I have been going too fast in an effort to get through the novels. Maybe some can relate. Narrow and deep – good. Shallow and wide – bad.
I have therefore decided to redefine and implement a brand new version of R & D in my instruction of novels. As I stated before, this new idea is on the level of jGR, jGA, and sGI in terms of important new ideas here, in my opinion.
I hate to call it cRD, but what the hell, right? People are totally confused by all these acronyms already anyway and if James doesn’t bail us out on them over the summer with some nice flow charts we will get lost in the sea of acronyms that have overtaken this site anyway. (Hence the need for the new videos I am making, which are going to be a real challenge – how would you like to try to put everything you know about language teaching onto video?)
Again, the old R & D is dead for me. Or, I should say that, again just for me, and I am not trying to present this idea as some special new breakthrough, but as something important to me in how I read novels with my students in the future. In my world R & D has evolved into something different and I think for my students it is far better.
How do I know that? I had a breakthrough class last week that showed me. Right in the middle of class, my students told me as much. I asked them if this new way of reading a novel was clearer and even kids who never spoke up all said it was much clearer and easier for them to understand than the old way of reading novels.