We ask kids to read too early and to output writing and speech too early. Consider: In the first two years, they will be asked to do those tasks after only 250 hours (more like 100 in time actually spent on them due to all the wasted time that all of us know all about […]

I got these questions from a group member and thought I would share them: Q. I’ve studied both jGR and the grading rubric in the book. I absolutely love the term “observable non-verbal behaviors”. It really holds the key to grading in terms of the standard, doesn’t it? A. Yes. For too long language educators

Joseph needs data. Let’s provide some for him. See below: Hello,  My name is Joseph Kelley. Thank you for your PLC. It’s very helpful to me as a teacher and for my mental health. I am a graduate student in Applied Linguistics and TESOL at Leicester University.  I am conducting a survey of teachers who

Counseling departments in some schools where CI is practiced in language classes often sense that special needs kids benefit from CI instruction in languages in ways that they cannot when the teacher is still doing traditional instruction.  This leads them to approach the CI teachers in the building and request that certain students with dyslexia,

It generally feels like we’re failing at our careers but it’s not us; it’s the system around us. We’re doing a pretty good job actually, putting in as we are an entirely new pedagogy to replace one that has failed, and in that failure I include not just the grammar/translation approach but also TPRS. If

Note: I’m coaching a Chinese teacher on the Invisibles. Here are some questions that she asked. They cover more than Chinese instruction, so even if you don’t teach Chinese you may want to give this a quick read, if you are doing the Invisibles and already have some inclination of what Category A is about:

A repost: (I had a copy of this taped to my desk for 30 years. It helped me keep my sanity and know how to respond to bad leaders and other negative and controlling voices in my buildings:) There is a kind of energy in our buildings that carries or implies that we in fact

Why should we transmit mere information to our students when we can transmit so much more: interest, meaning, fun, confidence? Maybe we could even transmit to them a reason to believe in themselves. Why teach merely to their minds? Why not teach to the whole child, to their bodies and hearts as well? Maybe, if

This information is from The Big CI Book. It gives proper credit to Jody Noble. Jody’s idea – dating from about 2001 – was (certainly unintentionally) appropriated by many TPRS teachers over the years so that now it is known as the “Special Person” activity. But if you read through what is below, you will

Summary: Practitioners of CI get a lot more bang for their buck when they spread the process of getting repetitions on the language out over a process of reading the story, as opposed to using circling to get reps during the creation of the story. You may want to read this if you still use

One Word Images have caught on. I’ve been doing them since I first started them in 2002, but only lately have they become a basic CI strategy. Here are some additional thoughts about them as they have developed in my mind over the years, for those teachers in the PLC who may want to refine

A repost from 2017: A teacher needs help in how to respond to this situation: “I am in need of justifying how CI is an effective instructional strategy to my principal who indicated on my TKES observation that the students were not asked to write any vocabulary down during their Movie Talk. I went over