Common Planning On Line

4 thoughts on “Common Planning On Line”

1. magisterp

   August 11, 2015 at 11:57 am

   “we each know what we want to teach, what our students’ needs are, and so we should choose by ourselves.”
   Ben, I’m not so sure.
   I forget how long your PLC has been around (9 years?), but it’s probably easy to overlook the fact that new teachers – completely untrained when it comes to Teaching with CI – are interested in doing what you all do. While this PLC is refining, and in some cases reinventing itself and its practices, many teachers come and go, and are never really a apart of the TCI world.
   There’s a lively targeted vs. non-targeted convo going on over at moreTPRS. I will simply say that if non-targeted is the way, I’m not ready.
   Last year all I had were frequency lists. Those were a great start, but I realized I needed more guidance (for MYSELF, not students). I found that there were verbs I could teach earlier on that really, really, really helped set the CI classroom stage. Here’s some support I’ve worked on:
   Guide to using other vocab WITH the 51 Most Important Latin Verbs:
   https://docs.google.com/document/d/1z9FowJBiQMNayr2frO_sSDk8L-7eunmpkFNgyI6yxUs/edit
   51 Most Important Latin Verbs:
   https://docs.google.com/document/d/1jgQ3scu4pM3Nn1itmf0WOnCCrEggqYiTVErpXDwMZi0/edit
   (Those links can also be found on this CI Curriculum post: http://magisterp.com/2015/07/09/ci-curriculum/)

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   1. Ben Slavic

      August 11, 2015 at 12:10 pm

      …if non-targeted is the way, I’m not ready….
      And I respect that Lance. But that word targeted and its twin non-targeted are starting, like everything else we are doing, to lose its meaning. Has Krashen commented on the list? Is Blaine still guiding people along as I remember he used to do so well years ago?
      I apologize for not looking myself but time and a dislike for the list chatter keep me from looking myself. Maybe a read about the terms by doing a search here might help. There are articles from 2009 as I remember, that phase of this crazy work we do.
      But what is wrong with just picking a verb, making or grabbing one of the new slide shows here as they come up in the next month (we hope!)? Just pick a verb and teach it. Use any of the many strategies we have outlined for so long here and which have proven that they work in the classroom because they are all some variant form of the Three Steps.
      Do the Three Steps and do that through the year. I am sure you will get to the same place most other teachers do in June if you do it that way, whether you target or don’t target.
      I don’t know. It’s a weird topic. I apologize that it’s not all clear. It’s just us, flying by the seat of our pants, as usual. No program, no method, no prescribed way to do it. All my books are just suggestions for strategies really. No experts. Just three steps and a bunch of us clowns with our shoe laces tied together, but even that freak show is tons better than what those other bozos had going on in the past.
      Sorry I didn’t even address your question. But I’m real sleep-deprived. Somebody answer it.

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2. Ben Slavic

   August 11, 2015 at 12:45 pm

   Lance here is a link:
   https://benslavic.com/blog/non-targeted-comprehensible-input/
   Search “targeted” for more articles.
   My deal is whether it is comprehensible or not, with no English.

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3. magisterp

   August 11, 2015 at 9:57 pm

   Hmm…that targeted/non-targeted buzzphrase took this in the wrong direction. I should’ve been more clear about how a common verb sequence is really about Teacher Support. You wrote:
   “But what is wrong with just picking a verb, making or grabbing one of the new slide shows here as they come up in the next month (we hope!)? Just pick a verb and teach it. Use any of the many strategies we have outlined for so long here and which have proven that they work in the classroom because they are all some variant form of the Three Steps.”
   There’s nothing wrong at all, but step back into your first TPRS year, or even into the world of traditional language teaching (for a minute). Despite the straightforward task (i.e. pick a verb and teach it), there is so much that can cause a teacher to fail, abandon CI, and consider it a tool that has no place in their toolbox. In fact, you’ve wrote about all those things that could go wrong here (https://benslavic.com/blog/checklist-for-beginning-the-year/). Imagine not having those in place, but trying to manage a class in the target language because you were blown away by Alina Filipescu’s TPRS video and want to emulate it! Better yet, imagine having all those things in place, but no experience Circling. If a teacher’s craft isn’t up to speed, kids won’t be into it. There goes “compelling” right out the window. It’d be a shame if one of those things, like “choosing a verb,” is factored into aaaaaaall the rest of what can go wrong.
   I suppose my point is that we lose teachers because there’s not enough support. I am TOTALLY into this stuff, yet even I need guidance! I can’t just pick a verb (yet), because when I did that early in 2014, I found that I needed other verbs to keep that “just picked” verb interesting and lend itself to a story. But then, I realized I needed OTHER verbs to just keep class in order, etc. Add skeptical coworkers and admin to the mix (probably because I didn’t have skillz), and “just picking a verb” becames the last thing that had to happen. See what I mean?
   Moving forward, I needed some support for myself, so I prioritize the LatinBestPractices 50 Most Important Latin Verbs list (oh, and added “throw” to that, making it 51 Verbs, since I like to toss around sports balls and props during PQA). Why? Well, I wanted to shelter the most essential vocabulary, and needed a plan in order to do so. This is a type of “targeted” input, and a good example is how I taught “runs” before “goes.” That’s a really silly thing to do. There plenty of scenarios that call for having “runs” in a story, but we also didn’t need everyone running all over the place because I “just picked that verb.”
   Once I prioritized that list, I found that I only needed a certain number of classroom objects in order to teach the first 25 Most Important Latin Verbs. That’s sheltering vocabulary, but it’s also targeting.
   So, I understand the value of being able to “just roll with it” (and even wrote about a positive experience here: http://magisterp.com/2015/05/20/non-targeted-input-ditching-a-lesson-plan/), but I am more concerned with having materials AVAILABLE that might generate ideas, discussions, or just plain help a teacher out. If you (and Melissa) ever rethink the idea of putting together a sequence (e.g. “goes” is probably better to introduce before “runs,” and most certainly before “thinks,” etc.), I’ll be ready to weigh in.

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