NOTE: In my last post, I shared material from a presentation I gave at the National TPRS® conference in July. This post is based on another presentation that I gave fifteen minutes later. This post addresses a trifecta of questions teachers often ask: 1. How do I get my students to talk more? 2. How can I […]
Tag Archives: lesson plans
Justin’s Lesson Plans from NTPRS 2015, Buy-In Guaranteed
NOTE: This post is a feature-fest based on a jam-packed conference presentation. Please feel free to skip around! To me, the perfect lesson plan is one that guarantees buy-in by students, requires little to no preparation, is enjoyable for students and teacher, is flexible and repeatable with the same group of students and across levels, […]
Indwelling Language and Stephen Krashen at NTPRS 2015
The first day at NTPRS 2015 (this year’s national conference for the system called Teaching Proficiency through Reading and Storytelling) has been exhilarating: I’ve enjoyed conversations with teachers and presenters that I had known only through the internet or by fame and had been eager to meet in person, and have been pleasantly surprised to hear that I have been […]
Riddle Me This!
What’s bright orange, red, and yellow, full of marshmallows on sticks, and freezing to the touch? If you’ve read much of this blog, you know I like to use and share simple activities or classroom features that (a) are a source of high-interest, level-appropriate content in the target language and (b) easily engender conversation in the target […]
Making the Most of Mystery
Last year, with input from students, I wrote a mystery one of whose central features is a small, sealed box that the protagonist finds and seeks to open. The desire to know what’s in the box plays a key role in propelling the reader through the story. Last night, I came across a brilliantly simple suggestion from Adam Beck (@BeckMonkeys) for making […]
To Wow and To Woo: Training self-directed language-getters
What if all our students -knew what they needed to get in order to advance in proficiency, -knew how to get it, -got it, and -experienced joy in the process? Much of my work in the classroom for the last several years, and in teacher workshops in the last three or four, has been devoted to […]
How To Use Your Windows
I’m taking a sick day from skiing in Sun Valley. The upside is that I can finally write about windows, as promised in the last post, which dreamt of the ideal classroom. Through the window I can see one of my Happy Places–a snowy peak with a ski lift–from another: a quiet lodge with an oversize […]
The Perfect Classroom
What do you love about your classroom? What do you hate about it? If you don’t have your own, what do you love or hate about the ones you travel to? I have to be honest: the only thing I’ve really loved about any classroom I’ve ever taught in is the students in it. Given that […]
9 Ways To Happify Your Class
Is your class a Happy Place? Your students don’t have to be happy, and they certainly won’t always be, but they’ll probably acquire language better when they are. Most of the reasons why a student would be unhappy are out of your control, but many aren’t. Here are some ways to happify your class in service of language acquisition. […]
Preparing a Lesson vs Preparing Yourself (#Teach2Teach Question 1)
This is a response to #Teach2Teach Question 1 from Garrett, about balancing “teaching” and “planning” (full question below). Special thanks to Amy Lenord and Karen Tharrington for starting the #Teach2Teach movement and to those who have responded to their call! Here is Garrett’s question: “How do all these teachers balance the workload between teaching and planning? Now that I am […]