A classroom system is how we organize the nuts and bolts of the actions that are NOT part of language acquisition. A classroom system organizes things like: *who goes to the bathroom, how often and for how long *how papers are distributed and collected *how grades are assigned and communicated *how the set up and […]

Carol Gaab will be presenting at SWCOLT April 12-14. The organizer is Jody Klopp, a name some of you will recognize. There will be several workshops/presentations there that TPRSer/CIers will benefit from! Brian Barabe and Laurie Clarcq will be doing two different presentations on Embedded Reading ( one 3 hour and one 1 hour). http://www.swcolt.org/conferences.htm

We can go a lot wider in PQA than we can in stories. If we learn that Patrick talks to chimps, then we can develop that and see where it goes. It may develop into a scene of extended PQA. There is so much freedom in PQA. However, if we are working to develop a

Carol sent this: Susan Gross and Laurie Clarcq will be presenting TPRS with levels 2-AP on Saturday, March 24 at Carol’s school in Pennsauken, NJ. For information e-mail Carol at  chill1019@gmail.com [ed. note: I have done this workshop and it answers tons of questions beyond the usual level 1 trainings.]

Susie always said to dive right into the method. I used to agree but now I think otherwise, for these reasons: 1. It is too difficult. I wouldn’t want to race in a Grand Prix without some practice time in a Formula 1 car first. 2. Too many people will notice, in and out of

Rules are the first expectations that we communicate to our students. Teachers who are new to TPRS, or struggling with TPRS often want to know what Rules work best. We have been taught that Rules=Discipline. Rules are not discipline. Rules are communication. They tell students what we expect. From the rules students infer what we

People always complain about how shitty Blaine’s novels are. Stop it. Just use Movie Reading to make it enjoyable for the kids to listen. Read to them with a relaxed, permission giving, softness. Read to them with love. Give the characters in the novel a bit of personality, but not too much (let the kids

A big reason I got attached to Anne Matava’s story scripts is because they fit in so well with my need to be guided along through a story. A more honest way of saying that is that my CI train went off the track all the time when I was just learning the method and scripts kept

In the last piece I wrote, “It is important we connect with the class for at least a moment to them know that we are here, we are glad that they are here, and that we will be making the decisions that direct what happens in the room.” If I make a few changes, I

This is from our brilliant Laurie. MB found it – it was posted awhile back. If you want the other one that goes with it, just cut and paste from the title here and put it in the search bar. Transitions are tough for all human beings. Each one of us transitions differently. It’s no wonder

Obviously when we do dictée we tell the kids the words for comma, period, question mark, quotes, etc., but I have started doing a cool thing that helps the kids become more aware of those pesky accent marks in French. If a sentence is: Sa mère crie… it often happens that the student “kind of knows” that

Smooth transitions are a key piece to successful classroom management. Most of us do not start out using TPRS in the classroom for an entire class period. Even when we get to that point on some days, we rarely do just one CI-based activity (ie PQA or storyasking) for an entire class period..especially if our