Kevin, who teaches with Kelly Haanan about five blocks from my house here in Littleton, has an FVR question:
Hi Ben,
Good to be back on the blog. I’m still trying to carve out some regular time to read and/or respond to all the posts, but I’m slowly getting there.
I’m also wondering if you have any thoughts on this:
I don’t know exactly what the problem is, but my kids last year didn’t like FVR. They tolerated it, but didn’t really get into it much, and towards the end of the year a few of them were grumbling a bit. I thought I did everything right (did it for no more than 10-15 minutes at a stretch, did it no more than once a week, played relaxing music, found compelling books as close to their reading level as I could [children’s books that many of them were exposed to during their childhood], etc.), and it just didn’t click. I also gave students a dictionary if they wanted to use it to look things up, but they weren’t required to use it. I enjoyed the FVR because it gave me a brief mental break in the class period, but I’m wondering if there is either something I missed or some new twist that I need to implement to make it more successful this year. I guess I’m wondering whether other people’s students have had similar reactions to it, and what they have done to fix things.
Thanks,
Kevin