Ben, I am still alive and teaching. Just a handful of students came to school in the last 10 days. My heart went out to them in their time of loss. We are 200 km from the real mess but the effects are felt locally too. One of my students lost her sister-in-law in the quake […]
Got this from Martha for those who want news from our colleagues and friends in Japan: Hey Ben, The tone that you are hearing is Japan. It’s how we could become a group so fast in one day with Susie. It is what is going to power everyone to rebuild. I’m bone tired and I’m
The teacher who pays full attention to the absolute importance of sufficiently repeating the structures [rebar] and limiting the amount of new words [concrete rocks] to create tight, personalized CI with strong rebar but not too many rods will definitely experience success with comprehensible input. We hit the spirals, park, and know when to leave each
Kailey Dellinger at GW moved a very very difficult last period class on a Friday into a space of fun and happy participation. She did this by paying attention to all the kids, playing to their strengths, praising them, including them in the story creation, and going slowly enough. I shall not soon forget Dominique
The fewer the new words, the greater will our students be able to focus on the meaning of the story (the overall concrete) rather than being forced to worry about a bunch of new sounds, the individual words/rocks that make up the concrete. This is in keeping with what Krashen says to do – make
So when we do much more PQA on Monday to guarantee the success of the story by more reps and more possibilities at personalization, then it follows that we would do much less Point and Pause. I used to be a big Point and Pause fan but Diana Noonan cured me of that by pointing out
Clarice remember that you can always immediately bail out to a dictation. Yes – CI instruction comes with an inflatable life raft. Just stop what you are doing – PQA , story, reading class, whatever – and do a dictee on whatever it was you were working on. No more drowning feeling! And the kids
Those drowning moments remind me of Dylan Thomas. I believe the name of the poem is “Nullus”. The poet talks about moments in life that are as “ugly and black as death itself” but then goes on to say that those are the moments in which “the creative changes take place. So it can be
Just rambling on about those drowning moments. It’s like just letting the snow plow keep on plowing in spite of the big drifts it occasionally has to plow up against. It may slow down a little but it just keeps on plowing. The snow – the kids – know next to nothing of the extra
Chunk Dictation works best at the end of the year when the kids have had lots of comprehensible input. It obviously can’t work in the beginning months of study since output in the form of writing can only follow massive amounts of input (listening and reading) as per Krashen. How does Chunk Dictation work? On
Clarice this is a way too lengthy post but I publish it here anyway. Maybe someone will reverse daylight savings and you will have time to read it. Staying in the Moment is my favorite skill in PQA and stories. It describes what happens not in PQA but in a story, described below, but it is
Clarice the thoughts here about PQA are just my opinions. I hope they help even a little. They are those water wings I talked about. – it is a good decision to videotape; it’s painful but you will see things. – the more you PQA the more it shifts from your brain into your body
