Nathan sent this exceptional post today. It will help everyone:
Hi Ben,
As I read through Dirk’s post about the difficulties of CI with small classes, I kept hearing the same refrain: you can’t do CI with small classes. I’d agree that it’s difficult at times, but at the same time I would I would wholeheartedly encourage the attempt. My two classes of German 1 last year averaged about 10-12 per class, but because those groups enjoyed it so much, they went out and recruited for me, which is partially responsible for class sizes of 28 I’m enjoying in German 1 this year. Don’t give up on CI with such groups just because it’s tough; you’ve got to grow those big classes somewhere and CI is the best way to do so.
In this post, then, I’d like to list a few adaptations that should be made for a small class. I have no claim at expertise here, these are simply what has worked for me and would welcome additional ideas in the comments.
The major roadblock is simply the lack of cover students have in a class that size. If you’re going to roll with stories according to the classical model, you need a group of people you can fall back on as quality actors, which you can’t always count on with small groups. Fortunately, there are a bunch of quality adaptations to CI on this blog that you can do frequently so that actors are only necessary sporadically. If you don’t have the critical mass necessary to generate enough non-reluctant students to keep you fueled with suggestions, the solution is to change your elicitation techniques.
Adaptation 1: Student-generated stories. I love these things; students will write ideas down that they can never bring themselves to say. The quiet kids usually have the best ideas, too. I put students in groups of two or three and have them brainstorm different stories out of the target vocab. Here you have more skits that arise than full blown stories, and the commitment for being an actor is not as high.
Even though you will have time to get to everybody’s story in a small class, I’d suggest not to; you need to give yourself time to develop the stories and be able to maintain critical rigor.
Adaptation 2: Embedded Readings. Start with a few written lines broadcast on an LCD projector that form the outline of a story: “Frank went to Paris . Frank lost his wallet. Marguarite found his Wallet.” Every pass through the story, add a few more details using a different color font. “Frank went to Paris to find the birthplace of french fries. Frank lost his wallet which contained his money and his Driver’s license. Marguarite the lovely French fry tour guide found his wallet, saw his driver’s license and fell in love.” As long as I restrict myself to a new sentence per section per pass, I can keep this up all hour and do.
I love Michele’s idea of handing a story that one class develops over to another class to keep plugging away at, creating a feeling of more community than just the small class alone can offer. Embedded readings don’t need actors. You can ask people in your class to draw pictures which you can add (giving you another reason to read through it again), but people can be enthralled in their seats.
Adaptation 3: Let them bail you out. How often do you get to the end of a story where things have been rolling and all of a sudden things stall? Suddenly nobody in the room, least of all you, can think of anything that is remotely interesting. Or all of a sudden you look at the clock and realize you have 5 minutes left to not only wrap your story but to shoehorn a quiz in as well? With a small class, I just tell my students to each write their own ending to the situation in their composition books, and I then type them all up for the next day and give multiple choice endings as part of the reading. You can’t do that easily in a big class (although it’s worth it when you do), but it works great in a small one.
Adaptation 4: Assign super-powers. Last year when doing a clothes unit, I asked every person in the class to grab one of the articles of clothing I had at the front and decide what super-powers that bestowed upon them. Once everybody had selected, we made a chart that tracked everybody’s powers in the class and which was copied into their composition books. Then we went out and explored the world using our superpowers to compete in the Olympics, fend off the Vikings in Ireland , right wrongs and injustices, etc. etc. (My personal two favorites: “Kim” could teleport anywhere, and “Greg” had money vision that occurred whenever he lifted his glasses). This was sort of a mini-realm that could be conjured up on a dime. We not only had a blast for a couple weeks but our stories throughout the rest of the year were peppered with everybody’s powers. Can’t do that in a big class, sorry.
Adaptation 5: Pictures. There’s a lot on the blog lately about using pictures, and this is great because it allows the visuals to be the star rather than actors. Dirk had a great bit with the action figures and drawn backgrounds on a document camera. Jim does a bunch with student pictures and rolls them out. Ben’s live action sketch of his one-word images is wonderful. Simply put, give them something to focus on besides you or an actor and it can roll for awhile. Six-frame pictures can not only sum-up stories but extend them into another day (see a blog post regarding this last year titled Recycling).
Adaptation 6: Practice your PQA. Look at your structures ahead of time and get your PQA line of questioning pre-set. You don’t have time to have a PQA fall flat because there’s not enough people to bail you out of your floundering. If none of your structures has any power or enough of a hook, change at least one of the structures to an old-standby that does.
Adaptation 7: Different Partners. Don’t always let your students sit in the same place, even with assigned seating. I’ve used a variation on the “Study Buddy Map” on Ben’s resource page for years by assigning students 1:00 through 12:00 partners (or less for really small classes). I take a day and let people choose partners for each hour slot (in groups of two for several slots and groups of three for several more). Then when I want partner work or just an excuse to juggle the class dynamic suddenly I’ll call out “Get with your 3:00 partner.” I type a list of the partners for each time slot which I display on the LCD so nobody has to fumble for sheets. It’s quick; it’s slick; it works.
To summarize, CI can work quite well in small classes as long as you can find a way to lighten the burden of everybody having to contribute all the time in a spoken or acted way. I developed my CI technique in small classes, and as a result lean on the above methods quite frequently even with larger classes. Blaine ’s classical TPRS model is really a wonder and does great things, but it’s true greatness is how it can be adapted for a less than classical environment and still work the same magic.