Here is Linda’s bio. (don’t forget to update with schools and cities): I teach at a medium sized high school in southeast PA. I have been teaching for a long time. Previously I taught Spanish but am currently teaching French. I am very close to retirement and TPRS has made the last five years so […]
Jen sent some new ones from Quebec. I am trying to get excellent songs that the kids can really relate to in French, German and Spanish. If we don’t have these categories, we won’t have a single place to access songs, which I think is very helpful for those of us who work with songs:
Today I returned to He Talks Too Much (Matava Vol. 1, p. 15) after all the Halloween stuff. Such a great story. I learned that it is this talking about kids in class who are doing all this crazy stuff, making it totally about them, turning them into the actors and not having it be about a unicorn
Jen wrote in this comment-turned-blog-post about using self-evaluation rubrics as per Melanie and Robert: I’m on my third “round” but I call it “reflection.” It is so valuable. Instead of doing a whole rubric each time, I am focusing on one or two skills (or class rules). This way I get really specific reflections from
The topic of thematic unit testing and the testing of vocabulary came up in a private email I got today from a colleague. My responses to her questions are in italics: Ben, Q. I recently bought TPRS in a Year! and PQA in a Wink! and they are great! While browsing your blog, I read about
I walked into a Fantastic Sam’s for a haircut today. As it happened, the owner was there. As I waited, I asked her something and over the course of the conversation it became clear that she was a former elementary school principal. I asked her a few questions: Me: What about the data push right
Lori brought up the question of the value of translation back to L1. Here is what John said, and in my view it is spot on: As someone who had briefly turned entirely away from translation (in reaction to the “translation is everything” perspective of most Latin teachers), I have found translation to be the
Since many of my students are already bilingual, I told them today to teach me Spanish in May for one class, using the method they saw me use all year in class. I told them that if they did that, it would be the biggest extra credit ever offered by a teacher in the history
The antidote to going out of bounds, so very easy in PQA, is circling. That’s it. When you are asking questions to your kids while circling think of it like beads on a string where the string is the targeted repeated PQA structure and the beads are the other words. When you say the same
Just a detail. If you are working from a Matava script, always remember, when referring to the script during the development of the story, that the underlined words are the variables and therefore need to be replaced by cute answers from the kids. The non-underlined words are not optional and are not to be replaced
When you do your PQA today, if you do Jim’s Halloween PQA idea or any other targeted PQA, don’t forget to get counters for the target expressions. Whenever kids see that you need their help, most are quick to respond. It’s not just about getting counts on reps, it’s a subtle way of involving kids. PQA counters
Maggie sent this: Hi, I saw this on Andrew Sullivan’s blog today. More support of engaged learning. http://mindhacks.com/2011/10/24/make-study-more-effective-the-easy-way/ Cheers, Maggie
