Reading

Some of us have had a lot of success this spring working with student generated texts, thanks to Michele. Having kids generate written texts is but a natural extension of having kids make verbal suggestions during stories. If verbal suggestions in stories work to personalize our instruction, then if follows that their written material can do

Another thing that has been working is to take a class that is reticent to speak, like my level fours (who still think that learning French means constructing it in written form and correcting spelling), and asking them to write a little story for the first ten minutes of each class, then collect it, make

Martin Anders teaches French in Germany using TPRS. Here is a detailed look at how embedded readings worked in his classroom recently: Hallo Ben, I just would like to share my experience with embedded readings with my 8th graders. (Note that we start French already in 1st grade. But it is their first year with TPR and

Bryce ends his four part series on reading with this: Reading more than once is OK.  Hearing it more than once is OK. Once is not enough.  Reading a text over and over is good.  We have to figure out how to get kids to do that.   I think that there are other reasons

Parallel Stories — Further Explanation When students are given a situation and are allowed to be creative and smart I hear such good lines from them that I can hardly believe that I have not heard them before.  Surely a brilliant author would have thought of that by now! And when it works, there is

Bryce continues: There are many ways of “reading” a novel besides, just, well, reading it.  These are some of the techniques I use to add interest and engage the students. Parallel Stories This is Blaine Ray’s method of teaching a novel.  You simply tell a story about a student in the class that is similar

Here is some stuff about reading from Bryce Hedstrom. This the first of four parts:   A few years ago, when I was more blissfully over-confident in my skills, I would push through all four of Blaine Ray’s level I novels in Spanish I.  If it worked, I could get those poor 8th and 9th graders to

Ben, It seems as if we always need ammunition to defend TPRS to the next group of skeptical parents, colleagues and administrators.  The book Story Proof: The Science behind the Startling Power of Stories, by Kendall Haven is filled with information, ideas and ample ammunition for us storytellers. We know by experience and by our