Diane and I have communicated recently on Mandarin here on the PLC lately. It is a subject I know nothing about. I have spent, however, years teaching across the hallway from Annick Chen and Linda Li in two different schools. Annick was the Colorado 2015 TOY and Linda has been described by Stephen Krashen as […]
This work is not difficult. It is just different and we must change internally. All the drama about NT vs. T is just froth. The real broiling right now is happening in the soup below. What is in the soup below? It is that place in our teaching where we must train ourselves to know
This is from Anne: One of my classes has gone completely NT. About 2 months ago they created a character and the whole thing has exploded into this long, drawn-out epic story in installments. We have been continuing the story on one day, then reading the latest installment and taking a T/F quiz on it
So far Tina, Steven, Carmen and Ryann have shared photos taken on their commutes to work. Only teachers know what those moments of going to and from the battlefield (but it doesn’t have to be) feel like. There is something poetic about the two images that have so far been shared with us. PLC members
Ben, Here is my commute down a back country road, the kind you always hear about in all of those country songs you listen to! While Oxford, MS is fairly busy as a university town, once you leave the city limits, it feels like rural Mississippi again. It’s the best of both worlds, especially for
So why not start thinking about next year already? Because some of us are barely able to drag our resistant asses into our classrooms these days? All the more reason to do it! My firm belief is that with a new focus on NT starting on this site now, we will arrive in May next
Tina and I (CI Liftoff) have a few books now on teachable.com that are very good. One is about the why of non-targeted CI instruction. It is a tremendously valuable look at the entire topic of non-targeted comprehensible input for $7, which is the cost of all the Bite Size Books, of which Tina and
I’m starting to be practical and think about aiming the content of the PLC toward next year. It’s because the professional feeling here right now is colored by that “Month of May” feeling of semi-despair that is no teacher’s fault and every bit the fault of a broken system. How indeed can we interest our
I am reposting this for Udo who had questions about SSR: Here is a strategy that eats up minutes; I should say gobbles them up. I would call it a bail out move but there is nothing about reading that could be put in that category. Read and Tell is a solid instructional strategy that
From Amy: Ben, Here’s my commute today. I work in the suburb of Salt Lake City and this stretch of road at the end of my commute is a good reminder to me to climb the hills and break down the walls. -Amy
This is from Leigh Anne: Hi Ben, How are you, mon ami? It is great to see the changes in la Méthode, to know that you are continuing the discourse and that you are surviving the pushback. Update: Well, it’s a lock. After 9 years with French 1-4, I’m being switched involuntarily to all Spanish
