The “look” of the characters and all of the details created by the artist’s vision end up becoming a sort of “brand” for that class. It is their “look.” The class brand is usually the result of a certain teenage way of drawing a character that is different from anything else, a mixture of many […]
I will never forget Brianna’s drawings, their well-chosen captions and all the sorts of clever ways she had to visually transmit information to the class via her medium. She had found her niche in my classroom. The class had found the creator of its “brand” within the building. I had found a gem whom I
In one class it became clear to me early on that one girl was truly gifted at drawing. But Brianna had to wait to see if she landed the position since other kids—who are at an age where the word “fairness” is next to sacred—had not all had a chance to draw and show off
How are the artists chosen? At the beginning of the year, we “audition” students for the role of artist. We want a gifted two-artist team that can work together quickly, quietly, and harmoniously, and turn out big, bold, clear drawings, and we use the beginning of the year to find that two-artist team by giving
When thinking about next year, it is safe to say that getting it right with the artists is perhaps the most important thing of all, if you are going to use the Invisibles and the student jobs. So this post starts a series of nine articles over the next week on just them: These one
When we give kids a reason to be happy in our classrooms, instead of placing them somewhere on a scale of how good they are at the language we are teaching them, we do it right. We place the needs of children to be an accepted part of a vibrant language sharing community over our
We have this great skill from the great Susan Gross. The eyes tell all in a language class. Students’ eyes give us data, information that we cannot get in any other way. The data that we get from students’ eyes may not be easily quantified, but that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t have value or
Alisa shares this: https://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/learning-the-language/2019/05/us_needs_more_foreign_language_education.html
Q. What about the use of technology in an Invisibles classroom? A. I know it is impressive to tell our bosses that we use the internet, distance learning, audio and visual enhancements, discussion boards, graphic organizers and voice-over Internet protocol, even videoconferencing in our classrooms, but I think that we are just fooling ourselves. Maybe
Craig West is using the new Invisibils protocol. He asks: Hi Ben – So next year I’m transferring to a new school. Looks like I’ll be teaching Spanish 1 and 2. I realize that there is no more than an arbitrarily chosen distinction between these two levels. My instinct is to merely follow the Invisibles template
Jen is this the article? I don’t think it is. I’ll keep looking. Here are some talking points you might consider using during a job interview: (1) I teach language using a methodology based on the research of Dr. Stephen Krashen on language acquisition, in particular his Comprehensible Input Theory, which states that people acquire
