OK time for major celebration. Jeff won. If you aren’t aware of that recent thread, read these posts before reading on: https://benslavic.com/blog/2012/11/09/jgr-and-parents/ https://benslavic.com/blog/2012/11/10/jgr-and-parents-2/ Here is the wonderful report of great growth done by more than one person in this compelling situation that happened over the past few months in Cincinnati. Reading it, we can see that Jeff looked […]

Here is part of the My Class is “Structured” thread from tonite that wouldn’t post as a comment (error message), so I am making it into a post: Jody had said: My kids, as young as they are (11 and 12), have always had to write “essential” sentences or dialogue–copied from the text to help

I’m making a separate category for this, as I did with David’s Textivate contribution this morning. Robert attacks the Interpretive Skill with this zinger of a reading/writing activity: For Interpretive Communication, perhaps you can get them to go along with something similar to what I did last year for the first semester final in several classes. Give

David Talone adds to the reading and writing arsenal: I had less to do today, and was missing nearly half of my class due to trips, so I decided to wing it a bit.  After 7 minutes of FVR, I told them that we were going to end the class with the word chunk game

If you look at this link: https://benslavic.com/blog/category/bail-out-moves/ you can find some options – what I call “bail out moves” – to switch to right in the middle of class in those times when “it ain’t working”. The one I suggest here is a kind of instant “writing” activity. I would only go to this with a

A question for the group: Hi Ben, I asked my Grade 10 class for self reflections today and they were very helpful to read. I asked them what they had noticed about their language learning this last term, as it was the first time I had tried TPRS with them.  All of them wrote that

I got this from a colleague: …students using English lose daily participation points…. I don’t agree with students losing participation points. It sets the teacher up as a bean counter. The perception of the child is that they can be wrong and that the teacher cares more about the point counting than the kid. I

I am suggesting some additions – in blue below – to jGR. Words in red are out, words in blue are in. Suggestions, discussion are welcome. INTERPERSONAL SKILLS RUBRIC (used in daily assessment: 30% of grade) 5 ALL SKILLS IN 4, PLUS NON-FORCED EMERGING OUTPUT – this is a rare kid who throws out some good unforced

Two big water tanks overlook the land. The land is full of seeds. It rains little here, so how to get the water from the tanks to the seeds, so that they can grow and mature? I would say to fill up the first tank with as much auditory comprehensible input as it can hold. Then fill up

Karen in Alaska is now in a situation like Jeff’s. Here’s the information: Hi Ben, It is my turn to send you a parent letter. A parent just sent me this letter. I have been meaning to call the parent or email them because their kids just sit in my class with shitty attitudes and

Some kids have rough home lives. They learn to be on guard against emotional or physical attack. When we start our class, we should try to remember that, because we won’t reach those few particular kids with our instruction if they are wary of us, not from anything we did, but from their own upbringing. So

Here is a bio from another Canadian. She mentions the Pure Land. That made me very hippy, I mean happy: Hi Ben, I think I sent you a quick email about a year ago promising a bio when the chaos was over and then summer happened and I played hard and had fun and drank