Here is a very kick ass end of year story from Dan Navar by way of John Piazza. John sets it up:
Ben,
A few of us have been exchanging emails about final exams, and the fact that some of us are being forced to give a grammar-translation style exam. Dan Navar’s response is below. I think that if we can use CI to get our kids to reach the insight that his student has, then we will have succeeded (hey 4%ers: notice the future perfect in a conditional clause. Bam!).
Dan’s story:
So I am giving my students a final common assessment from my district heavy on grammar and parsing – I had them write a grammar sheet in Latin complete with all the endings they would be expected to know. Today, one of my students asked if the questions were in Latin or in English. When I told them English – he said, to everyone’s agreement, “Damn – that’s gonna be easy. What’s the point of that?”
Refreshing way to end the year.
Dan