A while back I learned from a CI trainer, Valentina Correa in Chicago, a technique that the kids will love: Whenever a child successfully responds to any of the Director’s Cues prompts (at the end of a story between QL6 And QL7 or during Reading Option 7 (Reader’s Theatre), we present them with an Oscar! […]
My position on the question word posters is that they should be only written in English. There are two reasons for this: (1) if you point to the word and say it in the target language, with its English translation next to it, the students tend to tune out the word in the new language.
Got this from Bradley: Hi Ben, I had a short conversation with my friend that had so much to do with the work we do as second language teachers that it blew me away: My friend recently agreed to teach me to play the piano and we were listening to a few songs in the car
If you are starting free writes now, try to follow each of these rules: 1. Write without stopping for 10 minutes. 2. When time is up, count the number of words you wrote and enter the total in your bar graph. 3. No English words in the story except for names. 4. Keep the sentences
If it is true that language instruction in the U.S. is broken – across the board in general – then let’s not pretend (just because teachers are trying to make the research around comprehensible input work) that it’s working. My guess is that most language teachers are still mostly teaching using a 50 year old
Hi Ben, Your posts give me strength and make me stand taller. Solving the problems in our schools can only be done when we believe in ourselves. On your forum, you talk about our real individual problems, not to be solved but because they need to be seen. It’s about being seen, about being heard.
In Joseph’s recent thread on special needs kids, Jenna Engelbreit raised some points in a comment that are worth reading and thinking about. They go to the core of what we do and why we do it: I’ve always felt that my sped kids had a leg up on the “average” kids of the group.
The floorboards of our classrooms are rotting. How long have we waited for the final cave-in of each one! All of us will be dropped, all akimbo, each at the right moment for us, into the waiting underground lake of fluency. There, we will meet each other again in collegiality and joy. It is happening
I’d like to share an email exchange with a Chinese teacher who is using the Invisibles: Q. My new class is pretty reserved right now, and although I encourage creativity, it seems it will take a little more time to really get them actively involved. Any ideas? A. This is likely 98% due to the
I’m truly amazed at how teachers who claim expertise at CI have tried to market it as a way to teach a set curriculum out of a textbook. Virtually every trainer out there does that. Of course, the teacher who doesn’t appreciate the depth and breadth of the real research, and who is saddled with
Invisibles tableaux and stories can help heal. We just enjoyed a cool, uplifting story from Craig in a post here a few days ago. This drawing, from one of Craig’s classes today, needs no discussion or explanation. In his email to me, Craig chose to not explain anything. He knew he didn’t need to. That’s
Years ago I saw a well-known TPRS trainer reject an answer from a kid. That’s not a problem, because we all know that we are in charge of the creation of the tableau or story line. However, this person rejected the suggestion from the student, who in fact was very proud of their suggestion because
