I got this from Kate just now:
Hey Ben,
Happy Friday to you! I just had to share this home run moment that I had today. It’s so great to have an outlet to share them with!
I walked into my 3rd grade class today intent on spinning another story using the structures “she goes” and “I go”. We have been having a pretty good time with these structures this week but I wanted to get more reps in. Anyway, I always do a check- in with the kids to start the class: In Spanish I say “how are you?” and they tell me with either gestures or words “sad, happy, hungry, sick, etc.”. I used to just get a lot of “hungry” and “sick”. But by now they have learned to Play the Game so well that check in can take up half the class- they have started throwing in gestures or words from our stories like “I want some chocolate” or “I have LOTS of chocolate” or “I have a chocolate car” or “I’m afraid of my pencil”. But today it went down this totally gorgeous path of CI and it took up ALL of the class!
So here’s how it happened: one kid told me he had some chocolate and “offered” me some. “Oh, gracias!”, I said, and pretended to eat it. “Como se dice ‘PSYCH’?” (How do you say psych?”), he giggled. Um… why? Well, turns out it was “sick chocolate”. So I pretended to be mad and the practically class fell out of their chairs laughing. And we were off to the races! They started offering each other chocolate left and right and sometimes it was “good” chocolate and sometimes it was “sick” chocolate. It was hilarious – the kids were having the time of their young lives and suddenly we were circling completely different structures than what I had in my lesson plan. “Are you sure?” came in as did , ‘Be careful!” and “Ask him/her (if it’s good chocolate or gross chocolate)”, and “Said” and “wasn’t” (he SAID it was good chocolate but it wasn’t!) which of course led to “That’s not nice!”.
Totally in the Flow! I can’t believe that I just completely strolled off of my lesson plan and into the wild woods of…well, hanging out with my kids in the target language. Whoah. And to add to my joy, I have been timing the minutes that we spend in the target language (and bringing the clock down to zero if any English is used) just to see how close to the ACTFL 90% we get and so far we’ve gotten to 17 out of 30 minutes or 18 out of 30 minutes. But today we did 25 out of 30– without stopping!!! Unbelievable. I know that not every day can be like today but man, it was so much fun.
Hope all is well with you,
Kate M
Independence Charter School
Philadelphia