One of our group members here on the PLC has had a very bad year. No one in her school wants to see anything good in CI as a way to teach a language. Instead of keeping a little room in their hearts for CI, they have attacked our colleague. They have done this repeatedly, […]
Every once in a while I catch up with one of the great Spanish teachers in this world – Laura Avila. She teaches in Maine, not far from Anne Matava. Old timers here know that she has had her finger on the pulse of best practices in our field for years and years. Here is
Q. We have to submit a syllabus for each class. What do you suggest as a possible syllabus using your approach? A. One answer and perhaps the best one is to hand in the same syllabus as your CI colleagues and teach it in half the time each class, which is easy to do and has
There is conflict in our buildings about what language pedagogy even is. The conflict is there between language department members, but it is always either (a) swept under the rug, or (b) the traditional textbook teachers usually backbite the CI person who wants to do real CI until the person leaves. This ugliness has never
Below is a series of practical steps that allow you to move from tableaux into stories. Remember that tableaux are merely stepping stones to stories. Tableaux exist for that reason. Build a tableau as usual using all the instructions and steps found in Book 1. While building any tableau, use your intuition by trying to
Here are some recent reviews of the Ultimate CI training course starting next weekend: Rated 5 out of 5 Marko MAY 18, 2021 “Ben Slavic’s STAR Is The Modern Foreign Language Teacher’s Dream Come True And It Is Nothing Less Than A Paradigm Shift In Our Field. His methodology has taken SLA research and distilled it down into
Embrace the good news that you don’t have to be a TPRS desperado anymore. You no longer have to skate around on the thin ice of the internet to build your proficiency program, looking for things that “work”. Instead,, you should be offered something that is not in the form of little pieces here and
Q. We have to submit a syllabus for each class, with supplies needed, district tardy and behavior policies, grading policy and classroom behavioral policy, what do you suggest as a possible syllabus using your approach? A. One answer and perhaps the best one is to hand in the same syllabus as your CI colleagues and
Julia reports on a student reaction to Claymation: “One of the students working with Invisibles and claymation is giddy because she gets to be crafty for the first time in a really long time. She’s applying for art school and has to do serious artwork for her portfolio. She asked to be kidnapped today so
Julia’s students have extended the idea of making clay figures out of their individually created characters to do claymation. Below is their first project. When thinking about the end-of-year celebration, I can just imagine the joy in a class as the kids, the parents, staff, admins, and any other invited dignitaries including the news media
Ben, I can hardly believe how well the Ultimate CI program works. Here are a few highlights I want to share with the group: I walked into class yesterday morning without doing any prep for this. Before CI I spent significant time and effort on lessons that worked ok but I would have to be
More from Julia: I am going to buy clay for the kids today. One of my favorite things about this CI experience has been seeing kids blossom…those I never knew before. Ironically, my formerly least favorite students are charming now that they have the chance to be. I am really thinking a lot about how
