I got this from someone new to our group and new to the Invisibles. My responses are in italics: Hi Ben, I really appreciate the Invisibles book. I read the whole thing in one evening! I also went back to your videos on YouTube. I was blown away by the Pringle Man video. While I’ve […]
Last night I went up to Estes Park (CO) to watch my 19 year old son Evan sing in the spring musical for his high school, Eagle Rock School. His voice, over the years, has developed into a very rich deep baritone. But what impressed me most was his dancing and acting. Upon reflection, what
This is a third repost. I’m just going to keep reposting it: I took the “Suggest Cute Answers” rule off of my Classroom Rules.. It never really worked and made many kids feel uncomfortable, as if they couldn’t relax under this heavy class requirement. Tina supports my decision below: Ben, I got rid of the
Dear CI Colleagues, I did Story Listening with all my classes Monday. Their exit ticket was to tell me something that worked well for them as a learner of the target language (French or Spanish). I only had a few students in all my classes that told me negative feedback. Most were very excited with
We won’t know that they all understood until we teach a class that ends with great enthusiasm expressed by all. It isn’t just a good story that generates such happiness, it’s that they all got it. Like jen said in a comment here once that there is great humor in things like funny names and
If you are using OWI and the Invisibles and are at all confused about how the two terms interface, it is understandable. We can say that one word images are really just class created-characters. So when you see OWI anywhere, just think “class-created image”, whether you use it to start an Invisibles story or just
Kids will do anything not to be excluded on hand comprehension checks, even lie on hand checks. It is our responsibility to build that inclusion in our classrooms not just via personalization but also by going slowly enough so that they all get it.
There was a girl who was failing all her classes. She dressed in black everyday with black lipstick. But she was thriving in my CI classroom – actually she was the class superstar. She told me, when I asked once if I was going slowly enough, “Mr. Slavic, do you know how you can ride a bike
This is from Craig in Los Angeles: Hey Ben – Just wanted to drop in and say hi. I’ve been seeing the information about your events and am so happy that people are showing interest in changing this field. Unfortunately, I’ve been kind of taken out of it. I am still at the same school,
Tina reports: …today I got back into teaching finally. I told them a story of a giant and his garden. Then seventh period came in and begged me for a story with their Invisibles. It made my day. I dug out two pickles from the pike drawn separately on two different days by two different
We finally have set a new protocol for our instruction. It is based on a mix of One Word Images, the Invisibles and Story Listening. Beniko says that roughly half of the first two and half of the third as a suggested use of minutes. There is no reason why we can’t use some of the
Kids lie. They really don’t all have 8’s on those hand comprehension checks. They have 6’s and, were some of them to be completely honest, much less. It’s because we go too fast. But we accept that lie and go on. Silly us. SLOW takes that lying factor out and so guarantees inclusion by all
