Jim Tripp needs our advice: Ben, I need some advice. I have a class of 3 Spanish three students. I have found how hard it can be to sustain compelling CI with such a small group, especially for 90 minutes! So I’m not even going to try that. (Plus, I will have half hour visits […]

This is the final article on Spinning PQA. When we give up any idea of establishing meaning, defining words, telling a story that resembles a script, or even of teaching, then we have arrived at the threshold of a new world, at a new experience in teaching. Those things, the three steps, are necessary, but they aren’t

One of the founders of TPRS is Joe Neilson. Few know that. They think it’s all Blaine, but that is not true. Joe teaches at Salpointe High in Tuscon, AZ and is a master AP Spanish teacher. The thing is that he has been laying low for years. The last time I saw him was

Here is an insight into why we want these bios. We have read a lot from Dave since he joined us recently, but now we get to know where he is and stuff like that: I suppose I am one of those new, unknown, faces on here who has been posting without first introducing myself

Yea, Elizabeth! – I would first like to say thank you to everyone here for creating such a wonderful, open, honest community. The ideas, thoughts and support I find here are truly invaluable. Onto the bio! I teach German 1 and 2 at a high school near Philadelphia. This coming year will be my 4th

I like that Angie just started with this just this month in her classroom and is willing to report in, like May Lee did today, with some pretty high level questions that, since we are a group, we must respond to with good comments. I certainly don’t have all the answers. We’re all a work

Ben, After reading David Maust’s post I was inspired to give my own report from the field.  I am teaching two sections of Spanish B (2nd year of middle school) one section of Latin A and one of Latin B.  The circling with balls has been great for simplifying my life these past two weeks

Pouncing on things we learn while asking slow circled questions about the cat describes a process that is ever-expanding, because we in our class are looking for something as a group together, which guarantees success in any kind of conversation. To extend the PQA, to create the story, we have to listen to each other.

In a recent comment here David reminded himself to just stop those little explanations of discrete information in English that come from our egos and that are designed to make us look intelligent. He reminds us that they only hurt our instruction: …the kids in my first level classes are doing a great job at respecting the no

Since Bob and David led the way with this new idea of y’all sending in “Reports from the Field”, I have received a few more. Here is one from Bernard, the French guy of Face 1 and Face 2 fame from Las Vegas. Thank you for sending it, Bernard, and others please feel free to

I’m just putting this here for my own reference, to make it easy to find if I need it. I’ll categorize it under Classroom Discipline and even make another category for it by name. I know I have too many categories here and I will go through and clean them up sometime. The following things

Again, When the students are sitting there listening to PQA, it is like they are watching a still picture that we are adding details to. In PQA there is not a lot of cohesive action, where actual scenes unravel in our students’ minds. Everything is kind of static in PQA – the experience is like taking our students