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I made a funny: We are like dogs trying to help all of the language teachers who still have their feet planted firmly in the grammar translation methods of the past century. We are C ing I dogs.

Q. A teacher wanted to use the Invisibles Extend phase strategy of interviewing students and so she came up with some personal interview questions for her level 1 and 2 classes. From there, she wrote a list of grammar items that they would naturally need to use (possessive adjectives, etc.) to answer that list of

I got this today – thought I’d share it with the group. My responses in italics: Q. Today in my Spanish 2 class, I had a student name his ICI “Mike Hawk”.  I didn’t get the nasty joke until I read it in front of the class and everyone snickered and laughed.  I realized what

At 16:38 in the video President Obama says, “We want children…learning about their language and learning about their culture.” This is wrong. We want them learning the language, not about it. We realize that the culture cannot be transmitted to new generations without some kind of vehicle – language. At 20:00 the gentleman explains about

Story Listening can save the Lakota language. Study this: http://www.welovedeutsch.com/story-listening

There is a tendency to think that the solution to save Native American languages is somehow different than just doing CI. But the young children of the Lakota and other indigenous peoples don’t need some kind of special instructional experience that is different than students of modern languages receive.  The solution is not different because

When working from an invisible character with both physical and psychological characteristics that have originated in the group – either as a one word image or individually created image, depth and interest are generated in that character. Students become authentically involved with what is going on in class because the characters reflect genuine concerns that

As a general rule, the most effective stories contain far fewer new ideas and far fewer sentences than most teachers have employed in storytelling in the past. It is highly recommended that teachers limit the amount of new information allowed into the story throughout the questioning levels. It will help everything. Moreover, kids want stories

Alisa sent this: https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2019/09/26/students-high-achieving-schools-are-now-named-an-at-risk-group/

This is a lengthy post, but worth the read in my opinion: The goal is to use how we assess to build a positive response in class from our students, to build them up for trying and not necessarily for achieving. What things can we do?  We can ask for little rounds of applause for