If you are a new teacher doing Circling with Balls right now, be careful. You may not be going SLOW-Li enough. You probably aren’t. You know that you are going too fast if even one single kid in your class doesn’t understand. It is your job to make sure that they all understand. Tell them […]

Just wanted to share an email conversation with a (university level) colleague from yesterday. What I responded is in italics: Hi Ben – Well, I’ve finished my first day at both schools.  I’m exhausted, my feet hurt, my voice is a bit weak, but boy, this was more fun than I remember having at work

I got this from a colleague. I love the honesty. I am asking for the group to respond, especially Bryce and those experienced TPRSers who have taught at the upper levels, unlike me. My hunch is that this colleague, who really needs our help right now, can in fact make TPRS work at the upper

Today was the third day of class. The first day was when I did the Big Circle. The second was district pre-testing. Today I started in earnest with Circling with Balls. It was pretty cool. All the training this summer helped. I did the Circling with Balls and, since I went so much slower than every before

What are the Five Finger Rules? 1. No notetaking 2. Nothing on the desk 3. No repeating after me in any language 4. Signal me when you don’t understand 5. Everything I say is interesting, so if you understand, then let me know So, if a child is in anyway breaking one of the rules,

Krashen’s point that too much testing is a bunch of hooey and that poverty is the real problem vs. Duncan’s reckless positioning of the big governement testing guns leaves us with so much smoke that we can barely see our way through a lesson plan. But there is a pathway through the forest of Krashen

…by encouraging learners to focus on the words, the teacher activates their left hemispheres and deactivates their right ones. This is the most unfortunate, because the right hemisphere learns 1,600 times faster than the left one…. …so, does the very process of teaching language work against the learners learning the language? The answer is “yes”,

This article that Jim sent today needs to be a separate blog post: The National Standards Discussion: A Weapon of Mass Distraction Stephen Krashen We are again invited to give our opinions about the content of national standards (http://www.parcconline.org/parcc-content-frameworks). We are not invited to discuss whether we need national standards and their spawn, national tests. For those who

If we agree with Krashen that comprehensible input is all about teaching so that we allow our students to learn the language we teach them unconsciously, that is, without any conscious control of what sticks in their minds (that being a hugely complex process that cannot be accomplished merely by the incapable conscious mind) then we need to

Dr. Krashen wrote this: What School is All About Sent to the Los Angeles Times, July 17, 2011 In addition to influencing the medical literature (LA Times, July 16), J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter has a great deal to say about current educational policy. In “Harry Potter: The Order of the Phoenix” (2007), villain Dolores Umbridge

Anne Matava wrote this, which ties into the discussion we are having right now with Lori: Is anyone working in a school that is moving towards a standards-based model?  My school is, and I am having difficulty reconciling the new demands with what we know to be true about language acquisition.  Up until this point

I got this from a blog member: I have a question about your rules, for the “Do your 50%” rule, how do you explain that to students when you explain your rules?  I”ve read some posts you wrote about that rule but I’m still shaky on understanding it completely. My response: I tell the kids