I noticed a lot of things today about teaching using comprehensible input: I noticed again today (Monday is PQA day for me) how getting enough reps is just such a challenge, especially if I go slowly enough for the kids to understand, especially with the rather challenging structures we are doing in Jim Tripp’s Halloween […]

I’m calling the fall of 2013 the Time of the Finding of the Missing Pieces. It started out with my realizing how important it is to get single choral responses from the entire class to each question I ask. I learned that from Von this past summer in Las Vegas. Then jGR rolled in like

skip sent this link and would like to discuss it with anyone interested: http://www.actfl.org/publications/the-language-educator/sample-articles (the article “Going for 90%” is in the October issue…).

I received a major email today from a member of our group. Here it is: Ben, I have had a great year with four out of five classes. Students love the personalized Matava and Tripp story scripts. My smallest class of eighteen gifted students, which should be a dream class, has become my worst class. I have no

Andrew sent us his bio: Hello, my name is Andrew Edwards. I live in Lincoln, Nebraska but teach in a different city.  This is my second year teaching Spanish and my first year teaching with TPRS.  I taught using traditional methods and a textbook last year.  It was a mess.  I drove myself nuts trying

The Three and Done blank spreadsheet helps jGR. Three and Done has the result of limiting behaviors that distract from what the child should be doing in trying to align with jGR and the Classroom Rules. I find a clerical kid to hold the blank spreadsheet and just indicate to her, as described in the link

These comments by David about how he uses signing in his classroom might turn out to be of true value to some of us, and something that we can immediately put into our classes with potentially huge results. David makes point after point below why this could be true. Read this article in conjunction with the

David Maust has shared his work with us here in a recent post: https://benslavic.com/blog/wp-admin/post.php?post=21810&action=edit One specific thing that David brings to our discussion about how to get better at comprehension based instruction is his use of signing throughout the class, not just at the beginning of the class. You can see that here: http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLq8i4myDzPzPQnzv12TWGI7AauYNfjjDw It’s

This is a long but super excellent article from our own David Maust. It includes video and discussion of same. Hi Ben, I hope you are well! I put up some videos from my class last week on my youtube channel – davidmaustwhittier. This is a new thing for me, but has been a goal

I spoke with Diana Noonan today and she said there is a San Diego conference that is planned for next summer, in July. I had made a decision not to go to summer conferences any more, but now that I hear that this will be organized by Carol Gaab with Jason Fritze there and following

Here is the link to Paul Kirschling’s version of jGR (published earlier here this week): https://benslavic.com/blog/2012/10/26/jgr-explained-paul-kirschlings-version/ I sent Paul a note to congratulate him on it because, if you know Paul, his dry wit and style come through in it and it is a nice instrument. I may consider using the numbers he used as well. He

This is an update on Three and Done, which continues to support jGR like the workhorse that it is. It’s all in better focus for me. It’s not practical to make a note in the computer if a kid has a cell phone out, or starts talking to a neighbor, bc it takes too much time and