I don’t even know if this one is even listed in our list of bail out moves. It’s really simple. Whenever we need to bail out (when the CI is sluggish and we feel kind of scared that we don’t know what we are doing, which is fairly common for all of this in this work no matter how many years we have been doing it), all we have to do is laser point to the word wall and have them translate some words for 2 or 3 minutes. Kids love to look at words and see if they know them. This is the best way to teach word wall words anyway, along with WA and WTC, and it gives us time to stop and think and collect ourselves. Remember that the most effective CI happens when we are calm, slow, aware of our students and their cute ideas, and without an agenda that we have to “teach a verb” or something. If CI were an essential oil it would be lavender.
