Femmelette (m. – wuss – a male who is timid and weak) is a great name to call the manly man of the class. Just start calling him femmelette. Just make sure that you first ask him before class that you have a great name for the strongest boy in the class, but only one who […]
Brian Barabe raises two points below that could benefit from a variety of responses. I have not taught upper level TPRS to TPRS trained kids but somebody must be doing that and so can comment. Brian asks about the materials question as well. My answer to both questions is increasing output at the upper levels for
Grant Boulanger in Minnesota has this question: Does anyone know of anyone operating in a full on International Baccalaureate program? I’d like to network with some of those people to see how they are dealing with the requirements of the IB and wondering if you know of any. Thanks!
Gregory Hill is a K-8 Spanish teacher in St. Louis. He is currently building a Spanish language learning game that uses TPRS as a model for teaching beginner proficiency. All are invited to collaborate on this project. Below are links to two of his blog entries detailing the vision and objectives of his project. The narrative
Additional Information about the TPRS Graduate Course Columbia, SC June 14-17, 2010 In order to accommodate folks coming in from out of state, it is permissible for the group to change the August 2 meeting date to a sooner time, as long as the group agrees. Then, if some can not make it in person,
I get so tired from teaching that I have to sleep. But, somewhere after midnight, I wake up, because there is so much to process, so much to think about in this massive learning change that we are all in together now. Thoughts come into my mind and they won’t leave me alone and I have to
K sent this as a follow up to Noah’s note: Mr. Slavic, I saw your post – yes, that was very cool. The funny thing is that Noah sent that by himself , so I didn’t know that he sent that e-mail until he and all of the other kids that do lunch stories told
O.K. this is the coolest. K just sent me this from Noah. Noah is the guy who raced her in the hallway to start this thread off some months ago. Yes, that guy! How cool is that? Here he tells us what has happened since that race: Dear Mr. Slavic, Je m’appelle Noah. Je suis un
Ben, I know this topic has come up on your blog a few times in the past. Traditional language programs appear to “weed students out.” All but the best students end up dropping out of language programs. Only 4% of students acquire anything resembling fluency. Etc. This year, our department chair reminded us
Socrates: How can we know that we are learning? Students: What do you mean? Socrates: All we do is talk. There is no proof that we are learning. What do we do to prove that we are learning? Students: But we are learning! Socrates: That’s not good enough. Take out a sheet of parchment and prove
As the battle between trusting the process of free form CI and needing to follow a CI curriculum goes on, I got this from a colleague today…. Hi Ben, … buddy you are reading my mind. After a mostly sleepless night of tossing and turning trying to figure out how to return [a bunch of books], I
Skip added a riff to the Student Generated (Skeleton) Story idea set forth by Michele. She provided structures to the kids and had them quickly write stories, choosing one and going with it, but, unless I am mistaken, Skip offered an option of asking the kids for basing a story on some expressions that they
