After another great observation of Julie Soldner’s classes yesterday, I learned from Diana Noonan an interesting point about circling that I had never heard before:
…the only reason to circle is to teach vocabulary….
It makes sense. If our students already know a word, why circle it? Thus, we must be ever watchful when we speak to our students about the degree of familiarity they have with each word we are using in a sentence. The minute we sense what Blaine calls a “weak response”, then that is the time to figure out what word they are weak on, do some circling on it to teach it to them and then move on with our instruction.
That explains why a lot of experienced CI teachers say they don’t circle – they sense that their students don’t need it so they don’t do it.