Teacher: Any words of advice on what to focus on? I don’t want to let my school / kids down this year.
My response: You won’t. They only want to be loved, quite frankly, and you do that, I can tell. To repeat; they only want to be loved and feel confident. Love them from your heart, and make them feel confident by using the Invisibles.
You wrote:
I also haven’t taught Spanish 3 and 4 in so long. I do want to do a quick writing assessment.
My advice: Don’t do this. It’s unfair. They can’t write. Give them a break. If they weren’t taught before using CI, then they can’t write. I once inherited a group of AP students after three years who had had grammar and their writing was worse than my level one Invisibles kids in January.
You wrote: I just want to see where they are at in the first week and also informally assess them by how much they understand me / and respond.
My response: I wouldn’t do that either. Kids are so sensitive. Wish I could say more but what you raise here is five universes of discussion. My advice to keep it simple is teach the twos and threes and fours traditionally and leave the invisibles for level one only. Put in the Invisibles categories as time allows with all four levels only when it fits, usually at the end of the period. Then in a year you will have two classes, levels one and two, ready to go w the Invisibles and slowly when the current sophomores graduate you can do CI and then you will experience something about being a language teacher.
