Warning: this is one long ass blog that I wrote, really to myself, in an attempt to pull out of a downward mid-winter spiral. I’m trying to get a focused high CI week going, because English has worked its way into my classroom more than I want it too lately. Anyone with ideas to add to this weekly plan, without getting too complicated, please add them in:
The question du jour for me right now is how to keep the CI interesting over the course of the year, right through the winter.
In August, the circling with balls and one word images did great, but now they are below the kids’ language level, so no longer serve. I am seeing those two activites as pretty much first semester activities.
Word chunking, the perfect Friday activity and certainly a year round crowd pleaser, I always forget to do. The year is getting sloppier and sloppier as I look for riffs on the standard CI plan of PQA, stories, and reading. I need help. It’s a February tailspin!
It’s like I’ve wandered away from the the safety of CI in the form of PQA, stories, and readings based on those stories and I’m looking around for interesting new forms of CI, but I can’t find any.
One time I went wandering for a few years away from basic TPRS, out into the forest, which I called the Realm, but I found out that CI was a very iffy thing there - it was way too nebulous. I spent two years out there before coming back to the safety of the three steps.
I don’t have Bryce’s ability to vary my instruction during the week with all that other stuff he mentioned in his comment of a few days ago. I don’t like to use YouTube in class because I don’t like the way class feels when I have any machine in my classroom. And the minute I put the kids into groups they think it is recess.
I don’t let kids do projects because that involves work and I have to fail kids who choose not to do them. I don’t do Kindergarten Day because the floor in the classroom I use resembles a basketball court after a pep rally, with a rug that was pulled out of a dumpster somewhere in downtown Denver. I don’t do guest presentations because I am too lazy to set them up. I don’t do games because they are nowhere near the level of CI that I require in my classroom.
Below is a lot of rambling about what I plan do this week to try to get back on track. First I am going to email Matava for a few of her latest and best stories. That’s the most important thing, because I find that failed stories are pretty much due to shitty scripts that don’t grab the kids.
Then, kick ass story script in hand, I am going to start the story on Monday and see what kind of energy it has. If it is good I will use it in all four level one sections. I will go slowly, stay in L2, listen to the kids, stay in L2, teach to their eyes, stay in L2, do frequent hand comprehension checks, stay in L2, always assume that they are getting less than I think, stay in L2, smile through my fear, stay in L2, circle more, and stay in L2.
I am also going to do all I can to remember to stay in L2. I will ignore the voice in my head telling me to say something cool in English. I will not speak English during a story. I suddenly become a much more boring teacher when I speak English.
Then, after school Monday, I will write up a generic story for all four of my (French I) classes. I will use the notes taken by my “story notes kid” in each class. I will embellish and embed as per Laurie, and see about revisiting deeper later in the week. How will all this look?
On M,T,F we have single classes. But on W. Th, the classes are 90 minute blocks. So on those days I will present a nice long embedded reading to the kids as per below. Tuesday will be a simple reading of Monday’s story, with Read and Discuss happening, and then on the block day a much more complex story using the Tuesday reading as a developed embedded text.
At the end of Monday’s class, I will give a quick quiz that my “quick quiz kid” wrote during the story (scantron graded, yes or no answers). At the end of Tuesday’s class, I will give a second scantron quiz - this one on reading - that I will have written before class.
I will NOT start Monday’s class with ten minutes of SSR, but with only five minutes of SSR, because the story will need those five extra minutes. Tardy kids on Monday will get docked two points per minute late in that scenario.
On the block day, with all that extra time, I will start with SSR or a ten minute free write (a point a minute), to maintain a consistent attack on tardiness. Then, I will write a sentence on the board in English and ask the kids to go through five steps to come up with the French (first get rid of the fake verb, then get the infinitive, then get the subject pronoun, then conjugate the verb with the pronoun, then put it in the correct form).
I know that’s not TPRS but the kids like it. It’s part of my Throw Bones To Dogs program and only takes five minutes. The little left brain kids who crave grammar wallow in it. (You know, TPRS is so whole brain/right brain that the kids like to pop over into the left hemisphere from time to time. It’s not the worst thing. Dictée also does that. Big whoop. The truth is that I love French grammar and would teach it all day long if more than 4% of the kids could get it and if it did them any good, which it doesn’t).
In fact, I am thinking of now doing like 10% English (can’t be avoided so might as well allocate that much time to it), and now, increasingly, 5% or 10% grammar and sentence structure work as part of my Throw Bones To Dogs program. If it shuts up one parent or teacher or misinformed administrator then it’s worth it. (That puts me down to 80% - 85% CI. BFD. Just don’t tell Diana Noonan.)
After the grammar sentence on block day, we are, at that point, at least 15 minutes into a 90 minute period. Next, I will take out Fama Va and read a chapter. They put their finger on the word we are reading and we read chorally aloud together with infrequent use of Read and Discuss. (As great as R and D is, I have to limit the D part or we will never get through enough books. We are only starting Fama as it is. I want to do at least three of Blaine’s novels this year. We can never read enough, so I shouldn’t get all freaked out about finding new kinds of clever CI - like I said to start this blog - when I know that the best thing - better than stories - is for my kids to read.)
On that topic, as we were finishing Pauvre Anne last week, I made them read the last chapter chorally without me and some classes did it beautifully, like they would read English. It was a nice moment because they were so confident in their reading. Let’s not underestimate the power of choral reading with their fingers on the word. It builds confidence and it builds their language abilites in strong ways.
