I got this from Chris:
Ben,
What are some examples of transitions you do? The reason why I ask is this:
At my school the principal observes us once each 9 weeks, so four observations a school year and each semester we do a summary appraisal based on the two observations each semester. I met with my principal a few weeks back for my summary appraisal for this year and it went great! My principal absolutely loves what I”m doing and he really likes TPRS based on what he’s seen in my classes. He even said before we started with him summarizing everything that he typed out “with you, this is just a formality. I love what you’re doing”. My 4 page summary appraisal is awesome but I do find myself dwelling on one statement that I’m hoping maybe you can help me with. The statement is “It would greatly benefit student learning by providing students with the opportunity to transition during the lessons, as this would increase student engagement in the lessons.” Although everything is very positive and he says I’m an asset to the school, I do find myself thinking about that statement. I’m not sure what to think of it. Do you have any recommendations for “transitions” during lessons? The last lesson he observed, that he probably pulled a lot from, was a Monday and it was complete PQA during the lesson with a 3 minute break in the middle of class, which I admit probably looked like a randomly thrown in break with no transition. What types of ‘transitions’, if any, do you do? If you don’t, how do you recommend I explain the lack of transitions to my principal?
Chris Roberts
My response: CI can be so uniquely powerful that transitions don’t often occur, are not necessary and it would even be stupid to break the flow up. However, those classes don’t occur all the time. I have a basic plan for transitioning throughout my classes: I start with SSR, then we start some CI (PQA, stories, whatever, as long as it is comprehensible input), then we do dictee if time allows, then we quiz, then we do our self-reflection/metacognition discussion. How to transition between these things? Just do it.
I don’t see that this guy really gets CI, as shown in what he wrote to you. That’s educationese. He means that he read somewhere that a good class has a different “activity” every 20 minutes to keep the kids “engaged”, but he doesn’t know that we can keep kids engaged with a good story for hours and that breaking up the CI is not so wonderful in language classes properly done.
So he suggested to you what he does to many other teachers, I am sure, which is give them advice on some room for improvement bc maybe he was told in some principal’s workshop that he had to suggest something for you to improve on when they observe. I certainly wouldn’t take it too seriously.
Now, if he observes you again, you may choose to move through the sequence of things I mentioned above that I do when I’m not rolling with some unstoppable CI. You may want to do that simply bc you know the observor has been trained to look for it and then he would see the different activities and conclude that you are a serious teacher.
You could even throw in real physiological brain breaks like the beach ball brain break (everybody has to get one touch before it hits the floor) or do a little yogo or whatever. Then he would be thoroughly impressed.
But this guy is not talking about transitions so much as asking for different activities from you, proving, as I said above, that he doesn’t really get what we do and which is yet another reason I am more and more questioning if we can even do CI in schools.