Kids don’t really want to watch a video when they clamor for one in the most unpleasant way to start class. They just don’t want to embrace the rigor we are about to offer them for the next fifty minutes.
There has been so much written here and elsewhere about teaching culture. I have made my decision on how to teach culture, and this new approach is based on the fact that we don’t have a fraction of the hours we need to make CI work in our classrooms.
I am going to show zero culture videos (maybe one on a sub day in May, but I normally use sub days to get writing samples (half the class) and get some SSR in (half the class) so not really even then.
Hey, if a kid is really wanting to find some information on French culture, they can go to the internet. The other kids, those kids who clamor for a video, aren’t interested in culture – they just say they are. They say that video line that we all hate to hear. I won’t even say it here. No. Uhhh….. no again.
I say let them learn culture on their own. I teach language. This decision is in response to Sabrina’s Great Insight (sGI). I have also changed how I do R & D as well as a result of sGI, which, like jGR and jGA, I refuse to let scroll out of the ongoing discussion for too long here, as those two breakthrough ideas, and now sGI, are critical to our pushing the method forward, riding the CI wave as it were.