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Here is an article that we would all do well to read and reflect on in terms of what we really want to be doing in our CI classrooms. It is my position that CI gains are only a piece of the puzzle and should only be one of our goals as language teachers. Our […]

I just got an email from our group member Karin who is an accomplished StarChart™-trained teacher: Ben, I was reading this article and as I was reading it, I realized that AWE is exactly what your STAR curriculum allows me experience  with my students in every class. https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/on-parenting/children-awe-emotion/2021/11/29/0f78a4b0-4c8e-11ec-b0b0-766bbbe79347_story.html?fbclid=IwAR0yvta2DFHBljMaZ4_xWB_N3mu0hxbBAIvSuoIUQBnmFceb0zVcUGLyHFU It especially resonated with me when the

From time to time I like to go back and find posts from the “old blog”, of which this blog is the newest incarnation. The post below on assessing in terms of the standards was published here in 2017. Written by Robert Harrell, it gives insight into the whole topic of Standards Based Assessment. Comments

I feel strongly that more discussions are needed about the huge split between how we use CI and how we test with CI, that whole gnarly topic. What’s going on now, testing CI students with traditional methods, is in my opinion a disaster. https://youtu.be/rTD7918LBkY

Here is a question I got from a teacher. It’s a long post but if you are required to do summative long-term testing in your district it is an important read: Ben, I just found out that all teachers inour school have a new requirement for next year: …all teachers must prove that the students

One of our group members is teaching 180 students per day in 8 classes lasting 42 minutes each. Some of her colleagues have nine classes. One hour of instructional time per day has been shifted over to core classes. We’ve always known we were a dumping ground, but this is taking things to new levels

TPRS/CI is a student-driven methodology. It responds to the linguistic needs of the students at any given time. This makes it free-flowing. Free flowing is a good word to apply to a language curriculum. It’s not a math curriculum and thus left brain/dominant. It is a whole brain curriculum. TPRS/CI believes that we should shelter

Here are some more observations from Michelle in Australia. I love Michelle’s idea of the “draw-offs” and will probably add it to the book: Hi Ben, Yes, the self-study course definitely works! I totally agree that the ICI brings incredible images and stories out of the students and are by far the most fun to

Michelle sent some tableaux and ICI stories created by her level 1 French classes. Find them below. Here is my feedback: Michelle –  The tableaux are exceptionally well done. They contain the right amount of information and everything is related only to QL 2-4. This is as it should be when you do tableaux. They

A few days ago I received an email from a teacher in Australia, Michelle Fisher. Some months back I had sent her the “Self-Study” Ultimate CI Training materials – here is that link: https://benslavic.com/product/self-study-course/ Below is the email. In a subsequent post, I give feedback on what Michelle sent me: Hi Ben, Just touching base again

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

The word out on CI now and for the past ten years is to get the students reading as much as possible as early as possible. But that doesn’t make sense. They have to hear and understand the spoken language before making that next step to reading, don’t they? It’s just common sense. But profits