Andrea wrote in a comment today:
I am right there with you [Jennifer]. I feel really lost too. The feeling gives me so much anxiety – too much anxiety. I just want to know where I am going with this in my classes. I feel pretty good about it with my French I’s and OK with my French II’s. It’s my III’s and IV’s that I am so lost that I cannot see in front of me. They are not where they need to be having had 2 and 3 years of crappy CI. I’ve had them their whole careers so I can vouch for its crappy implementation. If I had someone else’s plan to follow (someone that has had proven success) I would feel much better about my situation. I know that really good CI doesn’t need a plan, but my personality does; and right now the anxiety is killing me. Thanks for letting me vent and thanks for the support.
Michele Whaley offered a strong practical answer:
Hey Andrea and Jennifer… I actually find that I do need a plan for good CI if my kids are dragging/lagging. It’s hard to know what to do with them, and I’ve got a similar issue right now in my intermediate class, where I have some really weak level four kids who can read pretty well but are lazy, and some brand new level 2 SpEd kids, mixed with the rest of the level 1/2/3 students. Teaching them all so that they can all acquire is challenging!
Here is my plan.
First, I pick a text I want to read with those kids, any text. In the first two paragraphs, I pick out any structures I think might give them trouble. I might do a pre-test on these, TL to L1, or the other way around. I might even ask them to translate the first paragraphs as best as possible, to find out what they know and don’t know. They don’t get any dictionaries or help from friends. (If you do this, save the pre-test, because it will be illuminating to compare it with a post-test.) Then I start working with the high-frequency structures, two or three at a time. I use Anne Matava stories or some that the kids and I create (because these HF words will be everywhere). Good stories will entertain everyone, at every level. I go super slowly, asking the superstars to re-tell, to put into other tenses, to tell from other perspectives. I also might do a parallel text with the kids by asking them the basic structure of the text I want to read. I did this recently when I wanted my class to read a Soviet text about the Moscow Metro; the students came up with a text on flying car stations. Doing that on a regular basis lets those doubting upper-level kids realize that I am getting to their “higher level” texts, even the ones in their textbook. They feel more secure that they are learning something, and I can be more secure that they will actually acquire something.
Once I’ve worked through all the structures, and they’ve read the class story/stories, I take a look at the original text. Can they read it yet? If it’s still going to be challenging, I create an embedded reading with it. (Note that this is the first real on-your-own “teacher work” I have to do…I could have typed up the class story/stories with them as dictation on class time and created the pre-test just by glancing at the text and jotting the words on the board as class started.)
Making an embedded reading means typing out the paragraphs in question, then copying them and deleting one-third of the details in successive versions so that I am down to the bare bones of the text. I read that first version with them, comparing it to the class story and everything else I would do with a text. They need to draw it, to act it, so that I am sure they have the same picture in their heads. Then I can proceed to the next version and repeat. Finally, I read the actual text with them. They think it’s easy. I give them a quiz (see Martina Bex on her four-level quiz, unless they simply translate again) and repeat the whole process with the next section of text. This could mean that two paragraphs might take me two weeks in class, but I have a complete plan now.
I find that if I have truly picked high-frequency structures in a text, the structures will show up often in songs and children’s poems, in news reports and fashion stories. They might not show up as often in a textbook…anyway, what I’m trying to say is that I can continue to do the other typical things my classroom enjoys: sing a song, learn a poem, talk about school and local events, and those structures will come up. I needn’t make any changes to the rest of my routine.
There are many more things I can do to “stretch out” the activities and have more CI with just two or three structures. (Go to my blog, click on “MJ’s TPRS collection” in the right sidebar, search for “Vera’s weekly sequence,” and that will give you more ideas if you need them.) I am currently on my fourth lesson with my adult class with the single structure, “He has a problem,” so I can tell you that any structure can go forever, generating new stories and activities.