[Note – in this post I use the term intuition. It is actually an edited post from a few years ago but if fits here. It is a post that concrete sequential teachers won’t necessarily embrace. I suggest that you not read this post if you like everything in order. This is a bit on the hippy side.]
In this article I try to explain to a new teacher, Lauren, how we can enliven our comprehensible input. How to keep our classes alive and interesting? We can do that by simply using more of our intuition when we talk to the kids. Doing so is like catching a wave on a surfboard – the conditions have to be right, but we can do it. We can hang five. We can make our class discussions alive, fun, and lighthearted.
What does it mean to hang five? First and foremost, it means to be in silence, except for our voices in the classroom (like on the surfboard when everything comes together – there are no distractions and there is a kind of being one with the board and the wave in silence – just the swoosh of the water is there). We the teachers are in command and we can drop five toes off the side in triumph before we drop off the wave/the bell rings.
When the (teaching) silence is there (Rule #2), we can go in any direction with the circling. The silence in the room is something I have never properly understood, and is connected to seating charts and phone calls home and such. It is crucial. When the class is totally silent, we have much more power over the wave and the circling isn’t mechanical for us because the personalization is so much easier. We are not distracted by discipline issues and we can focus on what is possible. The silence allows us to mine the CI gold in a way we can never do when even one kid is talking.
The silent swoosh of the wave on the water is the silence of the classroom. One might say how odd this image is, the image of a silent classroom being compared to the best things we can do on a surfboard. But think about it. Would a symphony orchestra sound any better if the pair of violinists sitting on the third stand in the second violin section stopped playing during the quietest parts of the Fauré Requiem and started talking to each other about what they were going to have for lunch?
I fear that too many of us just allow that kind of thing to happen. But, when we do, when we don’t absolutely insist on a silent classroom while we are doing the CI, we will never be able to personalize our circling and use our intuition to advance the quality of the CI, sometimes to places we never imagined possible.
Krashen didn’t bust his ass for thirty years coming up with this stuff for us to get it to a point where it almost might work for us just so that we could allow some kids to not pay attention to what we are teaching. Or put their head down on the desk and sleep. Is that what we think of ourselves? No. In this blog entry I would like to make the case for connecting a silent classroom, i.e. really enforcing our rules about kids talking in class, with our success in personalizing the CI. Without a silent classroom, we will fail at our attempt to make CI real in our classrooms.
I can understand kids talking and sleeping in classes in which CI is not used. They don’t give a rip about the imperfect vs. the passé composé – they’re not in that class to learn grammar rules at the expense of the overall language, and in such a class, no silence is the norm bc the kids are not engaged. As Laurie Clarcq once said, “The type of practice demonstrated [in a college grammar class] has no bearing on level of fluency….nor does it even promote a deeper understanding of the structure and beauty of a language.”
My point again is that it is in the silence of the classroom, except for our voice doing good slow CI that they can understand, with no overuse of Point and Pause on needless structures as discussed here in the past few days, where the path of circling can become more intuitive, and we can do things like go to the kid who most needs to be talked about in that moment of class. Doesn’t that make sense?
If we are going to walk the walk on this personalization thing then we accept the above point that, without the rules, no meaningful personalization will occur. That is my first point for Lauren in this blog. My second point is that we must absolutely talk about the kids and make them first, and who else to focus on than the kid who most needs to be talked about in that moment of class.
This is intuition at work in the classroom. It is following the invisible flow of things, and not beating the kids with grammar cleats. We can move our feet around on the surfboard with ease, because everything is so quiet and focused. Cresting the wave. I do believe, oddly, that there is an invisible flow of things happening in class that never receives attention. We tap into that and we tap into gold.
If we could just become aware that it is Sally who needs to be talked about today, and not Alec, we can feel where the class should go. Which leads to this important point about circling:
In any moment of class, I can either drive the CI in the direction of more CI, or I can bend it towards a kid. I can focus the questioning on the kid and let
– what they do
– how they feel today
– something they have done recently
– anything about them
drive the flow of the CI instead. That kind of CI has energy. It is the right wave, the one that will get us into real language sharing. We must learn how to catch the right wave.
