Chrisz (Canada) has come up with an idea that has the potential to blow up the entire grading system into little pieces and bring some sanity into our lives: I have moved Spanish with TPRS to a whole-mark-based-on-final system. Yup, you read that correctly: 100% of the kids’ mark is based on their final exam. […]

John While doing my grades, I felt the need to bump a student’s overall grade up or down, depending on how well I thought my numbers accurately represented how that student was doing in my class. Trouble is, some of my little angels will  check their numbers to see that they add up. This is

Nate Hill has a new site that could be of interest to our group. Here he describes it: As language teachers — especially as TPRS teachers — you know the importance of personalized CI for language learners. Wouldn’t it be great if language learners could build a network of speakers in the target language who

This is a brain break strategy, and a good one. The high level of rigor in comprehension based instruction requires brain breaks: The students form a circle around the perimeter of the room. A soft squishy ball, or just a tennis ball but nothing harder, gets tossed around the group from one kid to another. The

For those new to this group, this from TPRS in a Year! explains what circling is: Skill #5: Circling In the same almost magical way that pausing and pointing properly creates more engaged students, the students become strongly engaged when you circle properly. There is always a strong link between student engagement and good circling.

There is a rhythm to circling. It should not be a totally conscious, mechanical process, but rather one based on rhythm. Over years, it kind of moves down into our bodies and, whether we circle a targe structure a lot or just for a few seconds, it is still a feeling more than something that we think about

In those afternoon sessions in San Diego, I want to do a thing where we’ll work on CWB and OWI and stuff like that in groups of four after seeing it modeled by me and one other teacher. So the order for our first session on Tuesday afternoon would be: 1. I model CWB. 2.

I’ve often wondered why those Circling sessions coached by Susie and others at national conferences over the past ten years didn’t work that well. Well, in my opinion they didn’t work well because people I talked to told me they felt shitty at it. I felt shitty at it. I observed that the sessions made

Liam reports in from New Jersey: Ben: I hope your year is winding up nicely and that you’re getting pumped for SD! I had wanted to be more in touch over the blog this year but, if you recall from a previous exchange, teaching 6 different classes with multiple levels in some of them and

It is only the whole brain that can perform the nearly infinite functions necessary to grasp how the language is built (the conscious analytical mind is totally incapable of doing so). Just speak to the kids and read with them Point to the majestic design of the building of the language, which is far more

The fact is that the grammar teachers’ claim that their students can acquire a language in this way is and has been completely false. Nothing, absolutely nothing, can come from studying a language in this way. We must look at the house to learn the language, not the bricks. We don’t have to become architects

Let’s teach buildings! Let’s teach Garnier’s Opera House in Paris. We can walk around the outside of that building for three hours and barely begin to get what is on those exterior walls. And then we can go inside for the Chagall ceiling and for wonderful stories. And then we can hang out studying the