Greg wrote this here last spring. It’s good for those who have been working with the Invisibles program and know how it works. Greg says: Hey everyone: Here is another end of the year activity: Do a drawing day with the Invisibles. Change up some of the prompts that go on the back of the […]
Hi Ben, I wanted to update you and the PLC about my recent French Immersion Camp trip with some former CI students of mine. These students are in their 3rd year of French at their high school feeder school. They were in my classes when the invisibles started and they were the first set of
Here is a free download on classroom management for PLC members: https://ci-liftoff.teachable.com/p/the-bite-size-book-of-classroom-management/?product_id=552480&coupon_code=BLOGSEVENTEENBUCKS&preview=logged_out
Here are 30 points to make about teaching using comprehensible input in a non-targeted classroom: We emphasize the gradual acquisition of language that follows a different timeline for each individual learner. We do not emphasize the memorization of vocabulary and rules. It is the narrative framework of a story that makes new language items (lexical
Robert reports: Hi Ben, I just wrote a post on my Compelling Input Facebook page. It includes a quote from CS Lewis on the way he wrote his Narnia books. I’ve known for a long time that Lewis worked from images, but he explains the process in more detail here. Some people seem to think
Our discussion of what CI is continues: Here is how Wikipedia defines Dr. Stephen Krashen’s approach: …the natural approach is a method of language teaching developed by Stephen Krashen and Tracy Terrell in the late 1970s and early 1980s. It aims to foster naturalistic language acquisition in a classroom setting, and to this end it
This article discusses the general theory and practice of comprehensible input in the World Language classroom. After it, I will begin to post more and more articles on non-targeted comprehensible input, since I think that it is vastly superior to targeted instruction. For those still interested in targeted instruction, there are ten years of articles
David Strock has a question: Hi Ben, Below is my first post in this PLC. I hope I understood correctly, that we email you our question/comment and you will share it with the group. [ed. comment: yes, this is encouraged…] After attending a workshop by Susan Gross in 2007 I drank the kool-aid and embraced
Julia comments on the concept of enthusiasm in her own work: …something that I love about NTCI is that I have the freedom to follow and share my own interests. Last night I was reading more about 19th century missionaries along the US-Mex border and was really enthralled, and so I talked about that today
It is the focus on gains that inhibits are own ability to be enthusiastic each day. Unless we can expect new things, untargeted things, spontaneous and serendipitous things to happen, how can we get excited about our jobs? We always seem to be “targeting” certain words connected to the textbook, the novel du jour, the
Dear Ben, Today I told the story of Junípero Serra to my 6th graders. I felt like doing a history inspired lesson this morning, so we did! (Ahhhh the freedom.) The kids are completely understanding these days and they loved this lesson. Even though it wasn’t an Invisibles lesson, they still were invited to use
For a long time I knew that Piedad Gutierrez was swimming upstream trying to get to the non-targeted place along with me and Tina and about four other people that we knew over the years. She just finished a training in New Jersey in which she covered the following topics. It’s very similar to where
