Here is part of a recent email exchange I shared with Anne Matava. In it, Anne expresses how she has dealt with the February/March burnout – when the kids actually need a break from all the comprehensible input:
Anne: I am moving away from CI for a while.
Me: This is normal.
Anne: The kids are burned out and tired of stories.
Me: They would be burned out on movies, ice cream, anything at all by now.
Anne: We are doing some grammar in level 3. Level 4 is working on a video for a video competition. Level 2 is making up a story as a class to make into a book, with photographs. Even the first-year kids are doing some basic conversational stuff, like how are you and where are you from. Everyone is happy about the change of pace. Because of their strong background in CI, they are able to pick stuff up and use it lightning-fast. The 3rd year students had never seen a verb conjugation before, but they were able to accurately fill out all 6 forms of to be and to have. The kids expressed gratitude for the “filing system.”
Me: Filing system. Hmmm. They don’t hate conjugating verbs because they already know and can use them and don’t see the forms as some kind of weird enemies. They call the verb conjugation chart a filing system. That is an accurate term!
Anne: I still believe in CI. I am just not shoveling shit against the tide any more. Stories will now be more of an event, we’ll work them harder, do more with them. At least 1 hour/week will be spent in each class in random PQA, what I call chit-chat, with the kids in German.
Me: A lot of us, I have noticed, are doing more and more “chit-chat” in our classrooms.
Anne: My routine was too rigid and too demanding. Today we talked about the force-feeding of CI and the amazing foundation it has given them. I will have to find a way that satisfies my need to be facilitating language acquisition and not just playing school, and their need for different types of instructional experiences. I feel good about it.
Me: The changes you describe above are the result of massive input, for years in some cases. Just think how happy they are to be able to do those things. Just think how bad they would feel if they couldn’t. Your kids can have fun playing with all those different aspects of German because of all that input that preceded this time of the year.
Anne: As I move away from [rigid thinking in any area], stopping stories for awhile felt like I was wrenching away from that sense of security we get with stories. But I knew it was the right thing to do.
Me: Teaching using comprehensible input makes us leave the rigid areas of our minds, which explain and dictate. There is no perfect way to teach. But when we teach using comprehensible input as our base, we see so many new possibilities. Our students, likewise, can actually do things with the language, as you are seeing.
Anne: Just when I think I have something figured out, there is a shift and the old rules no longer apply.
Me: And even Blaine has stated that he is open to anything better than what he invented, should it come along. We learn flexibility in this way of teaching our kids, but, at the same time, we keep in mind that they can’t learn the language unless they first hear it and read it in those first few years in massive amounts. It is a dance. I personally am going to finish the year with at least 75% reading. We got heavily into stories in March especially, and that change feels right. The kids also want to output more now in the form of writing and a lot of connections are being made now when they write. All that input is paying off. Since I only teach levels 1 and 2, I could care less if there is any speaking output. I know they need a lot more time for that. Nonetheless, a lot of them are speaking a ton right now, those who are wired that way.