David Talone asks a great question we can all benefit from: I was wondering if you would mind either starting a new thread or bumping one up on ideas to do at Parents Night.  I have two parents nights (one middle, one high school) in the coming week.  I only have ten minutes with the […]

Both David and Jim have mentioned here over the past month or so that they are keeping their stories, extended PQA, etc. that they build with their kids limited in details. This is so key. One of the keys to discipline, the major one, is that the kids must feel like they can do it, like

Ben, Jeff here.  I’ve been reading mostly and not commenting.  Although I have not commented much as of late, I have been enjoying the reading.  This past summer I was working on my Italian in Italy.  Nothing has convinced me more about the power of CI than trying to improve my abilities.  I could see

This article is to pick up on the thread we had in spring and summer here about getting the kids to self reflect on and discuss what it means to do a comprehensible input class: I think we should use David Sceggel’s rubric a lot now. This may be the most important time to get

Chris was talking about how the kids heard from the older kids in the school that they don’t like Pobre Ana. It put Chris in a hard spot. Here are two ideas, Chris, if you have to use Blaine’s novels: Don’t give them the book. Read it folded flat on the document camera. Spin parallel novels

Starting with a YouTube video on any topic interesting to the kids has been the subject of Jim’s teaching this past week. It is a significant idea from Nathan. I will start this thread below with some comments by Jim. We can categorize this idea as “YouTube CI”. Jim: If I may give an example

John Piazza sent this from San Francisco, the City-Where-Changes-Often-Start-in-America: Ben, My administrators just handed us the chart that is shown at the below link, and said that we were going to spend some time talking about it this school year. It is from an organization whose focus is on what they call social and emotional

Rarely, but it happens, people who try to comment are blocked by a 404 error, whatever that is. Send such comments to me and I will post them as articles. Here is one to Aree from Michele Rhodes, as she addresses Aree’s lovely new teaching environment in Atlanta: My recommendation would be to select a

This is from skip: Hey Ben, Do you remember earlier this summer people were writing in about their HUGE classes and asking for ideas and I said that Blaine said that classes of 40-50 were not only good but preferable? I spent a while looking for that thread but I couldn’t find it…  I wanted

Chris reports in on his day. It included one classic rude comment from a kid about Pobre Ana. If that wasn’t enough, he found out from a student something that the high school expects in the way of articulation. In my opinion, there is nothing quite as crappy as a middle school CI teacher having to send

Since Anne has now switched schools and is teaching French (in the classroom right next to our own Laura Avila!), she is looking for readers. Any suggestions from French teachers? Hi Ben, Can you ask the PLC to recommend readers for French?  There is nothing here, and I don’t know how to teach out of

Aree (in Atlanta) in this post sings the common song of many teachers who try to get CI going in environments that depend on the textbook. We really need to come back with some strong advice on this one. Everybody needs to step up with an answer bc this affects so many of us, esp.