I have known Dori for at least seven years. She’s in Parker in SE Denver and came to visit me when I was teaching in middle school in Jefferson County. She seemed so appreciative of what I thought were some pretty mediocre classes. That tells me that Dori has a lot of heart. And she was up in Breckenridge […]
Here is part of a recent email exchange I shared with Anne Matava. In it, Anne expresses how she has dealt with the February/March burnout – when the kids actually need a break from all the comprehensible input: Anne: I am moving away from CI for a while. Me: This is normal. Anne: The kids are
I got this from Reuben Vyn about how he handles kids who bug us for cuss words in the TL: Whenever my students (usually the ‘cool’ ones that could lose interest and potentially not continue into the upper level classes) ask me how to say inappropriate things in French, I always laugh it off and
Obviously, Monday’s Quiz #4 is difficult and gives the instructor a grade that keeps grades from getting inflated. The participation grade keeps the kids socially honest in class, while the (following Monday) reading grade – with its 30% new words – makes it by far the hardest grade of the week and thus keeps the kids honest in
Quiz #3 – that is, the participation grade, reflects so much and is such a key factor in this entire grading approach. Some on this site have taken the position that grades should only reflect intellectual achievement, not participation. I seriously disagree. The nature of what we do is that when the kids are consciously making an
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
