When you do non-targeted input you end up creating much bigger CI swimming pools in your classrooms. But when you try to limit the vocabulary being learned to certain words that someone told you to teach from a list, you’re in the small pool; you’re almost in the kiddie pool. Not trying to control everything […]

We in this online community should be so very appreciative of our Alisa for her unlimited and always expanding awareness of what is going on in our profession. In what looks like some serious backsliding in mainstream WL education, there is a new term out there called “WL Core Practices” that didn’t get by Alisa’s

This is from Anne: Hi Ben, I can’t remember if I read this somewhere or if I made it up myself: Every day of the year is National Something-Or-Other Day. Most days it’s 3 or 4 things. On nationaldaycalendar.com you can find a list; you can also get put on a mailing list and receive

It helps to be happy in this work. No. We have to be happy to do this work. We are communicating with children all day! What happens if we communicate anything but happiness to them? I am sure that most of them already experience negativity from others in their days. Just taking a guess on

We try to keep our discussion here mainly about strategies/best practices, but a lot of talk gets in about how to deal with opposition within our buildings*. That’s fine. We need to be reminded often that there are a whole lot of people who are upset about the new trails we are blazing in what

The center part of a sunflower, where all the seeds are, can get full of seeds and get almost too big. That center part of the sunflower compares to the story, where each seed is another detail in the story. A story can get too big too. There is nothing wrong with that. Not so

From Alisa who teaches both Spanish and Hebrew in Chicago. Hers is an important question and maybe someone in the group can suggest a possible direction, although the questioner herself is a world expert in the field, but in the real way because she walks the walk every day in her classroom: Amigos, I was

From Jonathan: Ben- Got a few questions to throw out to the PLC, re: FCR (Free Choice Reading): 1) Do you use FCR @ the beginning of class on a daily basis? 2) If so, for how long? (include how long class time is) 3) What are your sources for reading material? 4) What are the

It’s interesting to me that some in our group are having success with the Big CI Book and others with ANATS and ANATTY, since they are different, the first one still retaining elements of TPRS/CI and the second ones being fully devoted to NTCI. It doesn’t matter. We work for success however we can find

Should I call what I do NTCI or Proficiency Based Instruction (PBI)? That’s all it is about…proficiency. Or should I call it something else? It’s non-targeted as anyone who has been on here since 2016 knows, but NTCI is just an awkward name to me and also invites the CI people to get oppositional. But

I know that on this site we have beginning of the year parent letters about what we do in our classrooms but it is so full of pages that I can’t find one. If anyone has one that they are willing to share with the group, please cut and paste it into a comment field