I’m moving this over from the list of comments. In this long rant, I respond to a question from Brian. I post it here because it has in it the closest thing I have yet seen, in my opinion, to a good set of rubric descriptors for the interpersonal communication mode. It’s not set in stone (is anything?) but it […]

This is a superb five star question from Lori: Ben, I know that this was brought up once before – about the perceived over-reliance in TPRS of translating stories into English.  This came up in my class recently after we did a short unit on polyglots. One of my students emailed the polyglot her group

Anne wrote: Hi, Brian. Do you have a rubric for the first standard (interpersonal communication)? I like Brian’s reply because it talks about use of English, which is a huge topic that has never gotten enough attention. I also like it because, once I get a nice rubric for the interpersonal piece of the grading pie,

John shows why he is a PQA Commander. He is willing to “go there”, where “there” is into trust that PQA can become something more (extended PQA or even a story). Here’s his scary (for those of us easily frightened by the PQA goblins) suggestion. We can definitely do this tomorrow. Then maybe Wednesday, if

I’ll just respond here to Jim’s idea about finding a single internet place for embedded readings: Actually Jim, if the readings are from story scripts found in your book and in Matava’s two books, then we should keep them in one place. I hear what Laurie says about the tprstalk site, but, like the list

Chill sent this: Interesting link:  Literature for teaching children.  After a brief perusal, I noticed that a CI person may have had some input with the Brown Bear, Brown Bear French story: http://www.education.ne.gov/forlg/

Jim sent this. It definitely warrants discussion: I’ve been thinking for a while how to allow ourselves to share stories with each other so that we don’t have to necessarily write up everything from our stories all the time. I think that would save us considerable prep time. The way I see it working best

Chill sent this great link for French teachers, with the comment: This has become a cult classic among my students! I am sure most of you have seen it, but if you are like me – reminders are a good thing! Joyeuse Halloween! Chill http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oLUIopGXEQQ&feature=related  

This is some seriously thought out stuff – something we can all use in our buildings – from Brian and adds greatly to the standards based grading thread: Hi Ben, I’ve attached what is essentially my current thinking on grading as it relates to standards based instruction in general and, more specifically, the learning goals

This blog post from last spring tags on to what we were talking about earlier this week: If we are floundering in the CI, we should compile a list of bail out moves and tape it to our desks. We can call them our water wings because we are all learning this together – there

I am moving this from comment status to a blog post: I weigh the quizzes at 75%. They are on scantron. They are yes/no. They can be from any class except Fridays, which I reserve for songs and poetry, areas way to sacred to connect to a grade. Thus, they can be from the PQA

Hey Ben, I have been teaching teenagers French for the past 15 years. I am the only French teacher at one of the two middle and high schools in Pittsfield, MA. I teach one class at Reid Middle School and fours classes at Taconic High School. Although this has its disadvantages, it has also been