Those of us who feel so inclined should write more with the purpose of educating people about comprehensible input language instruction. It’s obvious that it’s the way to go, after about 30 years of sliding around on the ice. Our movement has traction now, and what that means is that people are willing to listen.
Classrooms which in the past may have been filled with a low-level discomfort or outright hostility between the people in the room immediately change with the student jobs. People all over the classroom form a team, working together towards a common goal. That is real reform in education. There is nothing quite like seeing a
I strongly recommend that teachers of level 1 WL classes not use the novels, even though they are labeled as level 1 chapter books. I think level 1 novels should be started in level 2. The reason is that it divides the classroom community. The kids who are readers quickly wrestle away the classroom process
The “look” of the characters and all of the details created by the artist’s vision end up becoming a sort of “brand” for that class. It is their “look.” The class brand is usually the result of a certain teenage way of drawing a character that is different from anything else, a mixture of many
I will never forget Brianna’s drawings, their well-chosen captions and all the sorts of clever ways she had to visually transmit information to the class via her medium. She had found her niche in my classroom. The class had found the creator of its “brand” within the building. I had found a gem whom I
In one class it became clear to me early on that one girl was truly gifted at drawing. But Brianna had to wait to see if she landed the position since other kids—who are at an age where the word “fairness” is next to sacred—had not all had a chance to draw and show off
How are the artists chosen? At the beginning of the year, we “audition” students for the role of artist. We want a gifted two-artist team that can work together quickly, quietly, and harmoniously, and turn out big, bold, clear drawings, and we use the beginning of the year to find that two-artist team by giving
When thinking about next year, it is safe to say that getting it right with the artists is perhaps the most important thing of all, if you are going to use the Invisibles and the student jobs. So this post starts a series of nine articles over the next week on just them: These one
When we give kids a reason to be happy in our classrooms, instead of placing them somewhere on a scale of how good they are at the language we are teaching them, we do it right. We place the needs of children to be an accepted part of a vibrant language sharing community over our
We have this great skill from the great Susan Gross. The eyes tell all in a language class. Students’ eyes give us data, information that we cannot get in any other way. The data that we get from students’ eyes may not be easily quantified, but that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t have value or
Alisa shares this: https://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/learning-the-language/2019/05/us_needs_more_foreign_language_education.html
Q. What about the use of technology in an Invisibles classroom? A. I know it is impressive to tell our bosses that we use the internet, distance learning, audio and visual enhancements, discussion boards, graphic organizers and voice-over Internet protocol, even videoconferencing in our classrooms, but I think that we are just fooling ourselves. Maybe
