A Bigger House

Among the ongoing suggestions for the PLC Gold link, which James has suggested we place as a hard link on this page for ease of reference to the best stuff we have in this PLC, is chill’s suggestion that we include the weekly schedule as a golden idea. I have been thinking about this and

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Carol Gaab in Denver

Carol came up from Phoenix today for a beginning workshop and then tomorrow will be the advanced one. I apologize to those in the Denver area for not mentioning it sooner but you can still come tomorrow, no matter what level you are at with CI. I think it’ll be worth it. Last year we

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On Early Speech Output

There is no such thing as early speech output of the Berlitz variety, where the teacher gets the speakers focused on how the language is produced. The mind should be allowed to do that infinitely complex work by itself. Indeed, the mind – the deeper mind and not the conscious mind – is the ONLY

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Absences

Sharon sent me some questions about when kids are absent. Please add comments as you see fit: First question: We’ve been back to school for two weeks, and I have not given one quiz!  Two things I’m wondering about…  first, how do you quiz the new vocabulary presented in a given class?  If you have

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Sub for a Week

Chris departs Thursday and returns next Thursday on a field trip with his kids. He has this question for the group: So my exploratory  kids will  have me in my class for two days and then four days with a sub who is a retired Spanish teacher. Real bubbly personality, great person.  Doesn’t know much about TPRS

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Bullshit

Administrator: We always need to teach to all learning modalities of the children. The lesson should move around in a lively way between the different modalities – it keeps the kids interested. Me: Bullshit. It has been pretty much agreed upon over the past thirty years, based on the best research available, that in language classes

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Failed Documentary

In 2010 I was working with a videographer whom I had contacted about making a serious film about TPRS, a documentary. We sneaked her into East High School where she was going to get as much footage as she could from within our ten member WL department. I’ll never forget that first session, walking down

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Anger from Colleagues

It’s interesting that anger seems to be a lot more directed at us than from us. We just want to left to our own devices to study what Krashen and Blaine have offered, and I don’t know of any TPRS teachers who have “gone after” traditional teachers. Some, like me, have gotten angry at being

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James Hosler – Video

James is new to all of this and has sent in some video footage for us at: http://jameshosler.blogspot.com/2013/01/sample-latin-3-pqa-january-15-2013.html He explains: I was hoping for three things with this video: 1) to get some feedback from fellow teachers; 2) to show my “beginning of class routine” and the transition to and practice of PQA; and 3)

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rSF – Sentence Frames 6

Bob Patrick writes on sentence frames. I have been barely able to fit in any stories lately because I too have become a big fan of this great idea from Robert Harrell which combines writing with auditory input. We may be talking about what they did over the holidays until June! I LOVE the Discovery Mall set

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