I got this from a group member today. It seems like this is a tough part of the year: Hi Ben, A student came into my room yesterday upset about his grade. He disagreed with me about some jGR grades I’d given him in November. He got heated and walked out. Then, he came in […]
Craig has a question for the group: I’m realizing finally that I have a problem. It is this. I am far too accommodating to students. Especially to ones that don’t make any effort to accommodate my requests. Any of you do this?
Q. I know that in the Invisibles book you offer lots of ideas for sub days. Could you summarize some of them here? A. Here are some: (1) Give the students translation tests of previous readings from the star. Doing this serves two purposes: (a) you get you a significant grade, and (b) the sub
When a semester or final exam period arrives, I do a story that goes through the phases of the star, just as in a normal Invisibles class. An exam period of two or three hours is perfect for that. I. therefor assess in a way that accurately reflects my instruction, as the research indicates is
Here’s an article we should probably all read: https://medium.com/kaizen-habits/psychologists-explain-how-to-stop-overthinking-everything-e527962a393
Starting stories with a general idea about a problem and no targets is a great way of getting a robust and healthy plot line going. I once asked Joe Neilson (the unrecognized co-founder of TPRS) how he starts his stories. He told me that he thinks of a general problem that some character has, and
In a comment here a few days ago, Annemarie wrote: …I felt that I couldn’t have any moments of quiet, that I had to fill every single minute. I realize that I still feel that need…. These are the words of a warrior. Yet, the war is not physical, but mental. How can we convince
This is an update on the new Invisibles book. What I did was combine the two older books into one updated 410 page masterpiece, if I do say so myself (I’ve never said that about any of my other books) – it was an ease of reference thing. So, if you have purchased the books
Students are always exactly where they are, and if we express something in three seconds, and they need four, it is up to us to slow our speech down to their level and not expect the reverse to magically happen. When we do this, we exhibit and practice empathy. The TPRS Community rightly points to
In general, one could say that one of the primary reasons for many of the overall failures in the American educational system is that teachers routinely speak to their students, in all subjects, using rates of words per minute that exceed the capacity of high school students to understand them. There is data on this.
One day I was watching my classes being taught by a teacher new to the method. I was coaching her from the side of the room. Being new to it, she went extremely slowly. The kids responded beautifully, due to the excessive slowness. I felt the truth of SLOW at that moment. One student, whom
This is a repost from many years ago. The information in it cannot be repeated enough. Many of us fail to look in the right place for the solution to the problem of not reaching our students with our comprehensible input instruction in the way we want. We think we need new strategies, that the