For example, while walking around the room looking for some kid and some card with energy, I see Sally sitting there with her card that says, on the left, Sally, and, on the right, her drawing of a stick figure doing gymnastics. So I start circling:
Classe, Sally does gymnastics! (ohhh!)
Does Sally do gymnastics? (yes)
Does Sally do gymnastics or play piano (we had just talked about how Olivia plays piano)? (gymnastics)
Does Sally play piano? (no)
Correct, class, Sally doesn’t play piano, she does gymnastics! (ohhh!)
Class, does Sally or Jake do gymnastics? (Sally)
Correct, class, Sally does gymnastics! (ohhh!)
Class, who does gymnastics? (Sally)
Now, this kind of circling pattern, in 2005-06, became a bit rigid for many of us. We thought it was a formula. We overdid it. There is no formula in what we do in applying Krashen’s principles! If we are going to learn to hang five we need to flex out a little on this point. Instead of focusing on the circling pattern, we focus on the kid. We still circle, because we need the reps, but it has a different feel – one of surfing on a fast moving wave instead of surfing through concrete.
It is the misidentification with form, with the form of language, that is the source of all bad teaching. This is pure Krashen – the kids can’t learn the language because they are focusing on its form, how it is built, and not on the meaning of the comprehensible input that is about them. When we focus on the form of the language, we just sit on the board out where there are no waves and we stare at each one but never try to ride one. We cling to the surfboard (the language), but we are afraid to ride the wave (the personalization piece).
The misidentification with the form of language, then, is what causes the boring circling (L used the word “cold”). We have to remember that we are in our classrooms to focus on the kids. Chemistry and physics teachers, just about everyone else in the building, can’t do that due to the nature of their disciplines, but we can. So we must learn repetitive questioning without loss of lively banter with the kids. We must learn how to hang five.
How might the above CI look when our CI surfboard is well placed on the front of the wave (good personalization going on), with plenty of foot contact with the board that will allow us to drive the circling (the board) in any direction? Perhaps this below might help. It is an attempt to describe what happens when we simply learn to trust that we can take the flow of the questioning to a place of highest interest concerning the student. We start in the same way:
Classe, Molly does gymnastics! (ohhh!)
Does Molly do gymnastics? (yes)
But, this time, we start looking for any hint of a cute answer from any kid.
We want to get to a more flexible type of personalized circling, so we start looking carefully, during this time, for anything with energy that they feed us. We are really physically looking for kids who have been waiting, just waiting, for a totally quiet classroom so that they can think sharp, who just needed the totally quiet room to receive and reply to our invitation to throw out something really funny – to get things going. Our own part, in the silence of the room, in the studied positive emotional kindness that we are showering on the kids no matter how we feel that day, are ready to let the kids’ cute answers drive the class. These moments are so key to getting the circling personalized. Just look and really see them. Create a setting in which they can think and feel that their ideas matter to the flow of the CI.
Suddenly, over on your left, the big kid with the long hair who is leaning forward because he is so into it, in response to the question:
Class, does Sally or Jake do gymnastics?
answers that Jake does gymnastics. Now here is the slightest wrinkle in the circling. Jake doing gymnastics. The kid, a very smart kid, was just being a little funny, a little wise with that answer. He was inviting you to go somewhere.
Just think about it. Consider it. Of course it’s not the right answer – Sally is the right answer. But you think about Jake, who is the offensive tackle on the football team and a Division 1 prospect at 275 pounds, doing gymnastics…. Hmmmm….
You immediately process whether Jake can handle the attention, and you decide he can, and soon, via the circling, you have Jake and Holly up in front of the room competing with Sally in a gymnastics competition. All because of a cute twist in the form of one word from the kid with the long hair. What is happening in these moments?
1. Jake is becoming a real person to Sally, and vice versa. Instead of going all year without knowing each other, which used to happen years ago in my non CI classes, these two kids form a bond in the humor of the scene.
2. The kids get to know Jake and Sally.
3. Jake and Sally get to move their bodies in class and get some attention. Both things are manna to children who are used to being faceless and unrecognized as important in their classes.
4. You caught a wave. The room is totally focused on the kids. Now you can hang five.
You can now positively and totally glorify Sally. She is there, standing next to someone three or four times bigger than her, but she is the star, she is the champion because you circled that word into the CI when Jake was up there. Jake wan’t the champion, Sally was the champion.
Now might be an excellent time to play the “where” card, which is the best springboard card for fun, the best question word to follow up a little round of circling with:
Class, where does Sally do gymnastics?
The class has no suggestions (they are a French 1 class and still getting their water wings). So just ask them:
Colorado?
They say yes, but you need a rep or two on that so you say no. It just doesn’t feel right. Then you ask:
Idaho? (it’s the next place that popped into your mind)
That has a little funniness to it, so you go with that. Soon Sally is the champion of Idaho and Jake sits down to a big round of applause. Many of the kids are now really leaning into it because they understand. You are not going too fast and it’s about them. They can lean in and have fun, because they understand. Now the whole class can follow Rule #4 perfectly. It’s all about whether they understand or not, which is all about SLOW.
So, Idaho. You think of potatoes. On some deeper level of your mind you process, with lightning speed, where this might go. You need to think on your feet in these moments. Where might Molly, the champion of Idaho, go in Idaho? What might she do?
Suddenly, while circling the word champion (“Is Bella the Champion of Idaho?” (no) (“Is Nakeia the Champion of Idaho?” (no) “Is David – the funny kid with the big heart who loves learning this way and can be counted on to take a joke – the Champion of Idaho?” (no).
But you twist it and say “Yes, class, David is the Champignon (mushroom) of Idaho!” The class hears “Champion” and gets confused. Sally is the Champion of Idaho! But you go to the whiteboard and write down the two words:
Champion – champion
Champignon – mushroom
(we write the English but don’t say it in Point and Pause).
Suddenly, as if by magic, two of our kids have identities. One is the Champion of Idaho and one is the Mushroom of Idaho. In the next class, perhaps, someone will become the Potato of Idaho. All you did was circle intuitively, following possible threads in the conversation. By doing so, you avoided mechanical circling, or fake PQA.
In this kind of intuitive personalized circling – what Jason Fritze calls “co-creation” – there is a greater sense of play. The kids have more say in things, but they are totally quiet.
This point absolutely must be repeated – if there is even one side conversation in the room, then this kind of circling, this hanging five fun, just will not happen. The very kid who is allowed to even whisper to a friend, is the destroyer of the process of intuitive personalized circling.
In one of my level 2 classes recently there was a child who insisted on making the lean over contact with a neighbor. I stopped class and said directly to him in English: “Would you go into a court of law and interrupt the proceedings in front of the judge by talking to a friend when every one else in the courtroom is quiet and totally focused on the legal proceedings?” (the kid said no). “Well, then, why would you think it’s o.k. to interrupt my class in similar fashion? I won’t allow you to do that. It messes up my class. I have worked way too hard at learning how to teach this way to let you sit over there and not pay attention. I especially won’t let you talk to your neigbors while I am teaching. Stay after class so that we can discuss this. I am sure that I have the support of every kid in this class who really wants to learn French on this point. Thanks.”
Too strong? Not your style? O.K. – but just see how far your circling gets when there is even one kid who is not being given proper limits about the rules in your classroom. Even a few of those side conversations will prevent you from ever even getting up on that board and hanging five. We must follow our rules about one person talks (us) and the others listen (Rule #2) or everything, all the CI, dies. If we can’t get our classrooms totally silent during the CI, we cannot hang five. If we can’t do that, we can ride no waves. Just as on a surfboard, if there is the slightest disturbance in the water, or some object in the water, or the blast of a horn from the beach, or maybe another surfer – which is comparable to some kid talking in the back of the room – we lose the art of all of this – we can’t hang five. The other kids can’t focus because Rodney is over there making some stupid joke in English to Maurice, and Maurice just wants to pay attention, but you allow this from Rodney and then you wonder why this stuff doesn’t work for you.
O.K. enough of that ramble.
