We as teachers are generally strong people physically and mentally. We have to be – just because of the nature of the job. So let’s just stay strong mentally and physically during this crisis! Good things can come from this. Indeed, they WILL come from this. For one thing, so many of us who now […]

As many know, our long time group member Ryann Campbell was caught by the coronavirus about two weeks ago in the Washington hot zone. Here is her report as of today: “I got a bit worse, and had to go to the hospital. My oxygen saturation was dropping dangerously low. Last night was better than

Here is the third installment of the new Invisibles book: A Spatial Curriculum Let’s expand on the idea that we learn languages by focusing on the message only. In the past, language instruction has largely involved isolating parts of language in the form of grammar or working from word lists, and then breaking everything down

Here is the second installment of the new Invisibles book: Introduction We want to free comprehensible input (CI) as a pedagogy from its current cage. In order to do that, we must begin with a renewed look at the concept of what a language curriculum even is. We who embrace CI are like the early

I would share the Table of Contents here but it doesn’t format very well when pasted from the actual text – it’s a whopper of a table of contents and reveals a collection of every single good TPRS/CI idea I’ve ever had in the past twenty years, all rolled into a single passage. Here is

Got this from Jake: Hi Ben,I’m curious about ideas you or any other teachers on the PLC may have for long-term online activities as whole states are shutting down schools.  This doesn’t affect me yet, but we’ve been told by our admin to be planning for this.  Thanks!

Here is the newest version of the Interpersonal Skills Rubric. It has been known and used as “jGR” for the past ten years and used by thousands of teachers who have been working out of the Big CI Book. It is now known as the In-Class Communication Rubric and it’s just just better. It contains

Dana Miller-Kitch is the Canadian CI teacher who replaced me at the American Embassy School in the fall of 2016 in New Delhi, India. She had trained up over that summer on the Invisibles since she knew that she would inherit kids who were taught using them. I consider this article important enough to repost

Long time PLC members here understand the real value of the year-long online “CI conference” that this PLC provides. In an effort to let other teachers know about what we have going on here in our group, I am extending one month of free access to the PLC to any teachers who might want to

I got this email in support of what I am doing with the Invisibles, and would like to share it with the group: Ben, The Invisibles are fantastic!  Thank you so much.  I am in my first few months of using CI methods after 6 years of following the textbook and not stopping much to

I want to again put into writing my thoughts on the novels: The main thing that all level 1 CI teachers must know is that it is almost impossible to develop readers that can be read at a level that is commensurate with a level one students’ ability to read them. In other words, level 1

The only reason all those readers (incorrectly called novels – they are not novels; they are readers) are out there is that the two biggest leaders of CI up to this point, Blaine and Carol, sell them. So there has been this massive focus on novels perpetuated on teachers at the summer trainings, but is