It’s never too early to plan our end of the year activities, and this post is simply to remind those who in the past have found success in late spring using the Children’s Story Project (found in A Natural Approach to the Year) to reserve the month of May and possibly even a few weeks […]

Sunday nights after dinner during the school year used to be emotionally very difficult for me. I made this prayer to God one time and it helped. I reprint it here periodically: Dearest God, Your teachers down here are hurting. We know you know that. We just need to say it. It seems like something

The whole thing about teaching a language is that it is the heart that leads in language production and not the mind. What does that mean? It means that people say things (i.e. use language, express themselves) because something in their heart prompts them to do so. It has nothing to do with the mind,

Quick quizzes are easy, short, true/false questions (five or ten or however many you want). If you are pressed for time ask five and double the score. The questions are written during the story by your quiz writer. Don’t forget to ask yes/no or true/false questions. Ask “Did Sarah go to New York?” Do not

It’s always a good thing to focus on your storytelling skills, image building skills (all those things described in ANATS and applied in ANATTY) but in my opinion that is something you work on most intently in the fall. Now as we begin the winter “trudge of the soldier” it is more important to keep

Here is the Interpersonal Skills Rubric referred to in the previous posts, but in a different format (from ANATS). It is no easy task to pull this off grading move in January, since we all now know beyond any doubt that how we inform our kids about how they will be graded in any given

In this last article in the series on textbook companies, Robert Harrell offers a concluding statement to Sarah’s original set of questions about how to respond to her department’s actions in choosing a textbook. The point he rhetorically makes and has made throughout this series of articles is pretty clear by now – it is

jGR, aka the Interpersonal Skills Rubric (ISR) is the second and most important to us of ACTFL’s Three Modes of Communication. Here is some more information about it. I am recommending that you use it in your classes like a hammer in January, for many reasons. Students in comprehension-based classrooms must show up in a

In this series of articles about surviving the winter and especially that first month back in January, we focus primarily on assessment changes, accepting that changes in classroom culture are hard to effectuate in mid-year, but arguing that if we change how the kids are being graded, it will at least get their attention. It’s

In this article Robert asks the textbook companies about how they address relevance. The point he makes below is also one of my favorites in this series, which, to repeat, if read with an open mind by anyone in the field of language instruction, spells the certain demise of the big textbook companies: How does

Based on:  http://www.sk.com.br/sk-krash.html Stephen Krashen is a Second Language Acquisition researcher and professor at University of Southern California who has been publishing and speaking since the 1970’s. “Language acquisition does not require extensive use of conscious grammatical rules, and does not require tedious drill.” Stephen Krashen “Acquisition requires meaningful interaction in the target language –

It’s funny – funny in the sense of weird, even unnatural – how we put kids down and then blame them (using our weapons of choice: grades) because they can’t do what we ask them. I’m referring directly here to our history of making languages inaccessible – let’s be honest – to our students. First,