Mila just joined our group, and read A Natural Approach to Stories over the holidays. She took over for a teacher who left at the semester break and is just in her fourth day of teaching in this non-targeted way. Here is her report: My classes are small so the day after Card Talk they […]
Why not just teach half the class period traditional and half CI? The reason I say that is because the yapping is just too stupid in some buildings. Now, if the department/school wants CI, that’s great. They won’t hassle you. But it just seems to me so simple to split it evenly and be done
I got this from Leigh Anne. It is pretty cool: Hi Tina and Ben, Hope you both are well! I am deliriously happy, professionally, having seen great results this week at Final Exam time. I so appreciate what you do for us WL teachers, and our students. So, kudos to you and Tina! So, the
Q. It seems that every year I have an annoying group, a clique of about four students who just won’t stay quiet. They’re not mean kids, and often they are very bright, but they visit too much. Ideas? A. It is advised that we do not implement a seating chart until about the third or
Tina and I finished the book and it is gone to the publisher but we still have to finish the appendices. We’ve both been under a rock with all of it for a long time. I was thinking about this new book. It’s not like anything I’ve ever written because it actually represents a curriculum
I got this question today: Hello Ben, After about five years, I am again seeking advice/help from TPRS & the CI community to help me teach language in the way I am convinced is the way to go if one’s concern is language acquisition. You graciously gave me of your time and advice five years
Today Meg brought up the topic of what to do when the kids don’t respond to Plans A through D. I wrote up a Plan E for addition to the Classroom Management book and share it here: Plan E – Removal If the misbehavior continues, if the side conversations continue, if we have called home
Sometimes we find that our students’ energy needs to be contained with some pencils-to-paper activities. When the kids have a pencil in their hands, they think that they are learning. Let’s be honest and clear here. Our goal is first and foremost to make it to the end of the year with our mental health
How to get structure and still retain what one might call an “intuitive” curriculum? So let’s say we have a choice of our basic types of non-targeted strategies, for example Small Talk (Calendar/Weather), Card Talk, Word Chunk Team Game, etc. – the kind of things we do with beginners. The old thinking is that we
I post something Gretchen wrote here today as a comment in case anyone missed it….especially the last sentence, which I consider huge in its implications for what is happening right now every day in our classrooms because of our new awareness around CI: …I see colleagues who, with good intentions, are having their 1st and
First they listen. Then they read. Then they write. Somewhere along that continuum, depending on the person, speech emerges. Input precedes output. WE cannot control that process, because it all happens where we can’t go, into their unconscious minds during sleep after large doses of listening and reading output the day before in our classrooms.
Our work can be effortless if we want it to be, if we can but rise above our need to “instruct”, to “deliver instructional services”. As we slowly rid ourselves of the old ideas of what a teacher even is, how a teacher behaves in class, many of us (in my view because of the
