I’m sure few will agree with me, but any focus in a language class on a scope and sequence, or pacing guide, or curriculum map, whatever it is called, is bad.
Increasingly, I see that the necessity for maximum repetitions as the key to what we do. We can’t talk about the importance of repetitions anymore. We have to do it. And we have to do it to a much greater extreme than we thought.
Therefore, putting things into a time table keeps us from getting the kind of day to day reps we need by making us go to the next thing before the kids have gotten the last thing down a few levels in the brain is just stupid. It is way out of touch with the students’ need to hear massive, massive, massive amounts of reps so that they can get acquisition of the terms we want them to aquire.
When they learn, they think about it and they forget it. When they acquire, they hear it a ridiculous amount of times and then they get it.
Here is an example. I have started to teach French painting to my kids. I introduce a painting to start class by talking in English about the painter and the period for about a minute. I am very strict about this – one minute is all I get in English.
Then, for a precious five minutes, we talk about the painting. After five minutes we stop. If I want to extend that discussion, it has to be done the next day to start the next class in the time allotted for the paintings segment of class.
So yesterday we talked about a Monet painting. Then today to start class I put the painting back up and we went over the same vocabulary from yesterday for another five minutes. And tomorrow we will do the same. Maybe it’ll go to a fourth day.
I’ll do it until I see in their eyes that they have acquired the terms I want them to learn. When is that? When I see in their faces the auditory focus we spoke about here a few weeks ago at this link:
https://benslavic.com/blog/2013/03/04/auditory-focus/
Now, if in my building I don’t feel that I can go back and get reps on stuff, if I am always trying to get to the next thing bc of the pacing guide, threatening me trouble with the administration if I don’t cover the information I am supposed to be covering in the pacing guide, then I am not doing CI in the spirit of how Krashen says we learn a language, via mega repetition of comprehensible input.
The two, CI and the idea of a curriculum map, is just a bad combination. Let me spend five or ten minutes on the same painting with my kids each day until they move from just looking at me to interacting with me at the level of “kathunk”, of auditory focus.
To me, it’s like this. I have my laser pointer and say there’s a bridge. I ask if there is anything above or below or on or under the bridge. I go on a circling tear to get reps on above and below, which sound very cool in French. I circle just that until my kids can’t take it anymore.
Then I talk about the bushes and trees, and the lilies. And then I return to another round of intense circling of above and below. I focus on that, bc in this painting my goal is to teach above and below and that’s about it, of course in context as we teach everything in context in CI. If we don’t teach everything in context, we are dumb asses.
Now, here’s the deal. That five minutes takes above and below down about one level into the brain. That’s not enough. I want above and below deeper – I want them acquired. I want them ten levels down.
In a world of pacing guides and scope sequence mapping (even the terms sound threatening) I will have covered it and that’s it. My targets, above and below, will have bounced off the surface of the kids’ brains for parts unknown in outer, not inner, space.
The smart ones will keep above and below in their conscious knowledge bases long enough for some test, but big deal, they will not have acquired the terms any more than the slower acquirers. Nobody will have acquired the targeted vocabulary if I teach the word from a list.
Now, George Bush told me not to leave any child behind, so I don’t. I do three minutes on the same painting the next day. I keep repeating above and below. And I eat up precious minutes that I wouldn’t be able to do is I were following some kind of pacing guide.
I will have taught above and below from a list, which is really a dumb ass move if you want to know a good one. It’s one of the biggest dumb ass moves in language education, in my view.
So that is my first comment on L & D. I have some other things to add, and James, if you could maybe think about including this in a possible hardlink template/flow chart, I think it could be very helpful for the group as a quick procedural reference in class for next year whenever they do L & D:
I am combining the earlier template with the new stuff from today so what we have now for L & D looks like the part below in red with the old stuff from the first R & D post in blue.
Obviously the amount of steps represented below wouldn’t work for my five minute deal to start class, but there will be days when I would want to do L & D for the entire period and this is a good template for that:
The process:
1. Go to The Big Picture – Boston.com, Google Images, or somewhere like that. Or put any image up on the document camera. Pick out an image that contains some vocabulary that you would like to teach your kids. Connect it to a lesson plan if it would make you happy.
2. Frontload the coming CI discussion with that vocabulary, establishing meaning in the same way that we set up stories in the first part of PQA. Offer no more than four new terms. Too many terms and you will certainly lose the kids. We always limit vocabulary and offer tons of properly spoken language (grammar) to our kids.
One thing about this step – if the image is being projected on a white board or anything you can write on, you can actually establish meaning by writing the word on the object. It’s just another way, in this L & D setting a more eifficient one, to establish meaning.
Like when I teach a Monet painting and I write the word “pont” right on the bridge, I am establishing meaning the fastest and most clear and most efficient way I possibly can. This idea is a good one for dealing with multilanguage ELA classes. You don’t need a translator. The image with the word on it in the TL obviates that need.
3. Discuss the picture in the TL, using the Punch List from the categories list here to guide you along through the class. (https://benslavic.com/blog/2013/01/09/punch-list-for-observing-teachers/)
4. Be happy if you only get five sentences all built around the few words you started with done in twenty minutes of slow circling. You will see something happen – there will be crystal clear comprehensible input happening all over the classroom.
5. At some point, ask the kids to pair share and talk about it.
6. After the pair share, I ask anyone who wants to share some of their own French with the group about the picture. I praise heavily when this is done. It’s not forced output. This has taken the form now in my level 2 French classes, to where I am constantly using a new gesture, placing my hands in front of me with palms up, which means, “Hey, I’ve repeated it enough, now you say it or part of it or one word of it. Just say it.” I wouldn’t do this before springtime in level 2, of course, but now they can volunteer some unforced production if they want. (very cool to hear, by the way.)
7. When the thing has gotten about ten levels down into the brain (as I said, I do this in short 3-5 minute segments to start each class as many days as I want in spite of big brother), as a final activity in L & D, I take the picture away and ask the kids to just close their eyes and relax and I read it to them in a calm and sacred way. I ask them to imagine the picture in their minds. This is called visualization, of course. This is an excellent time to do it. They love to create the picture in their minds in French bc they are never allowed to do that kind of imagining in schools, which is almost completely left brain centered (except ours and I would say art but some art classes don’t even teach to the whole brain!)
8. With ten or fifteen minutes left in class, ask the kids to write what they can remember from the L and D discussion. They can refer to the words on the board and the other posters you may have up in your classroom to help them write.
9. If time allows, put a few writing samples from what the kids just wrote up on the doc camera for general classroom discussion using R and D. Do not correct the grammar. Why waste time?
10. Collect what the kids wrote. Use them as a grade if you want. But if you are under stress, toss them. Remember that you don’t have to grade everything that you collect.
You can also use your Quiz and Story Writers – see Jobs for Kids (162) – as you normally do in stories. This is especially useful if you have a block. Without a block, you have to choose between a quiz and the writing sample you ask them for. The information provided from the story writer, of course, turns into a reading as a follow up the next day.
Here’s the previous original post on L & D: