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If you are not feeling very confident about how to go from QL4 to QL 5/QL6 on the Star, which is that dramatic moment when you decide in class to move from a tableau into a story, just state the problem (QL5) in one simple sentence and then the solution (QL6) in another simple sentence. […]

Some obvious reasons why TPRS/CI has failed in many if not most buildings: 1. The culture of the language instruction has accepted that teaching out of a textbook is normal. Since we all have come to accept textbooks and worksheets as “the way things have always been done”, we stay mired in the past. 2.

Teachers interested in the Ultimate CI approach are invited to join us here on Patreon for weekly UCI coaching sessions.  These are informal drop-in sessions from 4:30 to 5:30 p.m. MT on Tuesdays and Thursdays (times chosen to accommodate people from both coasts) starting on Tues. Feb. 1.  For benslavic.com patrons only.

Natural targeting is a term I just created. It’s what we do in the Ultimate CI approach. What is it? Instead of pulling targets from word lists in textbooks (semantic sets, thematic units, high frequency verb lists, etc.) and then testing our students every few weeks as we do now, we use the questioning levels

I want to make sure that all benslavic.com patrons – even if they aren’t taking the current Group 9 UCI Book 1 training – get the video links to each training I do. It’s a perk only available to patrons*:  Ultimate CI Book 1 Training – Class 1 – January 8, 2022 https://youtu.be/0ldP_fUts1g Ultimate CI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCLzWnZbMoQ&t=139s

Robert Harrell once responded to a teacher whose administrator was of the opinion that her teaching was not challenging enough, not rigorous enough. If that ever happens to you, grab this text and give it to the person: I’m sorry to hear you are getting grief from your administrator about rigor. It sounds to me

Here is class 2 for Group 9, edited down to the good stuff: https://youtu.be/UCLzWnZbMoQ

In our last training class on Saturday, Denise mentioned how Padlet can be used to share the written version of a tableau in Phase 1 of the Star. Then Karin shared that the teacher using Padlet can also record her voice to add to the written version. Why is this important? It is because if

When I arrived in 2015 to use CI to teach middle school French at the American Embassy School in New Delhi, India, my CI instruction by kids who had studied French in previous years was largely met with choruses of “Can we just do worksheets?” or “We learn better with worksheets!” Hmmm…. It didn’t discourage

The Ultimate CI program is designed: To fully align with the research. To fully reflect the Communication Standard. In order to accomplish that in the world of actions and not just in the world of words (many CI programs lie about what they do): It is designed on and based in a feeling of community

Here is an article from 2015 that addresses the equity piece (which is the book I’m currently working on due out in the fall). I included the comments made on the original post, so it’s a long read, but may be of interest to some patrons who may agree with me that proficiency gains are