That first post about the grove of trees is an attempt to get deeper into the nature of communication, which is the overarching standard in our profession, and yet one that I am sure is not agreed upon, not in the least, by members of our profession. Here is a link to the first Language of […]
This report from the field is in the form of a picture. John Piazza reports from Berkeley High School (CA): Hi Ben, I wanted to share this pic with you, because I think that you will understand when you see it. This was taken a week ago by a former student who asked to interview me
Along with reading (less interesting to the kids but vital), Star of the Week (much more interesting to the kids) may hold the key to the upper level CI class activity conundrum. It may hold the answer to putting the upper level rubik cube curriculum right.
We need to ASK THEM what they want to talk about before we start talking. This is as per Star of the Week. Why not ask THEM what questions they want to be asked? It’s not that hard to do and the results are fantastic. Just given them time to tell us what they want
So we were talking about how lesson plans lead to less interesting classes in TPRS. Canned TPRS lesson plans are based on insecurity about what is going to happen in the class. In that way, it kind of resembles life when it is too planned out – a bit stifling and devoid of any real interest.
This is going up on the Primers hard link and also staying here as a sticky post for awhile. Since it is in the Primers, we can all just go and copy it when we need it. This is a must-have document. I will share it with my students next week by projecting it up
I usually write volumes here and apologize for that. But today I am getting one of those crystal clear insights about this work. So here it is: Let’s just enjoy this work. Before stories we couldn’t make it fun. It was too boring. OK that was then and now is now. Now we have stories.
It’s about time that Robert had his own blog site and so this is to announce its launch this week. I will be a regular reader, as many of us will be, since we know very well what the Chevalier de l’Ouest has brought and continues to bring to our careers in the way of leadership and
Two of the biggest things that make a story interesting to the kids in a TPRS class are the elements of suspense and surprise. But if the one directing the story, asking the questions, making those split second decisions about where to take things during the creation of the story already knows what is coming,
This post from 2008 is from my book PQA in a Wink! It offers a way to deal with troubled kids that is based in kindness: Mildred is the captain of the girl’s basketball team. She is rough. She had to be rough because she was thrown around physically by her abusive parents in a
Who has oppressed us, who are asleep at the testing barrier? Oh, nobody in particular, except the textbook companies and a legion of freak memorizers-turned-language-teachers who don’t want us to wake up and who now are about to get the wake up call of a lifetime if only we can wake up at the assessment
One might ask right about now, “Who has time to read the recent barrage of articles and comments on authentic assessement? I’m too busy!” I would ask, “Who can risk not reading them?” Why? Because we are sleeping and need to wake up! We just spent, some of us, almost twenty years studying this Krashen and
