There is a rhythm to circling. It should not be a totally conscious, mechanical process, but rather one based on rhythm. Over years, it kind of moves down into our bodies and, whether we circle a targe structure a lot or just for a few seconds, it is still a feeling more than something that we think about when we are teaching.
It is a wonderful thing to know that we are giving our students the repetitions that they absolutely must have in a context that they aren’t actually noticing. It’s like in any sport – the basics aren’t focused on when actually playing the sport. Dribbling a basketball isn’t something we focus on when we actually play.
I would like to explore this idea in the next few months, in some way. We should have a April Circling Fiesta via video or something where we send in video of us circling and then we can critique each other. I would bet that we would learn three things from that video – that we don’t go slowly enough, that we use English too much, and that we don’t circle enough.
Circling is like the gas that makes the car go. It is such a key skill that we must get into our bodies on an unconscious level, so that we can think about other things, the real things* as we teach using comprehensible input.
*responding creatively to what is really going on in the classroom in the Vygotsky sense where you create a Zone of Proximal Development with your students as a mom does with her children, where love is allowed to come into the language learning process and mold it and form it so that it is real.
Related:
https://benslavic.com/blog/2012/04/05/rhythm-of-circling/
https://benslavic.com/blog/videos/visceral-circling/
https://benslavic.com/blog/videos/visceral-circling-archie/
https://benslavic.com/blog/videos/circling-with-balls-archie/
https://benslavic.com/blog/videos/circling-with-balls-archie-continued/