Jennifer sent this to add to the word list discussion: Hi Ben, I’m still trying to figure out how to teach in this new bureaucracy I find myself in. But, I’m getting ideas that are starting to gel together. Thank you so much for all the wonderful, thought-filled posts and conversations. Without them, I’d […]
Make it clear to them that periods of silence, when the class is trying to come up with cute answers to a question, are welcome. Just sit there in that quiet space. It’s o.k. – sometimes everybody needs time to think. If the silence really drags out, do a retell right then. Then watch
Let’s admit that the influence of the people in our buildings who feel that grammar really needs to be taught to the kids in the first year is strong in our classrooms. Kids hear that the next year is all grammar and they get a look in their eyes like, “Are you preparing me for
I got this testimonial from Elissa a few days ago: “…I am LOVING LOVING LOVING my work with kids now that I have found TPRS. OMG this is frickin awesome. And I still feel like I’m at the tip of the iceberg! I’ve learned so much from you and the blog and DVDs. I just feel
Meagan told me an idea for next year. I think it has a lot of potential in immediate and front loaded personalization. You ask the kids to bring in images of their “mascotas” or family pets or any animal that they find important to them. Those critters then become potential drop in characters into stories.
Does anyone know the number of words in the average person’s spoken vocabulary? We in DPS had lunch today and the number 250 came up. Whatever the number is, I know that when we hear it in workshops it is always surprisingly low. I mean, we can and of course will use some words beyond those
Every now and again I have to take comments and make them into blogs so that they can be searched. So sorry if they’re on here twice. Jim’s stuff below about illustrating stories (I asked him to expand on an earlier comment) expands on the original thought of how, mechanically, to get the kids into
Meagan is my colleague at East High here in Denver. Last week she told me about how a kid came into her classroom and asked, “Is it true that four year olds can learn a langauge faster than us?” I loved Meagan’s response: “No, it’s not true. That myth exists because of the way languages
Something else I am trying to learn to expand upon and repeat more and PQA more in a story, besides a strong image, is a well built sentence, something out of the ordinary. We get such sentences, perhaps something in the subjunctive mood, and we should circle them more, because they don’t occur that often.
If, in the middle of CI in whatever form, I come across a bit of content that has power, I try to expand it and repeat it more than a normal sentences. What has power in CI? Images. Images naturally have more power than abstract ideas. A dog with a square head is more interesting, somehow, than
Michele found this blog from a year ago. One paragraph reveals that I was out of L2 probably 40% or more of the time, and only this year on Diana’s challenge to all of us in DPS was in 90% or more of the time. I finally made the switch after nine years. How many
This is a recent comment by Jim that I am making into a blog so that I can add it to a new category on the right of this page called “Beginning the Year”. There is a lot that could go in there, but those posts are just too hard to access now. One good