So we’ll probably do R and D on Fama Va for twenty minutes. Now we are 40 minutes into class. Time to stand up and keep a beach ball in the air until all have gotten at least one touch, or five minutes go by, whichever comes first. (Brain breaks are too easily forgotten. How would you like to be forced to sit in a restraining device all day? We must get them up for brain breaks in all our classes. I am going to try to remember to ask God to help me remember to do brain breaks half way through all my classes, every day. It’s so much fun and they sit down refreshed. I also just realized it is the perfect time to let the bathroom wandering rude ass kids go then, and not during my CI, which is just so interrupting. Hey, bathroom trips only during brain breaks - that’s a good idea!)
Now, half way through the block, what? Perhaps this is the time to bring in the embedded reading that I prepared from the core Tuesday text. It is a high interest item. But since I just did Fama Va reading it may be too much reading. What would Bryce say? We are 55, say 60, minutes into class. What next?
Honestly, instead of that embedded reading, which I will leave in the weekly schedule as optional, this may be a time to go word chunking for awhile, maybe fifteen or even twenty minutes. Or, if we didn’t do a free write to start class, we could do one now - this is the time of year for increasing writing activities, perhaps some suggested on this blog under the Honesty thread.
If we do the word chunking and it gets rowdy. I have the perfect hammer - dictation. Why not? I know it’s output. I don’t care. It keeps them quiet and busy, and they love it. What the heck. I have never thought of dictation as a disciplinary tool, but it is one. It requires total silence. But no more than ten minutes of dictation, ever, as per Susie Gross and Joe Neilson.
So here is my week so far:
Monday - five minutes of SSR, two points per minute. Just to nail the tardies. A kid walks in six minutes late with no excuse and gets a zero on a quiz. Good morning! Then the story - I need to remember to do the first two steps right - gesture/establish meaning with the three structures, then PQA those structures that lend themselves to PQA, then do the story. Then, to end class, the five minutes quick quiz that my student wrote. It’s a big energy day because the story requires energy, but it’s worth it because the entire week will in some way tag on and relate to the story we make, mainly in the form of reading. By working hard on Monday I assure a successful week.
Tuesday - the usual ten minutes of SSR, one point per minute. The tardies get nailed and I get another grade for the computer. After SSR, I put the story I wrote after school on Monday on the overhead (yes the overhead, get over it) and we read and discuss that until the quick quiz - the one I wrote in advance to go with the reading - which ends class.
Note here that I have four grades in the book by the end of class on Tuesday - who knows that they were each just a few minutes long? (Quiz 1 is the SSR grade for Monday, quiz 2 is the quick quiz on the story at the end of class on Monday, quiz 3 is the SSR grade on Tuesday, and quiz 4 is the quick quiz at the end of the reading on Tuesday. That is enough for the week. Except for the monthly thematic units, that is all the grading I ever have to do, with the combined quizzes weighing in at 75% of the total grade and the thematic unit tests at 25%.
Note also here that there is a lot of kick ass CI happening on Monday and Tuesday.
Wednesday/Thursday block -
1. SSR - 10 minutes
2. Sentence translation - 5 minutes
3. Read and Discuss Fama Va - 20 minutes
4. Brain Break - 5 minutes
5. (Optional) Embedded Reading
6. (Optional) ten minute free write
7. (Optional) big book (concrete image) discussion of a page or two
8. Word Chunking - 15 minutes. If they get rowdy I’ll move right to a dictée.
9. I can’t think of anything for the end of class, but it will probably have ended anyway by now. If anybody has any ideas for this plan please write them in a comment below. I always feel like I am leaving out good ideas, but I don’t really care about good ideas and games and activities and stuff like that. They are not my goal in TPRS. Lots and lots of CI is my goal, so I stay pretty close to stories and reading all week. I would guess that Fama Va above and/or the embedded reading will go half an hour anyway.
(By the way, I don’t let my kids say that Blaine’s books are boring. I make them read them for the French. I keep asking them questions during the D phase of R and D. My students don’t have the option to complain in class. They are invited to speak to my privately about any concerns. But I find that Blaine’s books are fine for the work I would like to accomplish with them.)
Anyway, that’s my motormouth blog lesson plan for this week. Oh, I forgot Friday. Shit.
O.k. what to do on Friday? The kids are antsy to get to their weekend. Luckily, it’s just a 45 minute class. Hmmm. This is where Bryce pays the kids back their PAT points. But PAT didn’t work for me. Hmmm. Maybe somebody will suggest something. I have mainly level ones. I could definitely read and discuss another chapter of Fama. They can’t read enough. Then their reward after that could be a song.
But I refuse to work hard, and all that organizational stuff around songs, getting it all together and making sure it is appropriate, is a pain in the butt. I know - I will tell them that if someone can bring me an appropriate song by Wednesday, I will copy it and have it ready for Friday. They must bring the CD, because all I am offering to do is to fix the messy French version they got off the internet and make the class set copies. I will NOT include the English on those copies. Why do that? They would just read the English. Plus, it makes them read. Plus, translating is more work for me because I have never seen a properly translated set of lyrics on the internet.
Another option than a song to end that Friday class? Easy - word chunking. Done. End the week with some b’ball. Friday, then, should be an easy day to slide into the weekend of some reading, some music, and, if time, some b’ball.
[Note: I needed to write all that out to make sure that I plan myfirst year classes around CI and not around something else. I need a routine and kids need a routine. If the routine gets boring, at least it's a CI routine and not one that strays from the fundamental approach that I feel is best - input in the form of listening and reading, with limited writing. Plus, I am not good when I start messing around with too many new ideas. That kind of got me in this funk in the first place. We'll see how the week goes and revisit this schedule next weekend.]
