Gregory Hill is a K-8 Spanish teacher in St. Louis. He is currently building a Spanish language learning game that uses TPRS as a model for teaching beginner proficiency. All are invited to collaborate on this project. Below are links to two of his blog entries detailing the vision and objectives of his project. The narrative […]
Additional Information about the TPRS Graduate Course Columbia, SC June 14-17, 2010 In order to accommodate folks coming in from out of state, it is permissible for the group to change the August 2 meeting date to a sooner time, as long as the group agrees. Then, if some can not make it in person,
I get so tired from teaching that I have to sleep. But, somewhere after midnight, I wake up, because there is so much to process, so much to think about in this massive learning change that we are all in together now. Thoughts come into my mind and they won’t leave me alone and I have to
K sent this as a follow up to Noah’s note: Mr. Slavic, I saw your post – yes, that was very cool. The funny thing is that Noah sent that by himself , so I didn’t know that he sent that e-mail until he and all of the other kids that do lunch stories told
O.K. this is the coolest. K just sent me this from Noah. Noah is the guy who raced her in the hallway to start this thread off some months ago. Yes, that guy! How cool is that? Here he tells us what has happened since that race: Dear Mr. Slavic, Je m’appelle Noah. Je suis un
Ben, I know this topic has come up on your blog a few times in the past. Traditional language programs appear to “weed students out.” All but the best students end up dropping out of language programs. Only 4% of students acquire anything resembling fluency. Etc. This year, our department chair reminded us
Socrates: How can we know that we are learning? Students: What do you mean? Socrates: All we do is talk. There is no proof that we are learning. What do we do to prove that we are learning? Students: But we are learning! Socrates: That’s not good enough. Take out a sheet of parchment and prove
As the battle between trusting the process of free form CI and needing to follow a CI curriculum goes on, I got this from a colleague today…. Hi Ben, … buddy you are reading my mind. After a mostly sleepless night of tossing and turning trying to figure out how to return [a bunch of books], I
Bryce sent this today: ¡ME DUELE! This is a story I told to a mixed class I teach on Tuesday evenings. The class consists of Spanish learners ranging in age from 15 to 70 and Spanish teachers that want to see and experience TPRS in a real classroom setting over an extended period of
Ben: Your recent comments about the hit and miss nature of TPRS, depending on moods and relationships, was really encouraging. I have had some fun conversations with students the last month… the Olympics, the Superbowl, and the phrase “what are you going to do this weekend?” were really fun with various classes. I found a
What Should We Say In Job Interviews? I got this excellent question from a young Denver area teacher – please answer below in the comment section if you have any ideas that might help. Hi Ben! A year or so ago, I was doing my student teaching and had heard a lot about TPRS and
Give them a feeling of success What does this mean? We want the students to feel like they are good at Spanish. That feeling of confidence will carry them. I am not talking about some false sense of self esteem. I am talking about developing something within the kids that says “I can do this.”
