The wrapping around the gift that Krashen gave us is opaque. It’s hard to see what is inside unless you unwrap it. That takes no small amount of dedication and hard work. Krashen’s work is much easier to dismiss than embrace. Imagine my surprise when I opened the gift and found a way of teaching that actually worked! How lucky I […]

Susan Gross invented over 200 games and countless other activities that, now in her workshops, she says had no real value because they didn’t deliver the key ingredient of language acquisition: comprehensible input. I have seen teachers bristle at her workshops when she said that. That is because if they accepted the fact that it’s either CI

Our students learn how to write and speak only after hundreds of classes, every minute of each of them precious and best spent reading and listening. The more they do the latter, the more they succeed at the former. But it takes time. The more time (two years, minimum) that they receive input in the

I got this from Jen, who started doing CI only just this past March: On the heart-warming side, I got great honest and insightful feedback from my kids after our 8-week dip into the waters of TPRS/CI. Mostly I see that I just barely dipped my toe into a mere trickle of the class V

Make it clear to them that periods of silence, when the class is trying to come up with cute answers to a question, are welcome. Just sit there in that quiet space. It’s o.k. – sometimes everybody just needs time to think. If the silence really drags out, do a retell right then. Sometimes act like you can’t remember

Jen sent this question. It rings a bell but I can’t find it. Anybody have any ideas? Ben, Sometime last week I was surfing around and I came across a post about “remedial advanced” classes…where you talked about bridging the gap for 3rd/4th year kids who wouldn’t necessarily buy in immediately to stories/PQA. I should have

I just asked Dr. Krashen permission to quote here on the blog from Foreign Language Education – the Easy Way*. He responded: Yes, feel free to use anything you want to from Easy Way. It is long out of print, no plans to revive it, too busy trying to resist Arne Duncan’s policies. Best to the

Carol sends these end of year thoughts, which kind of fit right in with Robert’s comment citing the Patrick Lencioni book: Ben: I have been processing a ton of information from all of you. Thank you. This space and its community of professionals continue to be a source of great comfort and inspiration. This is

Here’s one of those penned- in blog posts from the labyrinthe – from 2008: It is an increditble thing to hear, just before class as they are quieting down, their genius, fun, humor in the form of their discussion, which all kind of fades out if you are going to start a grammar class or something like

The job that I am leaving in favor of my new life as a part time teacher was characterized by one thing – we never confronted each other. It was taboo. Who can survive in an environment like that? Michael Fullan believes that we have the moral imperative to confront each other. I like that.

Michele sent me this a few weeks ago and I should have gotten it up here sooner but better late than never: Ben, Nathan has been blogging on our shared space about a great end-of-year project that others might want to see. He has even scanned in copies of kids’ work so that people like

More good stuff from Bryce: At the beginning of each class I have my students do a “Repasito”.  The Repasito is a sponge activity.  It is a review of what we did yesterday and a link to today.  Sometimes it is just a fun warm up to get them thinking in Spanish.  The goal of