TPR to Begin the Year

Many of us start the year with CWB and OWI and Word Associations and the Word Chunk team game (https://benslavic.com/workshop-handouts.pdf). We need to remember to throw the right amount of TPR into that mix. It’s a deal breaker for the success of our year, along with the Classroom Rules and of course jGR. In a recent comment […]

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Interview Friday

Angie has a only few days to prepare for an interview coming up on Friday, so make some suggestions. We have had this question before but I’m not sure where it we answered it. Angie maybe you could check here: https://benslavic.com/blog/wp-admin/post.php?post=20465&action=edit&message=1 Hey Ben, I’ve got an interview on Friday and I’ll be teaching a 30 min. class

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Helena Curtain Again

Liam recently shared this sentence with us about talking with Helena Curtain at FLENJ: [Helena] gave a presentation at FLENJ as well, right before mine, in fact. Her presentation (her hallmark thematic unit – which I saw her give several years ago at ACTFL) included several disparaging references to “the TPRS crowd” and she ended,

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Retells

The great value of having the artist’s work to refer to when doing a retell of a story, vs. not having it, is that when the students are focused on the images created by the artist, they completely forget the words and focus only on the meaning, and are thus certainly acquiring. Working with visual

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“New” Research

Cheryl sent this: I saw this and nearly laughed out loud.  It seems that new research indicates that telling kids stories helps them to remember things!! http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2013/06/04/why-teachers-should-present-new-material-as-stories/ Cheryl Cowherd

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Meredith Gleason

Meredith is a new PLC member from Washington, D.C. Here is her bio and she needs some responses to an important question raised in the second paragraph below: Hi Ben! I’m a newly-joined member of your PLC and so far I am really learning a LOT. I’m in my first year teaching secondary ed –

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French Elementary Curricula

This request is from Trisha: Does anyone have any experience with or knowledge of elementary French curricula?  I am interested in anything from first grade to sixth.  I know that there will be differences between what interests a primary student and what interests an upper elementary student.  If you know about something, I’d appreciate the

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