I got this from a group member:
I feel like I am all over the place using verbs. Does that happen to you in the beginning? Someone said they had a pig. So then they said it was stupid (they love using that word) and it lives under Matt’s bed. … I just felt like it was too much Spanish…?
Yes it is a beginner’s thing. You learn to stay on one verb after awhile.
But really the thing to do is like when “lives under the bed” comes up as a response you must, in one instant, either reject it or accept it. If you accept it you should write it on the board, give the English, and then begin to circle the heck out of it.
Forget where you were and circle and PQA “lives under the bed”. Ask if Sharon in your class lives under a bed. Where? STAY ON LIVES UNDER. THIS IS THE BIG THING. By flitting from verb to verb you create choas in their minds. So when a new verb comes up, you are responsible bc you let it into the discussion or you don’t and, if you do, now you have to take responsibility and get a carload of intentional repetitions on it and never ask a question or say anything without “lives under” in each utterance you make.
So what if you don’t come back to the original verb? All you are trying to do is get comprehensible input. Go slowly, stay in bounds on “lives under”, ask the questions about them, get massive loud single word choral – mostly yes and no – answers. Can you see how much fun it would be to have kids living under bridges and underground and all of that, each kid could have their own place they live under. It could be hilarious.
So what if the verb doesn’t lend itself to interesting PQA. Leave it alone. Go with those verbs that have energy. Linger longer on them.
If the kids are not sitting up with squared shoulders and clear eyes, stop to explain jGR – you need a big poster of it right there in front of their noses to laser to and explain and re-explain in English how much (in my class 30%) their grade is going to go down if they get a 1 or 2 on the “ACTFL Standards” grade category that is in the gradebook. (In my class if I give a student a 2 for generally not being involved, that is a 40% for 30% of their grade. Those are big numbers that require them to score high on the easy Quick Quizzes (70%) if they want to even pass the class. Or I could add some more grade categories like projects and tests and homeworkto get them off the hook with their grade and make myself crazy because I like to work extra hard all the time because I really need people to like me and so I keep a really really busy but wonderful gradebook. Screw that.)
Also when you are talking about the big jGR poster point to the Classroom Rules. Point back and forth to them with the laser pointer from the jGR poster, making the kids see the relationship between the behaviors described in the Classroom Rules and their jGR grade.
Then go home and put the low 1 or 2 in the gradebook, and when they come to class early the next day bc they can’t go out this weekend bc they are failing your class, and they beg for some extra credit, you tell them that you give little homework, no big tests, and all you ask is that they try in class to understand you according to the new Communication Standard that has been forced on you. Tell them that if it wasn’t for the standard you would let them sleep or space out or slouch – playing bad cop/good cop with jGR as the bad cop and you as the good cop – and don’t change their grade by letting them do some lame project and hold them to jGR. Do that.
Also that is why I have a big list of verbs on the wall and whenever I get bored or something is not working we go over them with the laser pointer on them. It doesn’t really help, learning things in lists. But it gives them like one more repetition* and gives me a break from something that might not be working real well or if I need to make it over a few minutes to the end of class.
*although that repetition is useless bc it is not in context.
