I completely avoid the use of any “big tests”, which are disruptive, waste class time, usually require memorization, alienate students, give the control of the grade over to the teacher, require time to assess that I do not have in my new vision of myself as a relaxed teacher, and are generally inaccurate anyway. As […]
The purpose of the suggested weekly schedule presented over the past week was to simplify the process of implementing CI in my classroom. I personally have tried so many schedules over the years that I often got confused. This confusion greatly increased my stress levels. There is so much to do in a CI based
Friday – The plant grows even further as we synthesize and evaluate what we have learned by looking at music or paintings relevant to the ideas that grew via the creation of the story and the reading earlier in the week. One example is – if one of the structures from the original story was
Wednesday/Thursday – on Wednesday and Thursday we do the reading class. This growing of the root and stem into a plant goes beyond mere application of the knowledge and content gained on Monday and Tuesday to the analysis of the story in the form of reading, discussion of grammar and accent, writing, etc. There are
Tuesday – the story is so much easier for the kids to understand because of the extensive PQA done the day before. If Monday provides the seed and root of the plant, then Tuesday, the story, is the growth of the shoot into a plant. On Tuesday we apply the knowledge and comprehension of simple
An entire week of comprehensible input can grow organically from just three words. When the week is organized in this way, if the “plant” that is the week’s instruction starts with and is limited to just those three structures on Monday, then the students are able to experience a more streamlined and focused period of
I’m off to SF for a few days so will be gone sans computer access. However, starting tomorrow there will be a new series of posts coming up here describing the new way that I schedule my week. I highly recommend it because it is very simple and allows for maximum auditory and reading CI. I
Ben, I am still alive and teaching. Just a handful of students came to school in the last 10 days. My heart went out to them in their time of loss. We are 200 km from the real mess but the effects are felt locally too. One of my students lost her sister-in-law in the quake
Got this from Martha for those who want news from our colleagues and friends in Japan: Hey Ben, The tone that you are hearing is Japan. It’s how we could become a group so fast in one day with Susie. It is what is going to power everyone to rebuild. I’m bone tired and I’m
The teacher who pays full attention to the absolute importance of sufficiently repeating the structures [rebar] and limiting the amount of new words [concrete rocks] to create tight, personalized CI with strong rebar but not too many rods will definitely experience success with comprehensible input. We hit the spirals, park, and know when to leave each
Kailey Dellinger at GW moved a very very difficult last period class on a Friday into a space of fun and happy participation. She did this by paying attention to all the kids, playing to their strengths, praising them, including them in the story creation, and going slowly enough. I shall not soon forget Dominique
The fewer the new words, the greater will our students be able to focus on the meaning of the story (the overall concrete) rather than being forced to worry about a bunch of new sounds, the individual words/rocks that make up the concrete. This is in keeping with what Krashen says to do – make
