Clips 4-6 of this series of 24 show how PQA (clips 4 and 5) can move into extended PQA (clip 6). The reckless speed of the discussion is due to a group of precocious kids pushing me, and I am very aware of not doing a great job of keeping up with my barometers, who are […]

Brian wrote: If you use, say Anne Matava’s scripts for stories, then you aren’t backward planning for the readers/novels – is that right?  If that is the case, is it better then to just do some backward planning and work out my own bare bones script from there?  How do you do it?  My guess

I’ve got those 24 short clips from my old school – video taken last spring – that Frank was asking about. I’ll start putting them up here. I think I learned a lot at NTPRS this year, so these clips, especially the first ones showing PQA, are still way frickin’ too fast. But there is value here

I used to go to Saint Louis Symphony concerts a lot in college. I remember that the sound of the live orchestra was so much greater than listening to a recording of the music. I think that that is because the live players, the generators of the sound, were there, right there in the concert

I love songs. They are fantastic for the kids. But I avoid songs. It is because of the amount of new vocabulary that needs to be PQA’d for the kids to properly understand and thus enjoy the song. There is so much, especially when considering the song for a first year class, so much that it seems

I have two new jobs added to the jobs list: 1. the Reader Leader. This is the kid who leads the class in the choral reading of texts. She reads slowly and loudly and literally brings the class along with her. Extra credit for that. 2. the Memorizer of the Cards. This kid knows what

One of my students -Pamela (not her real name) – is on a remediation plan for some offense. She did something wrong. So she has to get a signed blue note from each of her teachers every day, as a way to keep tabs on her. The grade has to be reported on the blue slip.

Bryce want our advice: Estimados colegas, I am slated to present TPRS methods to two regional university Methods of Teaching Foreign Language classes in the next couple of months.  It has to be good because the national FL teacher of the year is presenting a week before me on both occasions (Yikes!!!).  I have only

Catherina said that she got confused with the voiceover and I agree that it is too much to absorb. It’s very similar to asking our students to understand when we go too fast and provide too much information and the class is not comprehensible. So we need to address that. One thing that we can

These from Julie Baird via Robert: Hi Ben, Here are the Levels of Acquisition from Julie Baird. LEVELS OF LANGUAGE ACQUISITION 10 = can easily retell the story in German from a different perspective or tense 9 = can retell the story with ease adding relevant details that were not presented in class 8 =

(A video link to a class by Michele is below in one of the comments…) Bryce your comment needs to be a blog post here because you have used a word to describe a quality that we totally must have in comprehensible input. It is a great word that I want to celebrate. It describes exactly

Hi Ben, You could call this one “stop teaching the rules, and start teaching language,” because this is the attitude I am getting from my 4%ers who are getting bored, disrupting class, and then getting very low grades because of it. I am seeing what you have already said about how toxic the 4%ers with