Jagan-Nath sent this: Perry Como sings “Kol Nidre” the famous Jewish prayer before Yom Kippur. An old Jewish grandmother in the audience comes up to him afterwards and says: “Perry, that was so beautiful!  Only a Jew could sing that song like that.  Are you Jewish?” “No, madam, I’m Italian.” “Perry, that’s impossible!   Was your […]

Cara sent this to Michele, who sent it to me: Ben, Cara sent this to me: http://marketplace.publicradio.org/display/web/2010/10/04/pm-new-ideas-for-better-teachers-and-schools/ This school in Tennessee is using techniques that TPRS teachers use to improve our teaching! The only thing that we’re missing is being able to freely observe [each other] from afar. Once again, we find that what we’re

Updates to my posters page will be made this week to: Word List Instructions – I have changed what I do with the “Spanish/French Word Lists”. I didn’t need all those words and this is explained in those new instructions. Suggested Block Schedule A – just a small change for those of us who may

   For some years Latin teachers have been talking about their profession in terms of Krashen and Blaine Ray. Bob Patrick is one of the founders of this site:   http://groups.yahoo.com/group/latin-bestpractices/    Bob and Rick Winterstein (Tacoma, WA) have contributed or will contribute articles in the journal British Journal of Classics Teaching about TPRS. I

Here’s another one from Anne. Target structures in italics. Variables underlined: Hurtin’  __________hurts him/her  or has a __________ache lies down on starts to  Ben is sitting in school.  His hair hurts him.  So he goes home and lies down on the refrigerator.  The refrigerator starts to shake.  “Yikes!” says Ben, and goes back to school. 

Nathan sent this exceptional post today. It will help everyone: Hi Ben,   As I read through Dirk’s post about the difficulties of CI with small classes, I kept hearing the same refrain: you can’t do CI with small classes.  I’d agree that it’s difficult at times, but at the same time I would I would

Johnna (who just finished her third week of TPRS last week) sent me this email: “You have to have your eyes wide open, you’ve got to be connecting with them, because otherwise, there’s really no point.  They know if you mean it.  They know if you’re telling them the truth.  They know if you’re feeling

Michele just sent this: Hey Ben – thought you’d like this as much as I do: “Here is one quantifiable measure of the advantage of being multilingual: imagine if other children were given twice as much time to prepare for a high-stakes exam as your own kid. You would scream unfair bias.  But that is

Michele sent this excellent link which reflects on what we do in TPRS/CI based instruction: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U Michele

The grammar translation analyis of language is in its death throes. We finally get that humans cannot possibly learn languages by consciously talking about them. The world is no longer flat. In this round, not flat, world, we have upward space (the conscious mind) and then we have deeper, downward, space (the unconscious mind). People who

I got this email from Liz Hughes: Hey Ben, I went to the Impulse Theater (an Improv theater) this past weekend for my birthday with my fiance.  It is in the basement of the Wynkoop Brewery downtown.  It was hilarious.  I was reminded of Stephen Valdes´  post about improv and it’s similarities to our classroom.

Dirk sent this: So even though I am in a school setting where I have some classes that are too small for good CI, I am still trying many new things and doing my best in class to make it meaningful and understandable CI Spanish.  I have 2 classes of about 30 8th graders who