Here is a very kick ass end of year story from Dan Navar by way of John Piazza. John sets it up: Ben, A few of us have been exchanging emails about final exams, and the fact that some of us are being forced to give a grammar-translation style exam. Dan Navar’s response is below. […]

I can see threads for next year on this site already developing: Movie Talk RT Levels 3/4/AP Embedded Reading Flow Charts by James We can say that as the 2012 year ends, we have made major, as in super major, inroads into our teaching in these areas: jGR rSF Weekly Two Week Schedule 2013 cRD L

Chill sent this for the Latinists if they haven’t seen it already, which was originally posted on Laurie’s embedded reading blog, to prove how small the world really is: http://ephemeris.alcuinus.net/ Even if we can’t read Latin, the site is nevertheless worth a visit, as many of us have probably never seen so much Latin in one place. We

I couldn’t get this in as a comment (that 404 security rule on comments is a pain in the butt) so I made my comment into this post: Daniel said this: Several of our students rapped in English the whole time during the speaking section. I thought it was funny, because the students obviously didn’t

Here is Lisa’s bio: I work at St. Leo the Great Catholic school in San Jose, CA. I am the Middle School Spanish teacher I taught in bilingual and dual language primary grades for 14 years.  When we moved to CA, I decided to apply at St. Leo’s, a small Catholic school, to teach Spanish. 

Lavinia, who is in Newark, NJ, sent her bio: Hi Ben! Thank you again for letting me again observe your classroom! I teach at TEAM Academy Charter Schools: Newark Collegiate Academy in Newark, NJ. I am currently teaching French 3, 4, and AP. I thought I was doing TPRS for several years until I saw

So if you have been following this thread you will remember that in my high school we got four kids signed up to take the AP exam as practice in level 2. Here is the rest of that story – only one showed up. These kids, one freshman and three juniors, have AP tests coming out

How can kids benefit from taking the AP? I guess to be able to put down on their transcript that they took the course. Most check the box that prevents the scores from being sent to the college, or they should, because of the difficulty of the exam. I think it’s got to be one

Why do the teachers and students in high schools seek approval so much? It’s a perfect setting. Actually, everybody in high schools from the kids to the district supervisors up to the superintendent are in it for the approval. It’s an approval fair, a mutual admiration society. Are we not seeking approval? You may not be, but

It is a bit of a worship thing, where the school gets to have teachers and students commit to long periods of intense training (I wouldn’t call what traditional teachers do with their four percent kids actual teaching – I would call it AP training or AP indoctrination.) Not to mention the work by the worker bees in

It takes thousands and thousands of hours to be able to handle a language. What does “handle a language” mean? It means to understand it when it is spoken in a natural way by a native speaker, to read it at a very high, almost technical level, to write at a level of clarity with

I responded to the teacher who described how the AP was given in the last post. Below is that response. I was not trying to fix anything, just responding to her without trying to do any more than just express myself on this topic of blown exams (either due to bad proctoring or not enough