Tina and I finished the book and it is gone to the publisher but we still have to finish the appendices. We’ve both been under a rock with all of it for a long time.
I was thinking about this new book. It’s not like anything I’ve ever written because it actually represents a curriculum that takes the concept of what a curriculum even is away from the textbook companies. In what direction?
This new book (really a practical application of the ideas in A Natural Approach to Stories), takes the traditional curriculum in the exact opposite direction of where textbooks have taken it for so long, which is into little pieces vs. not how it exists in its entirety, which is how is should be taught and represented (as a whole).
I just wanted to share that idea with the group, about how radical all this non-targeted new work is. After forty years of breaking apart the language and studying it as one would study the parts of a car engine that have been spread out on the floor, I now see something that lets us experience the curriculum simply by driving the car. (TPRS tries to do both and that never worked for me.)
Cameron Tayler has written an electronic supplement to the book that outlines ACTFL Performance Levels, CCSS, Can-Do Statements, Essential Questions, and Enduring Understandings for each activity in the book. It will be such a tremendous support for teachers who are required to turn in lesson plans.