This is from 2009: Block days (90 minutes) are perfect days to teach a song and then build a story or a reading from it. But you can do this in one class period as well. Project a song with its translation and work with it in a more or less traditional way for its meaning. An […]
Bryan Whitney offers perhaps the best bail out move I have ever seen, better than dictee maybe because that only lasts ten to fifteen minutes, posted below. I call it Write Their Little Butts Off. For those who don’t know what a Bail Out Move is, it’s just a way to end something that isn’t working during
It’s March, everybody. We can do it. Maybe take a lesson from this guy:
This is reprinted from 2008: When we teach isolated “activities” that are connected to teaching certain grammatical concepts, we are not teaching wholistically. Yet, language is learned wholistically, if Krashen is right. And Krashen is right. Doing such “activities” without providing a steady stream of uninterrupted L2 in our classes is like planting flowers in pots. The
A repost from 2009: I suggest that we endeavor to respect the continuum of hearing and seeing in L2 – the auditory part in stories, and the visual part in readings. When I say continuum, I mean flow of L2, as in din of L2, in stories. Readers unfamiliar with Krashen’s term Din are invited to
The focus of any comprehensible input instruction program should be on the fact of communication and not on the vehicle being used to bring it. Even a small amount of focus on the vehicle results in serious constraints on interest which greatly hampers the flow of the communication, and the comprehensible input cannot thrive. For
This post is from a few weeks ago but we had the wrong link, now corrected. It’s a request from Jonathan in VA: Ben – Been away for a while. Wondering if the folks here on the PLC could throw me some feedback on my Daily Interpersonal Communicative Engagement rubric. Shareable Link here: https://docs.google.com/drawings/d/1s1K329evaOijCKxA6m8rl8qMZNtXzHFDDFcy5HfVTkM/edit?usp=sharing A
As we move through the fun part of winter, it’s never too early to think about spring and the end of the year, which will arrive with its flowers, as it always does, in spite of how many layers of snow there are outside our windows now in early March. I’m looking out into my
Stephan in Peru asks: Do you think no or limited structures are equally valid for absolute beginners? I responded: Some people argue that structures are needed for beginners. This gives them control over the dialogue and gets people to come to their trainings. If no targets worked for beginning teachers, those trainers would not have
Words in new context are less easy for the mind to identify than the same words in previous context. This is a point of importance when we consider what to expect from our students in class and when assessing them. If you use a word from a previous story in a new story, do not
The common practice of mixing two languages in real instructional time negatively affects CI instruction. Don’t do it. So what to do? Just go slower and stay in L2. Ten minutes L2 and ten minutes in L1 is not unreasonable. That may be all you can get. 15 minutes in the TL and 5 in
Trust for things like chanting builds over the course of the year in relationship to the daily increase in kids’ trust when they see that you are not trying to force them to learn, or trick them on tests, and when they see that you genuinely care about them. As the trust builds, you will
