Hey Ben!  Just wanna give you an update on how things are going with the Star. We’re in November and the Star is still a game-changer.  It’s amazing what some of my classes are doing.  My 6th period class has created their own “cinematic universe” with our stories.  One of our very first OWIs was a […]

I have noticed that in two of the teaching activities I do during the week I just fade off to the side of the room and have very little direct involvement. The kids run the class, and they run it well. The two activities are: reading from the projected image of the story on the

Experience today I want to observe and report.  Word Chunking has become a very favorite “game” with my Latin 1 and 2 students.  In both levels today, I noticed something that I was not aware of before, but now I am fairly sure has been there all along.  When I read a Latin sentence for

I’d like to add two jobs to the three already connected to the Word Chunk Team activity – the Heads Together Checker (HTC). The first is for a kid who doesn’t participate well in his group and needs to be taken out of it. She stands next to me with the other two hires on that activity and tells me

So it has barely been two full (4-day) weeks, and as I have already mentioned, I am completely focused on the rules and routines with my first year students. I am literally not conscious of any content-based learning goals such as structures, vocab, grammar etc. Any Latin that gets covered in my class is purely

We now have two more jobs. These people work on reading days, when the text from the story is projected up during W/Th reading/embedded reading classes. So the way it works is the Laser Metronome Person has the laser pointer and keeps the beat on the words we are reading. Then the Reader Leader, the superstar

The district person who observed my class yesterday, a Spanish teacher of 30 years, approached me after my class and asked what my focus (content, etc. whatever) for the lesson was. I told her that the three structures in the Matava story “Let’s Start!” were my focus, and, indeed, those three expressions form the basis

There is embedded reading. I would add to that embedded stories. How? If the story rocked on M/Tu, and I don’t feel like going to a reading of it on Wednesday, I just spend the entire class on Wednesday reviewing in loose fashion the story, making sure that I use one of the target structures

People think it’s about stories. It’s about reading. The stories only set up the Wednesday reading and the Thursday embedded reading. The reading is the big deal. That’s also why I tossed the FVR for SSR of novels which culminates in a Friday test on the material read during the first ten minutes of each

Pop Up Grammar is pretty much bogus and only 4%ers care about it. I haven’t done it for years. But there is Pop Up English. That is when I say to an actor, for example, “Hey, you just walked through a door.” Using Pop Up English helps glue the story together. I go from 99%

Jen we have to exercise care if we are a long wolf or even if we are not. Susan Gross once told me that in her opinion 99 of every 100 people who claim to “do TPRS” don’t do it anywhere nearly properly. And for that reason they turn others against TPRS and we cannot blame

Anyway, Jen, you’re in a better position than you think and so don’t worry so much about your lone wolf status. I really do feel that the document Ardythe sent us is huge. Many of us didn’t even know about it, but the 21st Century Skills Map which is DESIGNED IN COOPERATION WITH THE NATION’S WORLD