A few weeks back we had a brief discussion of the Where Are Your Keys Program. Carla has looked it over and shares, for those who were following that thread: Dear Ben, I have been studying Where are your keys?  (WAYK) online for a few weeks now. I haven’t personally seen what success looks like […]

We have been slowly moving in the direction of increased use of video to share ideas of what we are doing in our classrooms. John’s Vimeo clip posted today reminds us that we don’t always have to write articles to share with each other here – we can film them. We may not have the

We were talking about the value of daily formative assessment in the form of Quick Quizzes. John Piazza and Judy Ramos have sent in excellent options to using scantron sheets, which not everyone has access to: John sent this link: http://vimeo.com/52554005 Judy’s option is here: Scantron option – Ramos for more on Quick Quizzes, see

I got this question from a teacher and thought I would just ask the group: Ben, I am EXCITED to have the blessings of my administrators to use CI as my methodology with Spanish I this year.  They have also agreed to send me to training (the Dallas area is probably as far as they’ll

Mark at CU/Boulder sent this: Hi Ben, Praise to Robert Patrick for what he has started at Georgia. Last night, in speaking with my colleague from one of our language departments, I learned from him that he had students who didn’t do homework in class and still got better results than students who did.  What

Many of us are now using Quick Quizzes to help support our comprehension based instruction. We do so because we know the value that daily formative assessment brings to our fluency programs, not the least of which is huge gains in classroom management. So below is a detail about Quick Quizzes. For more, click on the category at

Ben: This could be a fun way to review or work with high frequency, repetitive structures. Les Trois Petits Cochons à la Gaga: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1qxnpz0z_hg Bonne rentrée, Chill

Carol sent this for us. Whenever we want to work with a picture using L & D (Look and Discuss) as per: https://benslavic.com/blog/category/look-and-discuss-l-d/ all we have do is click here: http://www.360cities.net/ and Erin sent this note and link: Ben, Another L&D option that I can suggest is the New York Times’ learning blog. Every Monday,

Kath Burke in Thailand has a question for the group: Dear Ben – I am developing a story book for adult learners of Thai. I would like some tips from the group: 1. There are no official word frequency lists for Thai – e.g. a list of the top 200 words /500 words. I know

Here is a comment Sabrina wrote to a new member of the group, Sasha. It’s pretty cool so I made it into an article: Welcome on board. The Captain has turned on the Fasten Seat Belt sign. If you haven’t already done so, please stow your carry-on luggage (grammar books) underneath the seat in front of you

Dr. Krashen has stated that when we focus on writing we do not become better writers. Annick Chen has shown that to be true at Lincoln High School in Denver.  When we write more we do not become better writers. Somewhere in Robert’s recent series on Scope and Sequence, Robert Harrell mentions that no serious

When I first started doing CWB I was teaching stories in a middle school about ten years ago. The balls had the sole purpose of neutralizing the excessive physical energy of one nervous 13 year old boy whose identity lay out on the football field – such is the way we train boys in our