Story Listening is simple. You tell a story. You use the marker to draw it as you say it. The kids listen. They don’t test on any of it. They don’t talk. They don’t count reps. They aren’t being taught words from some targeted list, semantic set, high frequency list, to prepare them for a […]
Sometimes the right sequence of questions we use can lead us seamlessly into a story. When that happens, we hardly even notice that we went from an image into and through a story. At a workshop in St. Louis this week, three St. Louis teachers teamed up to demonstrate how this can happen: Monica developed
Our group member Bobbi Robledo shares: I work at Jefferson Academy Elementary School in Broomfield, CO. I am loving teaching here, where the administration is behind CI methods 100%. It is so wonderful being able to go to work every day knowing it is going to be a blast! Now we have an opening for
Krashen’s bold statement that language acquisition is an unconscious process is at the core of all we do in comprehensible input, and yet we forget that. But the fact is that we learn languages unconsciously, as per: https://benslavic.com/blog/2008/08/28/ci-oceanic-stuff/ https://benslavic.com/blog/2010/07/18/we-learn-languages-unconsciously-1/ https://benslavic.com/blog/2010/07/19/we-learn-languages-unconsciously/ SLOW is the principle vehicle for driving the learning into the unconscious mind. Why and
I apologize for not mentioning more often in these pages the fact that the nature of the change we are in right now is a quantum and not an incremental leap. It is such a big leap for us to grasp that we don’t use our conscious minds to learn a language. We keep running into
So the chef that is the unconscious mind in language acquisition does it all. When he makes the soup, bubbles form as it heats up and forms into tasty language. Those bubbles pop right into our conscious minds and we hear a constant flow of sounds in the new language that is kind of like what
Tina and I are working with a group in St. Louis starting tomorrow until Wednesday so we’re signing off here until next Thursday. Many of us are on spring break so enjoy!
We have no business ruining this great unconscious process of language creation simply because we want to be in the kitchen making the food. I say to all of us, “Get out of the kitchen! We are disturbing the chef, who is really shy and will retire from the kitchen if we barge in and
The unconscious mind is a soup kitchen where the language acquisition process takes place. The language acquisition process does not take place in the dining room. The vegetables and broth and other ingredients are what we provide the chef, who in the unconscious minds of our students is master organizer of the meal. The chef
Tina wrote this: It is not important that students comprehend every individual word. It is important that they can follow the message and not get lost and that they stay engaged. In fact, we would argue that many teachers’ failures to continue on with CI are partially due to their trying to make every single
Our group can be a gold mine for shared information. The request today is from Jeff in Illinois. If anyone can help with any pre-written verbage for this kind of proposal it might save Jeff some time: I just got approved to submit a proposal for Spanish electives that utilize CI. These classes will be
I am happiest in the midst of a good story with a strong group of kids whose hearts are open. Then it all becomes worthwhile. How many of our colleagues want the special sort of bliss that happens in those good classes? Most of our colleagues just want to use the book – it may
