some in our family in the Maine group. When I went up to Maine about five years ago, I was lucky that in attendance for that workshop was a fine man from Vermont – Ludovic. He struck

Thank you to those who held my hand these past five days. Each comment took me closer to understanding what was happening. I wasn’t even aware of it, but since its inception the forum was starting to split and thus water down the discussion here on the blog. I thought that it was about a

The thoughtful teacher who ponders the following image by Robert Harrell will be able to get a more complete response in her class. More will happen. The business of how we interact with our “voices/instruments” in our classroom is of huge importance to our success as the (choir) directors of our classes: Yesterday morning I

Thank you for the comments on the site and our future. I learn by writing. I can’t string a thought together using spoken words that isn’t out of bounds in a few minutes – that’s my right brain dominant personality in action – and so this written discussion is very important to me. This taking

I am concerned that the discussion here, once so focused, is getting overly diffuse. This is not a good thing. It’s what happened to the moretprs listserve and I don’t want it to happen here. In my opinion, groups like this one lose their focus because they lose touch with their core values and beliefs.

Non-targeted structures may or may not be acquired by the students – we don’t care. Our only focus is on the targeted structures and repeating them at least once in each statement or question we say no matter what. In the case of Circling with Balls, each activity drawn on a card by each student is

Grant Boulanger shares an idea about verb walls, one that I don’t endorse but that others might want to explore: Ben, As you know, I was involved in immersion education for a long while. My daughter is in second grade in a local Spanish immersion school and I was recently there for conferences. I looked

Those who think they might want to attend iFLT next summer, the information is here: http://tprstorytelling.com/conference/ It’s July 15-18, 2014 in Denver. The link above is very incomplete but Diana told me today that Carol is working on it.

James has some good thoughts here in his field report today: Ben, Last year I struggled a lot during Step 1 of TPRS, the PQA step where we introduce what everything means and get reps before the actual asking of the story. Of course we write the target structures on the board with English translations