A repost for Keri: A person I know recently brought up some concerns about the 1950’s style of textbook based/thematic unit memorization of lists teaching going on in a certain school. This person made all the arguments in favor of CI and Krashen, all arguments that I have made myself in similar situations. After a […]
This one is from Keri: Hi Ben, I have a question that maybe the PLC could help me with. Last year was my first “TPRS” year and, of course, those students are with other teachers. (I am the only TPRS / CI teacher in my department.) A teacher came to me concerned because she has
Why would a person look at a book or interact with a computer to learn a language? It strikes me as a very good thing that CI teachers have as their goal each day to teach a verb or group or words, and then see how many other words those verbs can attract to them,
When we create discussion in stories, we can exaggerate one of the qualities of each actor. This can be done using the Director’s Cues. When an actor is really exaggerating one single human quality, it is easier to understand and it tends to be funnier. This is what Molière did. Many of his comedies examine
What if we just did a Free Write Portfolio as our summative assessment each semester? We could use the OWATS model. Then we wouldn’t have to formally test writing each semester with some stupid test, and if he had the kahunas that DPS has, we would just drop testing of speech output, and then we
Q. Is it more important to focus on and use strategies that bring the greatest gains or strategies that focus on keeping the kids’ interest high? A. When the kids’ interest is the highest, the gains are the highest. Its’ not so much if the strategy looks like it is capable of bringing great gains
From John Piazza: On Latin Best Practices today, John Bracey shared some real insight about the traditional way of teaching grammar. It certainly resonates with my experience, as both teacher and learner of Latin: “I think that it is hard for traditional teachers to recognize that their students, even their superstars, are not actually retaining
Kids play in sandboxes. To them, when they are in a sandbox, even if they are doing “work” (building a sand castle, making something out of sticks), to them it’s still play. What about us? Do we as CI teachers play in sandboxes? Most certainly yes we do. The sand we use is the language.
James Hosler shares an important moment from yesterday in his Latin classes: I just kicked a kid out of my last class of the day. I hate doing that, but he just wouldn’t shut up. Real cute… you know the type, right? I had already kicked him out once a few days ago, too. So
Eric is in the process of trying out a new idea to teach high frequency verbs. I thought that if some others of us in the group tried it as well we could give him some feedback. I love the way the verbs are grouped here. Eric explains: “Here is my first, yet-to-be-trialed plan: I’ve put
