A district person who is in our building a lot has become aware of jGR. She wants me to address our science department on Thursday about what we are doing. The district person told me that the science department is very negative about what the kids can do and that they as science teachers are […]

We made a significant breakthrough on jGR today in my department. We changed the math because we knew we needed to. I grade everything on ten points and, up to the breakthrough today, that meant the following for my students: 5 = 10 (100%) 4 = 8  (80%) 3 = 6  (60%) 2 = 4 

Good questions from Briana and we all need to chip in to assure her a complete answer: Ben, Thanks very much for pointing me toward Lori Fiechter. It turns out that our schools are part of the same network (the New Tech Network), and I was able to contact her directly. It’s always such a

Tamula had asked about ways to present the method. The Susan Gross Cat Story is the standard, and I had asked Corinne for it to share here with you, Tamula, which Corinne did and thank you Corinne. This is the Susie Gross hand out, explaining how to get kids involved in pre-teaching the vocab to

Laurie had a brilliant idea to share stories around between the schools we teach in. So jen – as in jGR – in Vermont is going to send a reading created from a story to Laurie in NY and Laurie’s class will add some details and send it back to Jen. I am calling these

Starting out with comprehension based instruction is very much like running down a train track to the next town. You stumble and fall and it is very awkward. But the workout is good for you. It’s basic training and it happens in your classroom and it takes real courage to stay in and do the

Hi Ben, Could you post this opportunity for a Mandarin teacher? I need to find someone soon because I’ll be telling parents details of the trip in the near future. Thanks, Diane Neubauer February 25 – March 1, 2013, I’ll be taking my class of 13 8th grade students on a Mandarin-themed trip to San

So the Latinists sent some emails around to themselves a few weeks ago, including me in on the conversation, but the queue was jammed so I didn’t do anything as far as posting them here formally as articles, but the content is so rich that I thought I would just go ahead and post the whole

You’ll start to think I’m obsessed with our new jGR way of grading. That’s because I am. Here’s more: I am getting closer and closer to figuring this stuff out. What a long and fascinating journey. A Yellow Brick Road. A Long and Winding Road. That leads me home. What we have to do is

This is cool. Never thought of doing this. It’s from skip, Therese, and Michelle in Maine. For those who aren’t familiar with dictation, see the resources page of this site and click on workshop handouts. Standard F – HOW (Dictation Correction) 4    Exceeds Student self-corrects his/her dictation using the transcript of the dictation supplied by

I was sitting at the front of a workshop given by Blaine in Denver of 2004 . After the morning break, Blaine unveiled circling to us. For those who had been doing TPRS for awhile this was a revelation. We couldn’t believe this new riff in the method. Now, if someone told me that I could have circling

So what we are doing is testing an assessment instrument. That is most often done these days by gathering hard data. To test the validity of an assessment instrument, people usually isolate individual responses to a question after the test, count how many kids got it right, and then keep the question or toss it and replace it with