There are days when we wish we could go into our classrooms and be mindless and not worry about anything at all, following a set of automatic steps that still hold our students’ attention for the entire class period.
Below is a 90 minute lesson plan that does that for me. I use it whenever I want a class to move by fast without me having to actually think. It is, for me, an automatic pilot kind of lesson plan. There are days when I need such plans, to be quite honest.
The goal at the outset of the class is to get the kids’ little pencils moving right away in the creation of a written text. Then, for the remainder of the class, we use that written text to address all four learning modalities in short, roughly ten minute, bursts, including work on grammar.
So how do we start such a class?
Step 1 – (10 min.) Freewrite or Dictation
If it’s a free write, just follow the guidelines for that at benslavic.com/resources/posters/free write rules.
If you choose to go with a dictation, just start dictating. For the content of the dictation, I usually take the most recent story the kids did and make up about a five or six sentence dictation (see dictée discussion at benslavic.com/resources/posters/free write rules).
Note that on the dictée I don’t have to think. All I need in front of me is the written story that one of my students always writes as we create it (this is discussed on the resource page of my site as well). I look at those story notes and make up something. Here is an example of a dictation that I made up on the spot once for a level I French class based on the story we had done just the day before:
There is a girl who feels alone. She wants a friend. So, she goes to the circus where she meets a horse who tells her that he would like to be her friend. But the horse finds her ugly.
By the way, I give colored half sheets to them for the dictation. If a child arrives even one minute late, they don’t get a sheet. They get an 8-10 on the quiz if they were there, judging them on effort, not quality, and a zero if absent or tardy unless excused. It is so easy when I just take the colored sheets and go to the gradebook during my planning period – no colored sheet, they get the zero.
2. Step 2 – (10 min.) Grammar
If they did a freewrite, just take one from a fairly conscious student and quickly write it on the whiteboard, verbatim, with mistakes and all. Then, if you wrote in black, correct in red and explain the grammar and such – it’s just a little mini grammar lesson. They think they are learning when they do grammar, although the only real way to acquire a language is through CI, not discrete grammar work. (This fact will become clear in the next years. It’s just so over for the inordinate focus on grammar in foreign language education).
If you chose to give a dictation, it’s the same thing – just go over the grammatical points that you would like to make. For example, the expression “finds him” in the sample dictée above allowed me to present to my students a nice little lesson on the difference between definite articles and direct object pronouns. This is pop up grammar, in fact. (No wonder people don’t want to quit teaching grammar even while knowing how useless it is – it’s easy, and remember, the purpose of this lesson is to give you a day off from thinking).
Step 3 – (10 min.) Speaking
Doing output in the form of speaking before the (input driven) neurology has been established in the brain doesn’t lead to real acquisition of the language, but it gives the kids the feeling that they are learning,
This part of class is done by having the students read and repeat after the instructor to work on accent. Rote repetition, explaining nuances of accent won’t really make their accent any better, because in my view of language acquisition conscious focus on accent is far less effective than constant uninterrupted CI. But, again, it makes them feel like they are learning, and I don’t have to actually think, which is the purpose of this particular lesson plan, so why not?
Step 4 – (10 – 20 min.) Comprehensible Input
Now, having given the kids the opportunity to write a little, and having explained some of the grammar, we can do some actual comprehensible input, something of actual value. Start by asking basic yes/no questions about the text, going slowly, and using all of your CI skills. Then, move it up a notch and try to personalize the discussion (PQA the text). If, in the text used to start class, a girl has gone to a circus to find a friend but instead finds and falls in love with a clown, ask if that has happened to any of the girls in the room and see where the discussion goes. The big rap on CI is that it is hard to do. I contend, however, that it is much like riding a bike – once learned, it is almost too easy.
Step 5 – (10 min.) Cooperative Learning
Now for a little group work, for any administrators who may believe that the kids can’t learn unless they do some group work each day (there are people who believe that. We can’t call ourselves good teachers unless we get them into groups now, can we?)
Ask the kids to get into groups of three and tell them to take the best free write from before that they have between the three of them, or the dictation if that’s how you started class, and just ask them to write four or five lines to finish the story or extend it further without an ending. Today, a group came up with:
So, the horse is very sad. The horse hits her on the head “No!” she says. “Bad horse!” “Excuse me,” says the horse to the girl and he gives her a cake. She eats the cake, and they become good friends.
Step 6-8 (60 min.) Repeat the Process
Now just repeat what you did in steps 2-4 above, but using the newly generated text from Step 5 above as a starting point. Choosing any one text from one of the groups, start as in step 2 with the grammar correction, work on the accent, and do some comprehensible input discussion/PQA around it. Theoretically, this recycling of the newer text through steps 2-4 could lead to another text being added by the groups as per step 5.
Things that are clear and easily understood by kids, and that are about them, can hold the interest indefinitely. If a seven hour class were attempted using this method, each newly created written section by the groups in step 5 would become more and mory zany, and more and more personalized, and, as the class went on, the interest would increase in a geometric or even an exponential way.
This process could be endless, and you could theoretically end up with a book of over a hundred pages or more by the end of the year. Get a kid to illustrate it for an art class project, bind it and hand it to each kid at the end of the year. Voilà, instant perception by the community that good things are happening in your classroom.
Step 9 (40 minutes or more) – Story
We use the text created in class so far to ask a story. We just follow our new “script”, line by line, asking questions, allowing the new story to form with new and funny details as the class deftly handles the vocabulary because they have been working with it all period and because it is right there on the board, LCD, or Document Reader. For details on the process of story creation, see the sample stories in the back of TPRS in a Year!
By allowing the story to form from something that the students already have ownership in from earlier in the class period, the plan above avoids the boredom engendered by too prescriptive lesson plans.
If we take something, anything, that the kids create and then eventually build a story from it via the above steps, we end up not “teaching something”, but rather “allowing the CI to flow” through the series of short roughly ten minute activities described above. This “flowing lesson” is not unlike the Salute to the Sun yoga pose.
Also, because the material is limited in terms of vocabulary, we can do a lot of output grammar in the form of writing and speaking, and intersperse it with a lot of input discussion in the form of listening and reading. We all know that going too wide with the vocabulary is one of the surest ways to make a CI class fail.
If I have been able to describe it above correctly, the reader can see that the plan described here of unwinding segments of ten minute activities has real potential to take the usual pressure (a pressure that only teachers know) off our shoulders. (Actually, I added up the segments above and, including the story, the plan above is for two hours and forty minutes, so I apologize for that.)
It is precisely this effortless expansion that makes the lesson something to look forward to even on the tough days here at the end of the year.