Focus on the kids. What does this mean?
We are teaching students, not a curriculum. The students have to get it. They won’t get it if they don’t pay attention. And they won’t pay attention unless it is interesting to them. The most interesting subject to high school age students is THEMSELVES. We talk TO kids to get information about individuals and we talk ABOUT those kids a lot to teach the language and make it interesting to the rest of the class. For silly stories we often talk about situations between boys and girls because that is interesting to them and a developmental task they are working on at this time in their lives.
One important point here is that we are NOT talking about intimate secrets concerning the actual lives of our students. We are not intruding into their personal space. We are “personalizing.” To me that means talking about light topics—what they like and what they prefer: silly, quirky, minor, innocuous stuff. We want kids to stand out, but not be laid bare.
We never, ever talk about the intimate details of the personal lives of students. That is too close and offers too much information for the general public. Besides the language, we are also teaching appropriate boundaries—what is OK for close friends to know and what is OK for the general public to know. We are not here to talk about deep aspects of their real lives.
Teach to the eyes. What does this mean?
The way you can tell if they get it is by looking into their eyes. Do not teach to the back of the room. Do not teach over their heads. Look in to the eyes of individual students. When they get it there is almost always a little smile of understanding. You know that look. It’s a good look.
Check for understanding. What does this mean?
This is educational jargon for teaching to the eyes. We need to continually be checking to see if the students understand. Looking into their eyes helps here. In our classes the students have a signal (fist hits open hand) to indicate that they don’t understand what you said. I like this signal because it shows they have “hit the wall” and no longer can keep up. It also wryly reminds me of a subtle threat of violence—if I keep talking over their heads all hell may soon break loose due to a rising frustration level.
We check for understanding by the reaction time of the class. We want them to respond quickly and fluidly. If they are slow to answer a simple question, they probably do not understand the words in the question and we need to back up a bit.
We ask LOTS of questions. If they do not seem to get a higher level question (How? or Why?), then we will ask a lower level question (Who? or What?) and if that doesn’t work, we will ask the lowest level questions (Either/Or & Yes/No).
It takes only three seconds to ask an individual kid, “What does quiere comer mean?” have them respond, and go on. It takes two seconds to say, Enseñame «le gustaba bailar». When you know that they know, you can go on.
We also give short vocabulary quizzes frequently. The purpose of these quizzes is not to punish the students, but to see if we as teachers are doing our job. If most of the kids do not know the words on a pop quiz, then the TEACHER has not done his/her job. For a pop quiz to be valid at least 80% of the regularly attending students get an 80% or better. If not, we throw it out and re-teach the words and/or grammatical structures involved until they get it.
Stay in bounds. What does this mean?
This is the practical application of the i + 1 concept in comprehensible input theory. Our job is to skillfully use the target language to teach the kids. We want them to understand us. If we use too many that are outside of what they know we are not communicating. Our goal is not to go too far out of bounds—to never go much outside of what they know. This is not some kind of game where the students have to guess what the teacher is talking about. By going out of bounds we are not making them stronger and better language learners, we are frustrating them and they will shut down. When you use a word that is out of bounds, write it on the board and Spanish and in English. That will slow you down and help to keep you within the boundary of what they know.
Don’t go too easy on them here. Don’t over-use English if you can help it. Most of your speaking will be in the target language, but it will be language that they can understand; it will be vocabulary that they have acquired. They can understand a lot if you are skillful enough. Sometimes this will require a bit of circumlocution on your part—you may have to talk around the words and structures the students do not understand yet, but it can be done and it is great modeling for the students.
Staying in bounds can also be a classroom management issue. When students do not understand they quit paying attention. They give up on you and begin to make up some other way to make class interesting. You do not want that kind of “fun” breaking out.