Unlock with PatreonThe Problem with CI
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Stop With The Bullshit
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8 thoughts on “Stop With The Bullshit”
Someone whose opinion I highly respect once told me that her school year had been less than successful due to the fact that she tried to placate the kids in her class who had not bought in to the CI. This was just an aside in our conversation, but I have never forgotten it. Trying to create a hybrid or blend the traditional and the CI muddies everything for me.
Adn the two people who come into my mind when you say that are Susan Gross and Diana Noonan. When this comes up, they brook no compromise. They don’t try to make any nice. They blow the person back about 1.578349 feet. In Diana’s case, this included principals. We don’t placate people.
I’m doing a hybrid this year with project-based learning and even the kids realize now that it doesn’t work. I don’t know if I’ll be hired back next year, but if I am, I will certainly push for all CI and forget the projects (they’re doing them in every other class, anyway.)
What I love about input-based learning is that it puts the quiet introverts on a more level playing field with the extroverts. I am going to spend the rest of this school year trying consciously to make the introverts feel valued (I’ve enlisted the help of a few of them to help keep me honest)
Compelling comprehensible input! That was another thing that K. spoke about last summer that just stunned me. Compelling. It isn’t about what is compelling to us, it is about what is compelling to our students.
Last week in class I only had one middle schooler. What was compelling for him was to understand the written words we’d been learning over the past semester in contextual written form. So, I gave him the script that I’d written for myself in Mvskoke to translate into English while I worked with all the newbie primary students that joined our class. He was so focused he chose not to go outside for a walk with us. At the end of the class when the little guys went outside to play I sat down. He asked me questions about translating and I gave him my take. Then he asked if I had another copy of the script that he could use to take the information we’d talked about and to write it down. This isn’t a kid who particularily likes to do reading and writing excercises in English. But, he was directing his own learning and I wasn’t going to stop that. He wanted to push himself and was doing it at his pace. I can hardly wait to sit with him again and talk about what his next goal for learning might be. I know his other teachers (Core) will be surprised as he seems to be unmotivated but in my class, he’d figured out what was going to help him and had a real goal for himself. And that was in afterschool.
And it is the fact that the CI is about them that makes it compelling.
We did the Loves, wants to be with him/her and s/he hits structures last week and the FURTHEST thing from the kid’s mind was learning Spanish. They were listening about who loves whom is Spanish. It was just awesome, and fun and funny. They nailed the listening comprehension quiz. Most were very successful at writing about that “story” too.
Thanks Ben
After a long absence from the inspiring words I find on this blog, I am once again struck with the power of simplicity. I am working on a geography unit with my fifth grade students right now that I never in a million years would have thought they could pull off. But when we study the regions of France, their culture and their geography with specific structures, they are absorbing everything and taking things to a new level. I asked my students why lighthouses were so important in Brittany and, while in broken French, they told me there are a lot of rocks and boats and BOOM. I am certainly breaking the rules of TPRS here by leaving out the S, but my students are more engaged than I have ever seen them. I have to take that and run with it. Especially at this difficult time of year.
CI is simple, and I think that even though I’m going through a back door here, this is working. This is CI.
Keep It Simple, Stupid.
While I think COMPELLING is the key, I know that high schoolers/middle schoolers are way more interested about themselves than younger students. They developmentally are experimenting what THEY think. They and their friends provide the COMPELLING intrest.
Younger students often don’t have that process yet. They want to know about the world so they can develop their own opinions. Going in a back door TPRS way is still an opening to learning the language. They are willing to follow your lead because it is compelling to them to learn about France.
Whatever builds acquistion for them is the lead you have to take. Learners lead teachers in the best of teaching. But, lots of time we have to create an environment for them to explore for what is meaningful for them.