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9 thoughts on “Chunk Dictation 2 – again”
Thanks again, cap’n. I am so glad you and everyone else is back.
Thanks so much for this great idea! That’s exactly what I need today – I was getting ready to pull my hair out. And, you have described one of my classes to a “T”.
Funny how that less-stress technique reaps benefits. My colleague and I just made the decision to not add any more structures. Stories, songs, reading, video clips focusing only on the familiar. I see your chunk dictation doing that exact thing. It’s time to cement and support instead of stackin’ up more!!
with love,
Laurie
I used this today, insisting on total silence (adding extra seconds after class for infractions), and it worked as advertised. It gave me a break, gave the kids some good listening time, and almost all of them had a couple of perfect phrases.
Solid structure seems to be important just now–that and very clear boundaries. We can still get into a conversation, but letting misbehavior slide is not going to work as May begins.
I have to second Michelle on that one. I did the dictation at the beginning of class yesterday, and it completely changed the dynamic for the rest of the period. We were actually able to have a productive conversation. Thanks again!
I just had to drop a line and say that I used chunk dictation for the first time this week on my fifth and sixth graders. I was afraid they would complain about the writing, but they actually enjoyed it and were excited when they got the words right with no mistakes. I am going to make this a regular thing.
Also, I should introduce myself. My name is Irene Frazier, and I teach Spanish in central Texas. I teach at a small private school and only see my kids 30 minutes 2x per week. But, next year I am going back to public high school, and I can’t wait. This blog has given me so much information … I’m sure I will be reading and preparing all summer. I am also excited about backwards design of the week. Now, I just have my classes reading each other’s stories, but I am interested in finding other material that would be appropriate for high school. If anyone has any suggestions, that would be great.
Thanks again,
Irene
Cool, Irene. I will copy this and post it above as a separate blog post so that I can add your name to the list of members in the “Group Members” category to the right of this page.
And about chunk dictation…well, a link, if not really connected…
I read the book The Talent Code last weekend. (Google it and read some of the blogs from Daniel Coyle–you’ll feel right at home.) As I’ve shared lately, I tried a chunking sort of non-speaking output activity that seems to me to be correlated with the idea of practicing tennis swings in a very focused manner without the tennis racquet as Coyle reports. I ask the kids to hear what I say again in my head right after I’ve said it. Then I ask them to hear themselves shouting it. They aren’t allowed to move their lips the first couple of times. Just as an experiment, I’ve taught two classes a couple of long, grammatically complex sentences this way, and now I’m thinking that I should make them do this “hear it in your head” thing before they get to pick up their pencils and write.
Oh…and by the way, the kids can then spit out those sentences as though they’re fluent speakers. It’s a really weird experiment. Not TPRS. But definitely something I want to think about more.
Here’s a recent blog post from Coyle that might get you wanting more.
http://thetalentcode.com/2011/04/03/a-sneak-preview-and-a-question/
That’s all in that world of NLP stuff. Neurolinguistic Programming is bigger than a world. It’s a universe. It works. I love the Try Sh*t advice in particular, because that is our middle name, right? Especially you Michele. And that is connected as well to Suggestopedia. Brain wave changes where, when the brain slows down, it has blotter like qualities of recalling language. Georgi Lozanov brought it out of Bulgaria in 1955 to McGill University. I stopped doing it in the 1980’s because I couldn’t tell my classes to lie down on the floor and start playing the second movements of certain baroque concertos and move their heart rates down to 60 beats per minute to correspond to the music which resulted in the brain waves going down to the alpha state (the blotter) of 14 brain cycles per second. What if someone came in with a note, or the loudspeaker was used, or their parents thought I was a hippy. It works, but not in the real world. That sublingual stuff is fascinating though. A tough one to let go, but Krashen’s work has more than made up for its loss.