In an email today from Sean, he presented the best description of an aspect of concern about SL that I have yet seen. The following is some deep thinking and in my view gets to the core of the matter. I would add to what Sean wrote that Dr. Mason teaches students who are older and for the most part quiet and focus at the university level in situations we could only dream of having:
Hey Ben:
SL requires lots of practice, reflection, and refining.
For example, as I was browsing the Stories First Foundation website, I watched Dr. Mason’s demo video there and read some of her reflection comments underneath. #7 says, “I use a word that they know first, “give” and then introduce a new word, “provide””. I think it takes a high degree of metacognition (or maybe it’s intuition) as a teacher to have a grasp of what words students know and what words they don’t know, especially when you teach 5 classes in a day.