This is a repost from a few years ago: Most of us are fundamentally frightened of this entire process called comprehensible input. It is just too foreign to our natures as teachers trained in the old way. We have been trained in ways that contradict the new ideas that will shape foreign language education in this […]
Wilhelm Reich talked about the idea of muscular armour – the expression of the personality in the way the body moves. He was controversial, of course, but his base idea that a lot of the human experience is connected to how people defend themselves in social settings (classrooms, for example) has in my view not
Another repost from 2014: This discussion about targeting certain expressions so that our students can do certain things (order a meal, etc.) in the TL raises questions about the nature of language. What is the nature of language and what is it’s purpose? Most would answer that the nature of language is to allow people
This post is from our PLC member Laura Avila in Maine: Next week we are getting another layer of police inspection into our teaching under the title of “Learning Walks”. They want to see us using Learning Targets in the form of “I can” statements. I have adapted the ACTFL “I can” statements to make
Q. Aren’t Can Do statements helpful in that you are supposed to be addressing a curriculum with measurable outcomes and evaluate what the kids can actually do with the language? A. Well, first of all, my students and parents are happy. Very happy. The Ultimate CI characters we make each day bring undeniable engagement and
This is a repost from an article I wrote here a few years ago, after watching John Becker and a few of his colleagues in St. Louis give a textbook example of how to go from an image into a story. (Perhaps textbook is not the right word; it’s more like a perfect example of
Chris Mercogliano, writing in “Paths of Learning” (Issue #17, p. 12, 2004), states that there is considerable evidence for “a classical link between education and play.” He points out that the ancient Greek words for education/culture (paideia), play (paidia), and children (paides) all have the same root. Chris asks us to consider the following remarkable
Those who were around on the “old blog” (before this new site was built) may be wondering why we can’t have a comments field where we can “talk” in the comments field like we used to. It’s just a glitch in the new form of the PLC and I hope to have it fixed in
For the last ten years of my career, in spring, thinking about the longevity of my career, I mentally shut down in March or April. It’s about that time when everybody stops caring, so why should I care? If I am around a bunch of other people who stop caring and are merely crawling to
Here are the exact words that Mr. Rogers said to the Senate Subcommittee on Communication before being awarded the government grant that launched “Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood” on May 1, 1969: “This is what I give: I give an expression of care every day to each child, to help him realize that he is unique. I
Greg sent this: Ben – Do you think anyone on the PLC applying for jobs might find a letter of initial interest helpful? I’m attaching one I wrote up for my current round of job searching. Feel free to share if you think anyone could use/adapt it to their own use in case that could simplify anyone’s
John Piazza continues: If the school has a mission statement, we look over that ahead of time, and then point out a specific example of how what we do aligns with that mission statement. Chances are, that mission statement will be a list of priorities that can be most efficiently realized with CI based strategies.
