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Ruth’s rubric, designed to keep kids at their ease and not as a “gotcha” kind of thing to put in the grade book, reminds me of a post here from a few years ago by Sabrina, which, if anyone doubts the power of comprehensible input instruction, they should definitely watch: https://benslavic.com/blog/the-proof-is-in-the-pudding/

Ruth sent this for Kristen but I thought I would post it here for anyone interested.  relaxedunrehearsedlow-pressureinterviewrubric Ruth explains: Hi Ben, I don’t know if the attached document would be useful to Kristen who is looking for speech and writing rubrics. It’s just for listening comrehension and speaking. I made it up a while ago

When I ask a story now, as opposed to a few years ago, I always think of a story as a pathway to the reading. It’s like a twist on TPRS to see Step 3 as the source of the greatest grains, the goal of the work. The reading is the big deal. When the

This is just a short addition to a thread we had going here a week ago. Assessment of speaking output should never occur in a comprehensible input based class. Why do that? Force is the wrong word when it comes to speech output – it kicks in the affective filter to an alarming degree. Evaluating speech

Last month Martin quit because he was in pain. I love the honesty. For some reason we’re not allowed to speak plainly like that, even here. Everything is supposed to be wonderful. We are happy and our kids are learning. Bullshit. The chaos is real, the leadership is in shambles, and language teaching is in

I have reason to believe that a person recently completed a PhD thesis based almost completely on material from these pages without credit. I am sorry but I won’t go into it any more than that, although it makes for some juicy discussion. Just wanted to say it here. I don’t know what to do other

Another group member from Chicagoland sends a report and she has a question as well: Hello Ben, I am a Spanish teacher in a Chicago progressive private school, a Reggio Emilia inspired school. I teach PK-2nd. This is my first year there and the fifth of my teaching life. I am also an English learner.

Jen Schongalla had sent me a photo last week from ACTFL and I posted it here of her and Grant and Robert. There was another guy in the picture but I didn’t know him so didn’t publish that photo but it turned out to be our own Nathaniel Hardt! I just haven’t met him in

We have a number of bios from group members. Some go back as far as ten years. So you can search a person’s name and maybe they have sent one in that you can read. But we’ve gotten away from them in recent years, and the Teachers of the Month awards, too. We’ve been so

I was making tea this morning and the term: …quando cœli movéndi sunt et terra…. just popped into my mind. This was from the Libera Me  from the Faure Requiem. But I hadn’t heard it for thirty years back in South Carolina when I sang it over an eleven year period in my church. So I

There was a brief thread (one comment) here a few weeks ago on a post by Robert on the topic of Comprehensible Output: https://benslavic.com/blog/comprehensible-output-hypothesis/ I put the part I consider most important in that article in orange. Robert’s comments on Swain cannot be ignored. His read on Swain is so accurate. It reveals so much.

Tina sent this to me. Read it. Maybe share it. It reveals the dark bubble that traditional teachers live in, to the great detriment of so many students: Seven Sources of the Big Grey Cloud in Downtown Portland: My administrator warned me that I was in for a fight for CI because our community is