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Babysitting

With unruly students, we can work with one other colleague within our department, or our entire department can work together, to function as baby sitters for those kids who just bring the vibe in the room down. We haven’t talked about it in a long time and I am thrilled that Sean remembered it and suggested

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SMART Goals

Our newest member Mindee could use some feedback: Hi – I am an Elementary FLES (Spanish) teacher and am a recent convert to TPRS. Totally sold, through and through. Love this blog. I have to do a Smart Goal (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Time-bound) as required by the State of Va. and every year

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Los Angeles Workshop

Does anyone who was at the Lake Elsinore workshop last month remember which teacher mentioned Earl Stevick in relationship to the point about images (and thus the Invisibles) being more effective than mere words? She shared a line Stevick had said, all the way back in the sixties, that “imagination supports memory, and memory supports learning [what

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Approval Drives Stories

We want good group dynamics in our stories, but wanting is not enough, and a sense of neediness on the teacher’s part actually makes the group dynamics shakier. Good group dynamics happen when the teacher allows the students to just be who they are in the classroom. Then the teacher will see something. Creating an

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Negotiating Meaning

No comprehensible input class – especially one organized around unscripted, authentic communication – can succeed unless the students and the teacher are trained from the beginning of the year in the art of negotiating meaning. In the same way that we don’t allow students to pick the character, if we are using the Invisibles/emergent targets

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