Starting off the School Year Right

THE TAKEN SPEECH FOR TEACHERS

By |2017-10-11T13:22:12-06:00August 10th, 2017|

Here is a speech I long to give to my students at the beginning of the school year. Maybe this will be the year. (Most effective when read with Liam Neeson's voice.) "I don't know who you are. I don't know what you want. If you are just looking [...]

CLASSROOM OBSERVATION BY A FRENCH TEACHER

By |2017-10-11T13:22:15-06:00September 16th, 2015|

Here are the reflections on a recent classroom observation by Bridget Webster, a middle school French teacher. Her heartfelt and keen observations will help to encourage teachers that are considering taking the plunge into Teaching with Comprehensible Input (TCI). Bridget has been teaching for three years and is relatively new to [...]

CONTEE SEELY’S CLASSROOM OBSERVATIONS

By |2018-04-11T11:49:02-06:00September 8th, 2015|

I have been grateful to have publisher and author Contee Seely observe my classes two times so far this year. Being watched by someone that literally wrote the book on TPRS (Fluency through TPR Storytelling, with Blaine Ray) could have been an intimidating experience, but Contee is so gracious [...]

OBSERVATIONS & EMERGING LANGUAGE IN QUIZ #2

By |2017-10-11T13:22:15-06:00September 7th, 2015|

Here is an analysis of the quiz in the previous post. Typical level I language emerges in personal interviews and is produced on the quizzes. Students are using the high frequency words they are hearing in class. Here is what I can see at a glance when I look [...]

STARTING THE SCHOOL YEAR: WEEK 2 STUDENT INTERVIEWS

By |2017-10-11T13:22:15-06:00August 26th, 2015|

The gains from personal interviews continue to amaze me. In the last six days we have been doing only two activities: establishing procedures and conducting personal interviews. Drilling procedures is crucial for classroom management and the time invested now pays off hugely in the weeks ahead, but the gains [...]

STARTING THE SCHOOL YEAR: THE CLASSROOM LIBRARY

By |2017-10-11T13:22:15-06:00August 19th, 2015|

The classroom library is an integral part of any world language classroom. Telling stories is so dramatic and compelling that reading can be treated as the ugly cousin of language teaching, but it shouldn't. When done right, reading can invigorate your program and save your sanity. And doing reading [...]

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