There are days when we wish we could go into our classrooms and be mindless and not worry about anything at all, following a set of automatic steps that still hold our students’ attention for the entire class period. Below is a 90 minute lesson plan that does that for me. I use it […]
We can get lots of reps and lots of additional input with the personalized readings we do the day after our story. But not only can we do this in the class that the story was created, but we can (and should) also share these stories with other classes. Not only are kids interested in
Having just watched the movie Outrage, I am so moved by how some gay activists must just feel so tired from fighting the discrimination and ignorance perpetrated by those who would oppose or attack them for whatever political or personal reason. I wouldn’t dare compare the intellectual snobbery and ignorance from Krashen’s colleagues’ on his work to that
Dr. Beniko Mason is a professor at Shitennoji University in Osaka, Japan. She has known and worked with Dr. Krashen for over fifteen years and fully embraces his Comprehensible Input Hypothesis. I was honored that she visited my classroom last week. Here is a short email she sent back to me, which is then followed
The Big Picture has been a wonderful resource for me this year. Most of what shows up is related to current news footage, and as such is mostly useful for my 3 / 4 combined class who enjoy talking about the real world, but even then, I only pick and choose (Useful: Oil Slick in
Second email: A key component in this vicious cycle is testing. My students are expected to pass an accuracy based, grammar/vocabulary recognition test to enter into Spanish 2 (I have a TPRS colleague in a similar situation in another school district—so I know this isn’t a unique occurrence). I can understand why the schools do
Michele sent this as a kind of follow up to her regular Thursday blog. Jody’s regular Saturday blog will follow here shortly. The original article from Michele was much longer. For those who want to pursue this further, I will put the longer version of Michele’s blog below this shorter version, under the dotted line. It is
Doug Stone has written admirably on the assessment and curriculum development pieces as they relate to input based methods. We really need to keep in the forefront of this blog the discussion about data, especially. Wwe really need to be careful. Data can carry a lot of misinformation. It is not easy to understand and even
Sometimes I blend structures from Anne’s stories. Like I took se sent comme/feels like from Wendy Goes To A Psychiatrist and took seul/lonely from Lene and pulled mignon/cute from the text of Lene (Anne had not targeted it but I wanted my kids to know it) so my new structures were feels lonely and cute and, combining the two
John Keats, in his Letter to John Taylor, 27th Febrary 1818, stated: …if Poetry comes not as naturally as the Leaves to a tree it had better not come at all…. This line expresses how I feel about language learning. What we do in instructing our students should not be a primarily conscious thing, no
Bryce requests that we read and discuss the text below: Here is an attendance and make-up work policy I am preparing now to deal with absences next school year. Progress in CI-based classes depends upon regular student attendance. Only students that show up can get the input. I have to begin writing at this time
I just gave my second final exam to a mixed group (levels 2-5). I stole the idea from a traditional teacher in our building. The concept was that the kids were returning ten years after having graduated to the Russian class reunion. They had to have 15 pictures that they would share with classmates. They
