Yesterday way was a true Friday, right? Restless adolescents in the middle of winter with too many teachers jawing at them about stuff they are truly too young to appreciate and whose minds were not really on learning and mostly focused on being teenagers. I just want to share something from today. I don’t generally […]
I got this question today: Ben, Do you believe in 100-word free writes (or even ‘topic writes’, challenging them with a certain topic, perhaps what we PQA’d about) as a permanent, daily fixture in my 95 minute classes (which is all of them, all week)? Just picking your brain here… And should they be timed?
I got a question from a group member today. The answer is very simple, but the emotional component is clouding the issue for this person. So comment freely, providing lots of love, to this: Ben, I am going to check out Bryce Hedstrom’s alternate learning plan this weekend as I have three students from
I got this from Dirk about working with kids who struggle with the regular rules: Hey Ben – I have been cranking out this new re-shuffle of the weekly plan for CI. I have had to accept the fact that at my school, which is essentially a behavior/spectrum disorder school, students are truly incapable of
As the new site gets ready to launch, I still need some testimonials with face pictures (more rectangular than up and down) if you want to do that. Just send them both to my email. Thanks for those who have already done that – very kind of you. I just haven’t gotten to the video
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.]
Should level 1 kids not read as much as we now think they need (50% reading)? Don’t they need a better vocabulary to read? Wouldn’t it be better to use more time in level 1 for the power skill of listening? Should kids in level 1 TPRS/CI classes perhaps wait longer – until levels 2 and
This is the text I have prepared as per my response comment to John in the post “A Specious Argument”. I haven’t sent it yet and invite corrections/suggestions from the group before I send it. Ms. Snow and Mr. Castagna – Hi! It’s Ben Slavic following up on our discussion of a year ago. Ann, when you asked
We must ask why the kids are erupting with answers to the detriment of our instruction. If we can answer that, we will have found one of the big keys to one of the big doors to this approach to teaching. Are they erupting because they can’t contain themselves? Or because they don’t see anyone stopping them?
As we continue to work towards better and better ways of representing what we do to others, especially parents and (often clueless) administrators, we would do well to perhaps memorize a few of these talking points pulled from the listserve by Jody today. Jody explains: Jeff Klamka from NY just posted this on the more.tprs
Often, we hear those who don’t actually use L2 in the classroom (or use it so little that it doesn’t have any results) claim that, since they don’t have “that kind of personality”, they are somehow excused from doing the hard work of learning how to implement, for real, comprehensible input in their classrooms. This special kind of prideful ingorance, which
We have resolution to the major thread from a few weeks ago about the supervisor whose drop-in evaluation demanded output from our group member, if you remember. Here is how much good has come from that attack: Hi Ben, Oh happy day….Oh happy daaaay… I wanted to update you on the issues with my supervisor
