John said in a comment:
Haven’t we come to the conclusion that all input during years 1 and 2 should be auditory input? Is there, or should there even be, room for extended readings during this time, unless they are basically transcriptions of class stories, and have 90% or more known vocabulary?
My response (updated from the comment below):
Yes and Krashen told me that in my classroom three months ago. I asked him point blank in our debriefing how he would spend the entire first year (I was hoping that he would say what I wanted him to say bc there were a lot of pro-CI teachers sitting there who don’t agree with me and I wanted to hear it from, as it were, the big dog’s mouth) and right on cue he says, it should be 100% ALL auditory input the first year.
I then clarified, asking about how much reading should be in that 100% auditory, boss man? He shrugged it off, and what I got from that was that we can read maybe a little in the first year, but a lot less than the CI community now thinks fashionable.
It’s so weird, but honestly I think we have misinterpreted Krashen on the reading piece. He has written so much on it with such impeccable credentials, research and authority that we have glommed on to it without really thinking enough about how his research affects what we do in our community.
I know that the person who knows Krashen best by far in our small group is Jody, and she said (correct me on this if I am wrong, Jody) that she is not real big on reading in the first year, but Jody did you say that about novels or FVR. I think you said FVR. What do you think about novels in the first year.
The whole thing is simple and I don’t wish to make it complex (leave that to the philosophers): It really resonates with me to curtail reading beyond FVR and story readings until the students are ready in terms of more hours – maybe 300-400 – of auditory input.
As I said elsewhere here today, 125 hours of CI is not much. And we now want to put half of those hours in the form of reading, even at level one? That just feels wrong. Would I do that with a small child during the first 125 hours? I would not.
The neurology is just not there. That is why SK said that. I suggest that we read less in level one, and then bring in the 50% idea maybe in level two, certainly in levels three and above. That would mean dumping the novels in level one, which don’t work for the kids.
We think the novels don’t work for the kids bc they are boring, but it is largely because they can’t really understand them. This is getting worse as TV and computers are now ripping away at American kids’ ability to read in their first language.
So I say we consider these things for next year. Thanks John for saying that. And to give my opinion on your second point:
…is there, or should there even be, room for extended readings during this time, unless they are basically transcriptions of class stories, and have 90% or more known vocabulary…?
My answer, and I will do this next year even if I am the only one, is to only do Pauvre Anne or Houdini late in the spring, with no extended readings – and again, to be forcibly clear – because they are boring to the kids in that they are too difficult to read and there is no life in them anyway, not the kind of life we get from stories and PQA, and very little if any novels.
The only reading I will do with beginning classes next year, therefore, is the FVR to start class (and those books are kids’ books with lots of pictures and we are very fortunate to have such great resources in DPS) and the readings from stories as per my new weekly schedule of PQA Monday, stories T/W, and readings on T/Fr. Many level one teachers here in DPS do the entire series (of four) of Blaine’s novels all in level one. It doesn’t feel right to me.
If you consider that with the FVR and the readings from stories we are already reading a lot, there is just no room for the novels. Of course, that statement is predicated on: