I mentioned that I want to videotape my workshop with DPS teachers on Monday to help get a clearer version of the story I have already posted some clips of here. I will be able to do that because the audience fo this session will have had no French at all and I will have to go much slower, which might make things clearer. Here are the handouts for that workshop:
Ben Slavic DPS WL Handout – 9.19.11
Materials: markers, laser pointer, two sets of rules (one posted), color/no. chart, LCD, sample of five word wall chart, rolling white board (if available)
Note: this format requires at least two 50 minute classes for Parts A and B, and at least a full block class for Part C.
Procedures:
Part A – PQA
1. Assignment of jobs to three students: the PQA counters.
2. Five Finger rules explained. See below.*
3. Step 1 of TPRS: establishing meaning.
4. Step 1 of TPRS: gesturing.
5. Step 1 of TPRS: PQA of the target structures.
Part B – The Story
1. Assignment of jobs to three students: the story writer, the quiz writer, the artist.
2. Story
3. Quick Quiz
Part C – The Reading Class, done according to the following sequence of activities:
a. Silent reading of the first page of the text created and based on the story (usually a generic version of five classes’ stories).
b. Pair work. Students work in pairs to try to read the text.
c. Choral translation and discussion of text in L2. This includes L2 spinouts from the text, but is also when we teach grammar. I prefer going paragraph by paragraph, translating, spinning into a few simple questions in L2, and focusing heavily on grammar.
d. Choral and individual work on accent – this is a special time when the students, after constant input and relatively littlespeech output, get a chance to speak a bit. We tell them how well they pronounce the language, even if they don’t, because they need so much more input before that to happen. This activity is only done for a few minutes and is done primarily because the students enjoy it so much – it is a kind of reward for listening to all that input that preceded it. But in terms of current research it has little value, except for the enjoyment and motivation factor.
e. Sacred reading of the text – toward the end of the reading class, I take the opportunity to read the text to the kids without their being able to see it. But I don’t read it like a teacher. I read it like it is a secret that I want to share with them. I read it to them in a dramatic tone. I try to lend a kind of sacred feeling to the words. They are like people who are attending a play, and it is the dramatic moment of a play. One DPS teacher told me after observing my classes that she went back and did this sacred reading and that the kids were blown away that the understood it. That’s the point. The kids told her that she should have been an actress.
f. Translation quiz (optional) – pick any paragraph from the reading and have the students translate it into English for a quick and easy grade.
Note: we use the Embedded Reading technique when creating reading texts based on stories. I embed readings based on stories with about 30% new vocabulary and grammar added in to the basic story line (which I write on the evening of the story creation day from the notes given to me by the Story Writer. This builds students’ vocabulary, it teaches more grammar (this is by far the best time to teach grammar in a class based on comprehensible input. It also creates more unpredictable and personalized stories to heighten student interest.
*Five Finger Rules (not a poster, just a technique for keeping discipline)
1. No notetaking.
3. No repeating after me.
4. Signal me when you don’t understand.
5. Everything I say is interesting, so if you understand, then let me know (the best way is through your eyes), and if you don’t understand, let me know that too (the best way is the fist punch move).
How to use the five finger rules: remind the kids in the first three weeks or so of classes about these rules all the time. Just
smile and look at the kid, walking over if need be, don’t use English, and hold up the finger of the rule not being followed. They will get it quickly. Tell the kids that if they do these things their grades will be higher. Each one of your first week of classes, most especially, must begin with this little speech. It will norm your CI classroom a lot faster than anything else, especially words, which they don’t hear.
Note: if these are so effective, one might ask, then why post Ben’s “Classroom Rules”. The answer is that these finger rules are formative, as it were, to be used at the moment of each infraction. They are swift and effective. The “Classroom Rules” (see poster page of this site) are more summative in nature. They are posted and referred to with the laser
pointer during class in a more general way than the finger rules. Using them both can be a very successful pathway to successful classroom management. They work together, as it were.
Credit: Linda Li, Annick Chen
Note: For more detailed workshop handouts, please visit this site/resources/workshop handouts.