David Sceggel makes good points about CWB below. This is his comment from last night turned into a post. The reason I post it is because in the first article on the first day of class, I said that I was planning on doing less CWB than in past years in favor of more direct work with verbs, and this is to clarify:
The big point I want to make and what I personally feel good with on the first day and really in the first weeks of school is that I will have always used – for over ten years now – CWB as long as it has energy, and that is true for this year as well. A s soon as the prior class on a verb (used to start class) has lost its own energy, we hit it with the CWB cards. So first verbs, then CWB to end class, as per all the articles here on using CWB (see the CWB/Circling with Balls category; there are also videos on the hyperlink above and to the left) and according to David’s nice synopsis here:
To me this is the beauty of CWB. You actually come up with a little mini story.
“John plays basketball with Bigfoot in a volcano.”
You can get the all of the three steps within two (one?) class periods. Establish meaning with plays, TPR it, story ask the details, once it loses energy, get John and a Bigfoot actor to act it out, the next day read it. If you are really set, have a student email you a picture of them playing basketball and talk about that.
On the first day, you can have almost no English, and you set the tone for the year.
1. All TL almost all the time.
2. Students learn the game.
3. Enforcement of the rules. (we want students to break them the first week!)
4. Highly personalized, highly cooperative, hopefully compelling.
5. If we say it we read it. (Make the reading extremely simple and easy)
Meanwhile the history teacher down the hall is on page 4 of their syllabus….