Dr. Lynch at Texas A&M wants to do a study with members of this group and we need some participants: “Dear PLC: I am seeing volunteers to fill out a survey regarding your perceptions and experiences using NTCI. The survey will require approximately one hour of your time. Your information will be anonymous. I believe […]

Hey Ben – Q. We made a OWI; the character was a potato. So all through the first questions I asked, Est-elle grande ou petite, etc., because pomme de terre is feminine. Then when we named it it turned out to be male. So now it’s Ricky, and I find myself switching to il–il est

Q. Hi Ben! I am a second-year Spanish teacher. In graduate school, I studied and trained in TPRS methods with a professor whose pedagogy was centered on comprehensible input in language acquisition. I am lucky to have had her! I admire your work a lot, and I have been experimenting in non-targeted CI this year.

This is from Anne Matava: Hi Ben – In my 2nd and 3rd year classes we have hit on something fun with Card Talk. I had them draw something they did over the summer on their cards. We have started talking about them in two ways. First, we talk about what really happened: the kid

For those doing the newest work (NTCI) this clarification might be helpful: Dear Ben, I recently purchased A Natural Approach to the Year and am giving it a try (and excited to do so). In reading the job descriptions in the HR Manual, it seems that the description for the Secondary Artist is missing. I

Here is the complete original thread, with comments, around the traditional attack on John Bracey. These are the comments that started the discussion on rigor, which we should revisit here as much as we can lest we forget that rigor is one of the most outstanding descriptors of our work with CI and that rigor

Sean I just want to say thank you for your contributions to the group over all the years. I really appreciate your insights because they are always filled with kindness, while your mind is like a beacon scanning a field. We are all better off because you are a member of the PLC.

This and a following post from the intense days here of 2014 will be of interest to any PLC member who is being attacked by high school grammar teachers: John Bracey was attacked by colleagues and we got a thread going about it last month. Among other things, for those who remember the original thread,

Steven has some nice riffs on the game. I really like #s 1 and 5: 1) After I am done saying my sentence, I count down 3,2,1,0 then ALL members of a group have to raise their hands. This is the huddle time and ALL students have to share out the answer. 2) I say

I wrote this to Jennifer in response to a question about how to test kids on speaking assessment, for those of us who must: Ah, the speaking assessment. I lobbied very heavily in Denver Public Schools to abolish it at level 1 and they did. It saved them a lot of money at the district

Jennifer Goldszmidt wrote in a comment here today: One of my Spanish 1 students from last year decided to take French 2 this year (he took French in middle school and now he’s in 10th grade)….The lesson today went pretty well. I asked my former and now current student on the way out if he

A repost: Here’s something I”m in the process of memorizing for the next time someone says to me that my class is not structured: “My class is structured in the same way that what I am saying right now is structured. What I am saying now is structured but you are not aware of it. You