My grade book is just a little place to drop a few numbers in from time to time. The numbers describe the easy little quizzes we take at the end of class sometimes and some of the other easy activities that kids enjoy doing in class. I also put in numbers to rate the kids’ […]
Our PLC member Laura Avila has done something remarkable. She teaches in Maine in the same building with Anne Matava, who filed this report: My colleague Laura told me today that a former student of hers just placed into the highest Spanish class (500-level) as a freshman at the university. Laura works harder than anyone
This is a most welcome report from Angie. Those who remember the year she went through last year will want to read this. Here is a link to that other article if you want to read it first: https://benslavic.com/blog/2012/10/25/angie-dodd/ The work Angie is doing now is not a high status job. But it is true work and so
James shares his mission statement for this year and it consists of just one word: No amount of student unrest or pride, no amount of pressure from administrators, schedules, or parents, and no amount of misdirected, self-serving personal goals will make me go even a bit faster than all my students can understand.
Chris Stoltz reports: Hi Ben – There are Western Canada workshops coming up, useful also for US people in Northern Idaho, Montana and Washington states: The BC Association of Teachers of Modern Languages (BCATML) conference is here (Vancouver) and will be open for registration in a few weeks. There will be an Intro to TPRS
I have a question for those using jGR. It’s really just a reflection question because each of us do this work differently. Here it is: Can cCWB obviate the need to use jGR? For me, when I circle “Juan dances” for the entire class period, always using the verb in every single thing I say, I find that
I’m going to repost this every few weeks or whenever I think about it for obvious reasons: As we know, last week our group member Trisha Schutzius (Fort Collins, CO) rounded up all the information in the Robert Harrell Scope and Sequence articles and put them into one document that she called rSS/Sum. This summary and
Yesterday our new group member Deena sent in this report. I jumped it up in the queue because it is more than cool: Hey Ben! Cannot contain myself! I had my first day of the real deal today…I reviewed the RULES that I introduced yesterday and started in with a few structures in Spanish…Hay (there
This is the last in the series of posts about the Georgia Foreign Language tenets. Gary Null has been doing his thing promoting natural and wholistic ways of healing the body for about thirty years now. All through the years there was a feeling in Gary’s message, and in the country as a whole, that
Panel 20: Maintain open communication about the program and student progress among teachers, administrators, and the general public. Over my 32 years in the classroom, I have never met a more secretive, closed door policy group of educators than foreign language teachers, as a general comment. Furthermore, I have been observed countless times by administrators who had limited
Panel 19: Seek frequent opportunities for professional and language growth. I’m in! But it didn’t start until I got a scholarship to Starbucks University in Colorado where Susan Gross conducted one on one instruction with me over a period of years in a non credit class that changed my life completely. So the record goes
Panel 17: Communicate regularly with classroom teachers about student progress and program goals and content. In theory, this is great. But it doesn’t really happen. At least not in the real world. Let’s be honest. Professional open sharing of information between teachers for the good of the kids is not a real common thing in schools.
