Seating – 1

Robert shares some thoughts on seating arrangements in CI classrooms: One change in my thinking (and there have been many changes) that has occurred as I have thought about rigor is the approach to assigned seating. I have a pretty laissez faire approach to most things, and I used to think that giving students some […]

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Michael Fullan

Robert’s mention of Michael Fullen in a comment this morning leads to a repost of this article from about four years ago here on the PLC: I was reading some of Michael Fullan’s work and saw in it support of what we are going though. We’ve talked about Fullan here before but this is a

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Maine Coaching Sessions

There is a relatively new category here that is devoted to providing information to PLC members about peer coaching opportunities in their area, since people are starting to organize more on a regional level. The name of the category is “Peer Coaching Groups by Region”. There is already an article about the Chicago group (meets

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Water Runs Downhill

In The Power of Reading, Insights From The Research, Stephen Krashen mentions the importance of flow in reading (p. 29). Why shouldn’t this same concept be a key part of our focus as we learn to get better and better at delivering listening input to our students in the form of PQA and stories? Water runs down mountains

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Scheduling Question

New PLC member Jeremy Jordan talks about how CWB is working for him and has a question for the group about scheduling things in the first part of the year: Ben, I’ve read your books since starting TPRS/CI teaching 3 years ago, I just started reading your new one as well as joined your PLC

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Question from Bernard

I got this nice email from Bernard that address the question of planning structures through all levels. Since I have never taught upper levels with TPRS/CI (I failed with a traditionally trained class once, badly) and also since I don’t plan anything, I defer to the group on this. Does anyone have an answer? Bonjour

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Teaching in a Natural Way

Krashen talks about the Natural Approach. Blaine Ray creates stories with his students in a most natural and effortless way. Susan Gross talks about the need to personalize our classrooms – what is more natural than that? We can always get more relaxed with our kids, more natural with them. But the big irony is

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Jammed Queue

The queue is seriously jammed, maybe the worst ever. There are questions from PLC members and at least one hundred unpublished articles. But as the moderator I have to allow the flow of articles to be reasonable and not overwhelming, with preference given to questions from new people. So if you are waiting on something

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Heidi Edel

Hi Ben here is my bio: French Teacher at Shepaug Valley Middle & High School (all levels – we are tiny) Region 12 Washington CT This year I am also instructional leader. Although this happened by chance and default, I see it as an opportunity to really implement TPRS. We just transitioned to 100% TPRS

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Deena Swenson

Deena sent us her bio: Hi Ben, As a newbie, I am not sure how to go about adressing the group and haven’t yet seen fit to reply to anything just yet.  I would like to introduce myself and ask some questions so here goes: My name is Deena and I’ve been teaching Spanish “on

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Megan Green

This is from our new PLC member Megan Green and thank you Megan: I work at General McLane High School in Edinboro, PA. This is my 3rd year back to work after 10 years off when I had my two children. Before I stopped working, I attended a Blaine Ray TPRS workshop (back when it

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