So why not start thinking about next year already? Because some of us are barely able to drag our resistant asses into our classrooms these days? All the more reason to do it! My firm belief is that with a new focus on NT starting on this site now, we will arrive in May next year running across the parking lot to get to our cherubs because our instruction will have changed so much! (OK Slavic chill on the hyperbole but we get your point.)
So, while talking about how to survive May – and maybe Tina will come in here and give us a few ideas on how to end the year and maybe write that bite size book for us – I will, along with the general discussion, start sharing ideas here for next year since it is never to late to start thinking about the fall. (Although I firmly realize, having been exactly there myself almost 40 times, that right now that is perhaps – and should be – the very last thing on most people’s minds).
Three topics that come to mind for next year, three battle-proven ideas from this site that are used in a tremendous number of CI classrooms, are: (1) Questioning with Balls (formerly Circling with Balls) which is an activity that has stood the test of time as a start-the-year activity, (2) the all-important Classroom Rules, which, when we don’t teach them right in the first week of class we might as well forget we ever heard of comprehensible input, and (3) using One Word Images to start the Year, which compared to the other warhorses above is a relative newcomer to the starting the year scene.
I would think that anything we talk about to get the Invisibles even partially up and running in our classrooms next year (the Invisibles being the best version of NT I have yet seen) would be the best move we could do here on the PLC for next year.