Reading in CI Classes
Here I'm talking about how I do reading in my CI classes. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C26mp5NGTAk
Teenagers Are Trapped
Teenagers are trapped. They can't go back to the joys of their younger days, which were squeezed out of them somewhere between 4th and 7th grade. They can't go forward either. They're stuck. Oh, but what wouldn't they give for a
Language Activity Facilitators 7
The mind simply cannot serve two masters. The human unconscious mind is far superior, infinitely superior, in the artful process of decoding and understanding the sounds of a foreign language than is the conscious mind. It does so just by
Nathan Black
There is currently a great Big Picture presentation on diving that syncs great with a lot of year-beginning vocabulary. It’s called “Diving In” and can be found at: http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2010/09/diving_in.html In Circling with Balls, we are using the verb “jump” an awful lot, and
They Will Feed Us If We Let Them
They will feed us if we let them. What does that mean? To me, it means that if we give up worrying about controlling the direction of the discussion in the target language, and listen to them more, then the discussion
Revisiting The Realm
Those who remember the heyday of the Realm in TPRS can recall the great excitement around the idea of building an entire year of stories around certain medieval/gang/whatever characters, as the class chose. I think I have finally figured out
ACTFL Announces New Position Statements
Susanna Kesterson thank you for sending me this which I share here with all of us: ACTFL Announces New Position Statements Source: FLTEACH The ACTFL Board of Directors recently approved the following position statements: * Use of the Target Language in the Classroom (http://www.actfl.org/i4a/pages/index.cfm?pageid=5151
The Unconscious Mind Is Wonderfully Set Up
When you assess a kid on whether he knows certain discrete facts about the language, you kill his interest in it. The tragedy is that his mind already possesses wiring (that we often do not acknowledge) that is easily capable of acquiring the language,
Jim Tripp On Planning
This is from Jim on planning our CI lessons: I do a lot of my backward planning from songs. Of course, this isn't always the most efficient form of planning (yet), because songs contain an array of high frequency structures and
The Flailingly Prepared Teacher
Teachers who work hard don't necessarily reach their kids. That may be true in other lines of work, but this language game is not about working hard. If it were, parents who aggressively teach their small children language would have