We welcome Stacey Gonzalez, Barbara Routledge, and Ana Garcia to the group. I don’t know Stacey and Ana yet. Barbara is a Nationally Certified Board Spanish teacher in Oklahoma whom I met years ago at a TPRS national conference. I’m counting on her to provide a strong anchor to the work we do here because of her extensive experience in the trenches.
I’ve decided to do something new, not just as a way of saying thank you to my patrons but also to show to our group here that – in my view – the entire solution to the entire CI craziness/slop lies in my new books.
That’s not pride talking – it’s the ass end of my entire career and I firmly believe that in my case God saved the best for last in these newest books. He does stuff like that – always showing off what He can create.
Henceforth, all new patrons who sign up as members on my Patreon site here will receive some books as welcome gifts, if they don’t have them already.
These are the books:
1. The popular Big CI Book (2016). This is Teachers’ Discovery’s all-time best selling book. It’s become somewhat outdated, however, so unless you have a lot of extra time, put it on the back shelf of your CI library.
2. A Natural Approach to Stories (2017). A hidden gem and also the precursor to the Ultimate CI books. If you have time, give it a close reading so that you can really get an understanding of the base pedagogy used in the Ultimate CI approach. If you don’t have time, go directly to the book below.
3. The Ultimate CI Book 1 (2020). This is “the one”. This is the one that glitters. The Ultimate CI Book 1 makes the research come alive and “pop” in your classroom. You will no longer have to feel frustrated about not finding decent training on CI.
You’re in the right place. I believe that, based on people I’ve trained so far, you will read this book and it will work for you. I would like to ask our group members Kekeha, Tanya, Madi and Karin – who took the trainings last summer – to back up that statement in the comment fields below if you feel so inclined. Chris Roberts, also a member here, hasn’t even taken the training but like Barbara he has a background in TPRS so he was able to make it all work for him just by reading the book.
Read some of the testimonials of teachers who are now usingThe Ultimate CI Book 1 in their classrooms:
https://benslavic.com/testimonials/
So what is the plan? I’m not exactly sure what this Patreon-based training will look like, and we can proceed as a group. If you open the link below, you will see what I have in mind for general people (not patrons here) who want to try to learn the Ultimate CI method on their own:
https://benslavic.com/product/self-study-course/
We could do something similar, with the exception that we would be processing our ideas through this space. It will be a kind of ongoing study group that meets here. As you develop your own relationship with the Ultimate CI training, and you will, and you want to post a question, either put it in any comment field or just send it to benslavic@yahoo.com and I will post it as an article. We can arrange a Zoom meeting now and then as we feel the need.
I’ll send out Book 2 later once we have finished Book 1. At that point any doubts you have about this being a majorly badass way to teach using CI will be dispelled and you will see the greatness of the student cards, the one word images and the individually created images that can take a class higher than they’ve ever been before, with you in charge.
Also, if you bring lots of questions to the discussion about Book 1, I can use them in the in-progress Ultimate CI Book 3, Questions and Answers about the Ultimate CI Method, which will have an orange cover to go with the pink and blue covers of Books 1 and 2. Thanks to Charles Verhey for his great design work on these books, which are attached below.
Dive in and swim around!
