For Sean and others doing it, here is the updated Star Sequence curriculum. Note that in Phases 1 and 2 everything is auditory which sets up a nice visual (reading) experience for our students in Phases 3, 4 and 5. Also notice, Sean, that the number of reading options have been reduced to only nine […]
In this communication between Robert Harrell and a parent, we almost have a template from Robert that we could modify to use to answer parent inquiries like the one he recently received below: Good afternoon Mr. Harrell, My wife and I have been after our son for the last few days and his grades and participation at
From our unmatched superstar Alisa, good stuff on online reading: “Regarding round-robin (one at a time) style reading – here’s a suggestion – dunno what the button names in Hangouts are but it works over Zoom. You screenshare the reading, then you ask for volunteers to raise their ‘little blue hand’ to read. The teacher
More from Robert Harrell: If you follow the history of the teaching of languages, a number of practices become logical – even if misguided. Up until the early modern period, Latin and Greek were taught as means of communication. When those languages were superseded by French (and later English) as the medium of international communication,
A few thoughts on the subject of textbooks from Robert Harrell: Most evaluators and administrators place a great deal of emphasis on student-centered instruction. Many TCI/TPRS teachers take a hit on this because administrators believe that “student-centered” instruction means that students are doing all of the talking. This is an area for administrator education. TCI/TPRS
Another useful article by Robert Harrell: The quiz below can be given to teachers who teach using the old grammar model of teaching languages. So if you get into one of those uncomfortable discussions with a teacher in your building who still touts grammar as the (“academic”) way to teach a language (there is no
How I feel about language teaching is very simple, and has been expressed perfectly by the pianist Alice Sara Ott, when speaking about music: “Music is art, and art lives from creativity, and there cannot be any creativity if there is no motivation. And the motivation can only come from the child. So, I don’t
A repost, and a good one, from Robert Harrell: Hi Ben, Relative to the discussion about assessment, I thought I would share the following e-mail exchange I had with a student today. Since the student asked, I decided to be straightforward and blunt. Names have been redacted to protect identities. Earlier in my career and
About five years ago, in order to make those little Pobre Ana types of readers more “interesting” I suppose, or “useful”, people started to add pre-formed questions at the end of each chapter, to make it easier on the teacher. I think this happened first around 2015 when Teacher’s Discovery first published Anne Matava’s script
I’m amazed that many of us are too weak to challenge kids when they decide to show up for class without their video on. This is not acceptable. We teach LANGUAGES. They are participatory in nature; back–and-forth, reciprocal, human interaction and eye contact is required. How on earth could you teach a language class if
Setting Realistic Goals for the Post-COVID Online Classroom. Instead of stressing out about how much grammar you can teach your language students, learn to relax and just communicate with them in ways that tap into the great potential of simple human verbal interaction, also known as comprehensible input. Instead of paying primary attention to the
I’m not exactly thrilled with the quality of readers out there. I think it’s not good to ask kids to read above their level. Most of us hand them books that are above their heads. In general, the TPRS/CI communitey routinely asks kids to silently read books that are above their level, and it frustrates
